Development Of An Enterprise Resource Record Management System

1.0 Introduction

This chapter presents the introduction to enterprise resource record management system. It also presents the theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

1.1 Theoretical Background

The business environment is dramatically changing. Companies today face the challenge of increasing competition, expanding markets, and rising customer expectations. This increases the pressure on companies to lower total costs in the entire supply chain, shorten throughput times, drastically reduce inventories, expand product choice, provide more reliable delivery dates and better customer service, improve quality, and efficiently coordinate global demand, supply, and production [25]. As the business world moves ever closer to a completely collaborative model and competitors upgrade their capabilities, to remain competitive, organizations must improve their own business practices and procedures. Companies must also increasingly share with their suppliers, distributors, and customers the critical in-house information they once aggressively protected [17]. And functions within the company must upgrade their capability to generate and communicate timely and accurate information. To accomplish these

objectives, companies are increasingly turning to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP provides two major benefits that do not exist in non-integrated departmental systems: (1) a unified enterprise view of the business that encompasses all functions and departments; and (2) an enterprise database where all business transactions are entered, recorded, processed, monitored, and reported. This unified view increases the requirement for, and the extent of, interdepartmental cooperation and coordination. But it enables companies to achieve their objectives of increased communication and responsiveness to all stakeholders [9].

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The following problems are prevalent in business enterprises:

Many enterprises still make use of the manual method of recording organizational information on booklets or registers alone.

It is time consuming to find needed information.

It is difficult to update information without errors.

Accumulation of paper files and booklets.

To overcome these problems an automated enterprise resource record system is needed. It is in view of this need that necessitated the research study.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of the research work is to develop an enterprise resource record management system. The following objectives will help in achieving the aim:

To create an application with an interface to capture enterprise resource record for inventory, human resources and sales.

To implement a database system to retain information about the enterprise resource record.

To develop a system that will aid in easy updating of enterprise resource record.

To implement a system that will enable the querying of the database for specific information.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The significance of the research work is that it will provide the management of Siba enterprises with a software system that will aid easy management of enterprise resource record. It will reduce numerous paper work, errors and aid quick retrieval of needed information. The study will also be useful to other researchers seeking similar information.

1.5 Scope of the Study

This research work covers the development of an Enterprise resource record management system for inventory, human resources and Assets using Siba group of companies Ikot Ekpene as a case study.

1.6 Organization of Research

This research work is organized into five chapters.

Chapter one is concerned with the introduction of the research study and it presents the preliminaries, theoretical background, statement of the problem, aim and objectives of the study, significance of the study, scope of the study, organization of the research and definition of terms.

Chapter two focuses on the literature review, the contributions of other scholars on the subject matter is discussed.

Chapter three is concerned with the system analysis and design. It presents the research methodology used in the development of the system, it analyzes the present system to identify the problems and provides information on the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed system. The system design is also presented in this chapter.

Chapter four presents the system implementation and documentation, the choice of programming language, analysis of modules, choice of programming language and system requirements for implementation.

Chapter five focuses on the summary, constraints of the study, conclusion and recommendations are provided in this chapter based on the study carried out.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Enterprise:

A company, business, organization, or other purposeful endeavor.

Enterprise Resource:

Raw materials or personnel used to achieve an objective in an enterprise.

Record:

A set of data relating to a single individual or item