ENTERPRISE RESOURCE

PLANNING
Chapter 4

Dr. Sharad Patil

 Chapter 4

 Enterprise Applications Portal and

Content Management
Data Warehousing and Data Mining
 Business Intelligence and Analytics
 Emerging Trends in ERP Applications
Enterprise Applications Portal and
Content Management
 An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a platform for integrating
information, people and processes across organizational boundaries in a fashion similar to the more general web
portals. Enterprise portals provide a protected unified access point, often in the form of a web-based interface, and
are made to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets.
 One hallmark of enterprise portals could be the de-centralized content contribution and content management,
which keeps the data always updated. Another distinguishing characteristic is which they cater for customers,
vendors and others beyond an organization's boundaries. This contrasts with a corporate portal that will be
structured for roles in a organization.
 Employee portal
 A study conducted in 2006 by Forrester Research, Inc. showed that 46 percent of large companies used a portal
referred to as a member of staff portal. Employee portals may be described as a specific set of enterprise portals
and are used to give a program for employees to personalized information, resources, applications, and e-
commerce options.
 Lean portal
 In 2009, Gartner introduced the idea of the portal-less portal or the “lean portal & rdquo ;.Lean Portals offer an
alternative to the original portals available going back 15 years, which may have become very hard to deploy and
maintain. Traditional portals are bloated with features that aren't necessarily cost-effective to businesses. This
contributes to plenty of frustration for companies thinking of investing in a portal as the original model forces
them to exceed their budgets for features they don't want or need, without being able to deliver the outcomes they
wanted. In comparison, a Lean Portal is lightweight and easy to deploy. It's built using modern Web 2.0
technologies, such as AJAX, widgets, representational state transfer (REST) and WOA/SOA approaches.
According to Gartner, organizations who plumped for a Lean Portal found so it delivered more than 80% of the
mandatory functionality within months of launching, without compromising security or advanced integration
requirements.
 Content management (CM)

 Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and
publishing of information in just about any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this
information may be more specifically known as digital content, or simply as content.
 Digital content might take the form of text (such as electronic documents), multimedia files (such as audio or video
files), or any other file type that follows a content lifecycle requiring management.
 The procedure is complex enough to control that several large and small commercial software vendors such
as Interwoven and Microsoft offer content management software to regulate and automate significant facets of this
content lifecycle.
 Process

 Content management practices and goals vary by mission and by organizational governance structure. News
organizations, e-commerce websites, and educational institutions all use content management, but in different
ways. This leads to differences in terminology and in the names and amount of steps in the process.
 As an example some digital content is produced by one or more authors. Over time that content may be edited. A
number of individuals may provide some editorial oversight, approving this content for publication.
 Publishing might take many forms: it will be the act of "pushing" content out to others, or simply granting digital
access rights to certain content to one or more individuals. Later that content may be superseded by another
version of this content and thus retired or taken off use (as when this wiki page is modified).
 Content management is definitely an inherently collaborative process
 Contd..
 A content management system is a set of automated processes that may support these features:
 Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
 Identification of most key users and their roles
 The capacity to assign roles and responsibilities to different instances of content categories or
types
 Definition of workflow tasks often coupled with messaging in order that content managers are
alerted to changes in content
 The capacity to track and manage multiple versions of an individual instance of content
 The capacity to publish this content to a repository to support access
 The capacity to personalize content predicated on a set of rules
 Contd..

 Decaying Performance: For an enterprise, business need and technological

requirement, continue to evolve. Cost, Complexity and difficulty to modify
and update the existing system mount. Fixing existing system is no more
viable and provides diminishing return. Alternatives are investigated and
decision of reimplementation is taken.
 Reimplementation: Similar to Roll Out phase as mentioned above. However,
the organizations are better organized now. Initial process will be carried out
more professionally. It is likely that they will adopt more of a vanilla version
with minimum need of customization, so that the next cycle gives a better
Return on Investment (ROI).
 Contd..
 Recruiting technology is also a capability of the Human Resources module. This technology
allows the recruiting team to look for and manage the top candidates for open positions in the
company. With the state of the economy today when an employer posts an open position they are
often inundated with applications from people that have diverse backgrounds and often times not
qualified for the position they are recruiting for. The recruiting technology helps the recruiters
manage the many applicants to find the best qualified candidates and to arrange and manage
interviews for the candidate to get feedback from those employees who do participate in the
interviewing process.
 The Human Resources module is a critical business intelligence area of the ERP solution and one
that every company can use to add value to the information that they track and report on for top
managers of the company. In many companies the information contained in the Human
Resources module is also used to feed information to other areas of the company, again making
the accuracy of the information critical. For example: the Information Technology Department
receives termination notices when an employee leaves the company, allowing them to terminate
all systems access that needs to occur immediately to keep disgruntled employees from wreaking
havoc on key business systems or from sending out emails to the entire company, which most
companies prefer not to happen.
 Contd..

