Enterprise Resource Planning: Adding value to E-business

Organizations are now more than ever before faced with rapid changes in the market place and the need to stay competitive, profitable and satisfy customers and suppliers has driven them to seek technologies that will help them realize these goals. Two of the main con-tenders are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and E-business related technologies. There appear not to be so many publicized literatures on the relationship between ERP and E-business. It is based on this that this report studied six (6) cases to examine the value of ERP to E-business. This study discusses their relationship, how they impact each other and how they can be made to be more useful when integrated using Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and empirical research. What transpires from this research is that both vendors and organizations using these two technologies assigns specific values that ERP has on E-business according to their degree of importance. These values in order of importance are; increased competitiveness, increased agility and speed of business operations, improved communication, increased sales, improved business processes, reduced cost and increased profitability. Finally the study examines these values and concluded based on these values to suggest the implications for future research