What ERP is Not?

MRP (Material Requirement Planning): As the name suggests, the most crucial feature of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is to enable planning and make projections in production based on correct data. MRP, as the heart of ERP, allows for the calculation of material requirements by comparing current stock levels with order-based needs. There are three essential modules for MRP.

a) Product Definition Module: Defining products and making them unique by associating them with entities (attributes) that describe the products, specifying which product is a sub-product of another, and meticulously designing this structure for each case study are essential. This way, the system knows how much raw material will be consumed during a product transformation.

b) Inventory Management Module: Stocks should be automatically calculated in the system based on transaction types, and this configuration should be done meticulously.

c) Sales Module: A detailed and approval-based sales module is crucial to determine the production requirements. This is a key differentiator from CRM solutions, and it explains why ERP requires a separate sales module.

When these three modules are well-designed, the needs of the business and stock movements are recorded, making it possible to generate MRP.

Production Data Collection and Field Management: In this context, all processes within production should not only be handled through data pushing but also involve a feedback mechanism for operations conducted within the business, and all objects and resources within your business should be included in data management under field management. This is indispensable for tracking productivity, profitability, and conducting calculations.

Accounting, Finance, and Cost: In this last point, we are addressing the management of financial movements generated in the enterprise. It is crucial to manage financial movements generated in the business and analyze them. The cost module is indispensable for an ERP. In a software where the most detailed data of the business is kept, where product trees are stored, it is unthinkable not to calculate the cost of raw materials + operational costs. Operational costs should be calculated dynamically in such a way that it can be adapted to the different needs of the business. It should be reported periodically and analyzed. Finance and accounting can be managed through solutions tailored to the sector. While integration with conventional accounting programs may be the right approach in some sectors, in other sectors or sizes, an ERP accounting module is indispensable.