 Increasingly, the repository is definitely an inherent area of the system, and

incorporates enterprise search and retrieval. Content management systems take these
forms:
 Site content management system—software for web page management (often
what content management implicitly means)
 Output of a newspaper editorial staff organization
 Workflow for article publication
 Document management system
 Single source content management system—content stored in chunks in just a
relational database
 Variant management system—where personnel tag source content (usually text and
graphics) to represent variants stored as single source "master" content modules,
resolved to the desired variant at publication (for example: automobile owners manual
content for 12 model years stored as single master content files and "called" by model
year as needed)—often found in concert with database chunk storage (see above) for
big content objects
 Data Warehousing - Overview

 Understanding a Data Warehouse

 A data warehouse is a database, that is kept separate from the
organization's operational database.
 There is no frequent updating done in a data warehouse.
 It possesses consolidated historical data, which helps the corporation
to analyze its business.
 A data warehouse helps executives to organize, understand, and use
their data to take strategic decisions.
 Data warehouse systems help in the integration of diversity of
application systems.
 A data warehouse system helps in consolidated historical data
analysis.
 Contd..

 The important components of GL are:

 GL master data set up.
 GL integration set up with logistics modules.
 Period and year closing.
 Integration with other modules: Some of the modules, integrated
with GL are:
 Accounts payable for purchase invoices, credit notes.
 Accounts receivable for sales invoice, credit notes and adjustment.
 Cash management wherefrom payment details are transferred to GL.
 Asset management for transferring depreciation details.
 Cost accounting for allocation of cost.
 Contd..

 Why a Data Warehouse is Separated from Operational Databases

 A data warehouses is kept separate from operational databases as a result of following
reasons −
 An operational database is constructed for well-known tasks and workloads such as
for instance searching particular records, indexing, etc. In contract, data warehouse
queries tend to be complex and they present an over-all kind of data.
 Operational databases support concurrent processing of multiple transactions.
Concurrency control and recovery mechanisms are required for operational databases
to make sure robustness and consistency of the database.
 An operational database query allows to read and modify operations, while an OLAP
query needs only read only access of stored data.
 An operational database maintains current data. On the other hand, a data warehouse
maintains historical data.
 Data Warehouse Features
 The main element features of a data warehouse are discussed below −
 Subject Oriented − A data warehouse is subject oriented because it provides
information around a subject rather than the organization's ongoing operations.
These subjects could be product, customers, suppliers, sales, revenue, etc. A data
warehouse does not focus on the ongoing operations, rather it targets modelling and
analysis of data for decision making.
 Integrated − A data warehouse is constructed by integrating data from heterogeneous
sources such as for instance relational databases, flat files, etc. This integration
enhances the effective analysis of data.
 Time Variant − The info collected in a data warehouse is identified with a specific
time period. The info in a data warehouse provides information from the historical
point of view.
 Non-volatile − Non-volatile means the last data is not erased when new data is
included with it. A data warehouse is kept separate from the operational database and
therefore frequent changes in operational database is not reflected in the information
warehouse
 Data Warehouse Applications
 Data warehouses are widely found in the following fields −
 Financial services
 Banking services
 Consumer goods
 Retail sectors
 Controlled manufacturing
 “
 Production Planning

 Production Module - BOM and Routing

 Bill of Material (BOM) is a base functionality of setting up production
module of an ERP system. A manufactured item consists of components,
which are used to build the product through production operation(s). The
main use of BOM is to define product structure of a manufactured end item.
 Routing is another important base of production module, which defines the
method of manufacturing. Method or route to be followed for
manufacturing a product is a prerequisite for setting up production module.
 Bill of Materials: Any manufacturing process goes through various phases
of production and at each phase, components (either work in progress or
purchased) are needed. BOM details components required at various phases
or levels of operations (either single level or multi level). In a multi level
BOM, a parent / child relationship between successive levels is formed.
 Contd..

 BOM is used both for production and planning purpose, as specified below:
 Defining a production bill of materials: The end item is described at highest level of
BOM. Levels of BOM are defined indicating material-routing relationship at every
level of operation. Thereafter, components are added at each level. An existing BOM
can be easily modified to create a newer version of BOM. An Engineering Bill of
Material from Engineering Data Management module may also be copied to make a
production BOM. A generic BOM may also be modified to make a customized product
with the help of Configuration Management module.
 Defining a planning bill of materials: Production of similar items (such as garments
of same type but of different sizes) is linked through aggregate relationship under
planning bill of material so that their long term plan of production/ subcontracting
are not done separately.
 Loops in BOM - While defining multi-level production bills of material, the user may
mistakenly link a higher level item to its component at a lower level. This creates a
data error and triggers an infinite loop for the manufactured item. This mistake is
detected through utilities, which normally forms part of the module.
 contd..
 Routing - The objectives of Routing module are:
 All tasks required to manufacture an item are determined.
 The work centers related to these tasks are identified.
 The sequence of task linked operations to be carried out on work centers or sub contracting work centers are
established.
 Department - An organizational unit that carries out a specific set of tasks. A department can be of various types
such as work centre, service centre, sales office etc.
 Work Centre - A Work Center is a place where production activities are performed. Resources (like men and/or
machines) are linked to a work centre. Thus, a Work center is a group of resource units used as a functional
planning unit. . Work centers may be departmental work centre or sub contracting work center.
 Task - This term is used to describe any activity carried out on the shop floor. Work centers and machines (for
machine tasks) are used to define tasks. Task may be of various types such as production, repair etc.
 Work centre Task relationship - The task is linked to the work center if the work center is able to executing the
task. Details such as set up time, production rate etc. are maintained under this relationship.
 Routing Code - The routing code identifies a routing sheet. Multiple (alternative) routings are possible for each
standard manufactured item. A routing selection can depend on the order quantity, which is called the Order
Quantity Dependent Routing. A routing code is needed to be linked to the manufactured item.
 Routing Operation - Here, series of routing steps that are carried out successively to produce an item is defined.
The operations are identified by serial number, which indicates sequence of operations for the associated
manufacturing process.
 Types of Data Warehouse

 Information processing, analytical processing, and data mining will be the three types of data
warehouse applications that are discussed below −
 Information Processing − A data warehouse allows to process the information stored in it. The
info could be processed by means of querying, basic statistical analysis, reporting using crosstabs,
tables, charts, or graphs.
 Analytical Processing − A data warehouse supports analytical processing of the info stored in it.
The info could be analyzed by means of basic OLAP operations, including slice-and-dice, drill
down, drill up, and pivoting.
 Data Mining − Data mining supports knowledge discovery by finding hidden patterns and
associations, constructing analytical models, performing classification and prediction. These
mining results could be presented using the visualization tools.
 Contd..

 What is Data Warehousing?

 Data warehousing is the method of constructing and utilizing a data warehouse. A
data warehouse is constructed by integrating data from multiple heterogeneous
sources that support analytical reporting, structured and/or ad hoc queries, and
decision making. Data warehousing involves data cleaning, data integration, and data
consolidations.
 Using Data Warehouse Information
 You will find decision support technologies that help make use of the data obtainable
in a data warehouse. These technologies help executives to utilize the warehouse
quickly and effectively. They can gather data, analyze it, and take decisions based on
the information present in the warehouse. The information gathered in a warehouse
can be used in the following domains −
 Tuning Production Strategies − The item strategies could be well tuned by
repositioning the merchandise and managing the merchandise portfolios by
comparing the sales quarterly or yearly.
 Customer Analysis − Customer analysis is done by analyzing the customer's buying
preferences, buying time, budget cycles, etc.
 Operations Analysis − Data warehousing also helps in customer relationship
 Contd..

 Built in Available-to-Promise (ATP) and Capable-To-Promise (CTP) feature analyzes

both open orders and inventory when building work orders, ensuring only parts
needed (as indicated on the quotation) are produced

 Extensive commission and sales analytic tools help identify sales trends and
profitability by product, business unit, customer and sales person

 Quick and easy order entry with pull down menus and previous order history
including, ship-to, bill-to, pricing/quantity discounts, and more

 Flexible pricing and discount options including customer specific pricing, tier pricing
and other discount terms

 Cumulative or blanket release management to support the most stringent automotive,

medical, and other industry requirements. Includes cumulative release and
R.A.N./KanBan number tracking
 Unlimited bill-tos, and ship-tos with multiple delivery scheduling per one sales order and even one sales order
release

 Each order can contain a combination of taxable, nontaxable, miscellaneous, and commission based items

 Credit card processing of payments taken through the sales order department or submitted electronically via the
web portal

 EDI functionality allows importing of sales orders and releases automatically or flagged according to user defined
flexibility rules

 Complete Return Material Authorizations (RMAs) with links to CAR/CAPA, ECOs, and MRB

 Warranty tracking

 Complete credit management tools monitors credit limits, credit holds and other hold conditions

 Color-coding for quick visual recognition and links to immediate shipping and invoicing information make
customer service easy.

 Turn orders into pick tickets, packing slips or invoices with a single click or generated later individually or in a
batch.
 Contd..
 Integrating Heterogeneous Databases
 To integrate heterogeneous databases, we have two approaches −
 Query-driven Approach
 Update-driven Approach
 Query-Driven Approach
 Here is the traditional approach to integrate heterogeneous databases. This method was used to
build wrappers and integrators along with multiple heterogeneous databases. These integrators
may also be called mediators.
 Process of Query-Driven Approach
 Whenever a query is issued to a client side, a metadata dictionary translates the query into a
proper form for individual heterogeneous sites involved.
 Now these queries are mapped and provided for the local query processor.
 The outcomes from heterogeneous sites are built-into a worldwide answer set.
 Disadvantages
 Query-driven approach needs complex integration and filtering processes.
 This method is extremely inefficient.
 It's very costly for frequent queries.
 This method can be very costly for queries that want aggregations.
 Contd..
 Update-Driven Approach
 That is an alternative to the original approach. Today's data warehouse systems follow update-
driven approach rather than the traditional approach discussed earlier. In update-driven
approach, the info from multiple heterogeneous sources are integrated beforehand and are stored
in a warehouse. This information can be acquired for direct querying and analysis.
 Advantages
 This method has the following advantages −
 This method provide high performance.
 The info is copied, processed, integrated, annotated, summarized and restructured in semantic
data store in advance.
 Query processing doesn't require an interface to process data at local sources.
 Functions of Data Warehouse
Tools and Utilities
 These are the functions of data warehouse tools and utilities −
 Data Extraction − Involves gathering data from multiple heterogeneous sources.
 Data Cleaning − Involves finding and correcting the errors in data.
 Data Transformation − Involves converting the data from legacy format to warehouse format.
 Data Loading − Involves sorting, summarizing, consolidating, checking integrity, and building indices and
partitions.
 Refreshing − Involves updating from data sources to warehouse.
 Data Warehousing - Terminologies
Metadata

 Metadata is merely defined as data about data. The info that are used
to represent other data is known as metadata. As an example, the
index of a guide serves as a metadata for the contents in the book. In
other words, we could say that metadata could be the summarized
data that leads us to the detailed data.
 When it comes to data warehouse, we could define metadata as
following −
 Metadata is really a road-map to data warehouse.
 Metadata in data warehouse defines the warehouse objects.
 Metadata acts as a directory. This directory helps the decision
support system to locate the contents of a data warehouse.
 Metadata Repository

 Metadata repository is an integral element of a data warehouse

system. It contains the following metadata −
 Business metadata − It offers the data ownership information,
business definition, and changing policies.
 Operational metadata − It offers currency of data and data
lineage. Currency of data describes the data being active,
archived, or purged. Lineage of data means history of data
migrated and transformation applied on it.
 Data for mapping from operational environment to data
warehouse − It metadata includes source databases and their
contents, data extraction, data partition, cleaning, transformation
rules, data refresh and purging rules.
 The algorithms for summarization − It offers dimension
algorithms, data on granularity, aggregation, summarizing, etc.
 Data Cube

 A data cube helps us represent data in multiple dimensions. It's defined by dimensions
and facts. The dimensions are the entities regarding which an enterprise preserves the
records.

 Data Mart
 Data marts include a subset of organization-wide data that is valuable to specific
categories of people within an organization. In other words, a data mart contains only
those data that is specific to a particular group. As an example, the marketing data
mart may contain only data related to items, customers, and sales. Data marts are
confined to subjects.
 Data Mining

Data Mining is defined as the task of extracting

information from huge sets of data. Put simply,
we could say that data mining is mining
knowledge from data. The tutorial starts with a
basic overview and the terminologies associated
with data mining and then gradually moves onto
cover topics such as knowledge discovery, query
language, classification and prediction, decision
tree induction, cluster analysis, and how to mine
the Web.
 Data Mining Applications

Data mining is highly useful in the following

domains −
Market Analysis and Management
Corporate Analysis & Risk Management
Fraud Detection
Besides these, data mining can also be used in
the regions of production control, customer
retention, science exploration, sports, astrology,
and Internet Web Surf-Aid
 Data Mining Engine

 Data mining engine is quite important to the information

mining system. It includes a couple of functional
modules that perform the following functions −
 Characterization
 Association and Correlation Analysis
 Classification
 Prediction
 Cluster analysis
 Outlier analysis
 Evolution analysis
 Trends in Data Mining

 Data mining concepts continue to be evolving and here are the newest trends
that people arrive at see in this field −
 Application Exploration.
 Scalable and interactive data mining methods.
 Integration of data mining with database systems, data warehouse systems
and web database systems.
 SStandardization of data mining query language.
 Visual data mining.
 New methods for mining complex kinds of data.
 Biological data mining.
 Data mining and software engineering.
 Web mining.
 Distributed data mining.
 Real-time data mining.
 Multi database data mining.
 Business Intelligence and
Analytics
 The term Business Intelligence refers collectively to the tools and techniques
used for the collection, integration, analysis and visualization of raw data.
The raw data collected and processed through the Business Intelligence
processes is then transformed into comprehensible data or meaningful
information.
 This information is then interpreted strategically by looking for trends and
patterns in order to make business decision supported by facts.
 To simplify the concept, raw data is collected from various sources and with
the help of Business Intelligence tools and is transformed into meaningful
information, stored in data warehouses in predefined manners. From the
data warehouses, we can retrieve stored data in the form of a report, query
or conduct an analysis. This can also be explained using ETL (Extract,
Transform, Load concept).
 It helps in analyzing business trends from past and help in taking lucrative
business steps in future. BI is a dynamic approach, that means it’s output
changes and evolves with time and trends in business.
 Features of Business
Intelligence
Self-service Reporting
Dashboard
Interactive Reporting
Data Visualization
Data Warehouses
Business Intelligence features
Features of Business Intelligence
 Applications of Business
Intelligence
IT sector
Marketing and finance
Retail and e-commerce
Tourism and Hospitality
Manufacturing
Education
 Advantages of BI

 Efficient use of data.

 Fast analysis of data.
 Deeper insights into the business.
 User- friendly.
 Accurate analysis, reporting and fact-based decision making.
 Increased business profitability.
 Reliable future predictions in business trends.
 Increased flexibility in business.
 Limitations of Business
Intelligence
 Business Intelligence tools can only use to integrate and
analyze structured data, which in reality is only 10-20%
of the entire data. The rest of the data is unstructured like
the data from social media platforms etc does not come
under the accessibility of BI technology.
 The sole emphasis for future prediction and decision
making is laid on data. This is not always accurate
because it ignores many other factors and just focuses on
what data is suggesting. This often creates a problem
when the enterprise needs to take complex decisions.
 Cost and complexity of Business Intelligence often come
across as a limitation.
Top Business Intelligence Tools

 Power BI
 SAP Business Intelligence
 SAP HANA
 Microstrategy
 Sisense
 Tableau
 SAS Business Intelligence
 Dundas BI
 TIBCO Spotfire
 QlikSense