An investigation on the
readiness of Turkish
companies for
enterprise resource
management
Birdog
Ï
an Baki, TuÈrkay Dereli and
Adil Baykasog
Ï
lu
Introduction
Today's competitive marketing environment
forces producers and customers to get closer.
This means that organizations should give a
great importance to customer needs and listen
to their voices, and supplier and customer
should be closer and closer in order to produce
goods or services based on the customer needs.
Therefore, manufacturers and service
producers need an effective planning and
control system for a powerful coordination in
between all stages of the organization
(processes, etc.). The implementation and the
use of an effective planning and control system
in an organization improve productivity and
performance of distribution, while decreasing
waiting times. The enterprise resource planning
(ERP) systems are examples of the most
strategic tools, which provide robust tools for
planning, coordination and control of the
processes in the organizations.
An ERPsystem is basically defined as the
system that manages all resources necessary to
perform a business function. The resources can
be classified into three basic areas: human
resources, financial resources and physical
resources (Sprecher, 1999). The ERPsystem
can also be defined as follows:
... a software system that contains functions for
effective and efficient planning, coordination and
control of the supply, manufacturing and
distribution resources which are in different
geographical areas in order to meet the customer
demands along the companies' strategic objectives
and goals (nnnnncË 1997).
Figure 1 lists some of the many functions
supported by an ERPpackage (Dillon, 1999).
The growth proportion of ERPsoftware
packages has been highly increased recently.
The market for ERPsoftware packages has
grown from $4 billion in 1995 to $10 billion in
1997 and $52 billion in 2002 (Scott and
Kaindl, 2000). AMR Research estimates that
the annual sales of software and service will
exceed $84 billion by 2002 (Mabert and
Venkataramanan, 2000). It has been recognized
from those figures above that although the ERP
systems are vital for the organizations in today's
The authors
Birdog
Ï
an Baki is an Assistant Professor in the Department
of Business Administration at Karadeniz Technical University,
Trabzon, Turkey.
TuÈ rkay Dereli and Adil Baykasog
Ï
lu are Associate
Professors, both in the Department of Industrial Engineering
at the University of Gaziantep, Gaziantep, Turkey.
Keywords
Resource allocation, Resource management,
Organizational processes, Organizational analysis, Turkey
Abstract
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a game plan for planning
and monitoring all of the resources of a manufacturing
company. It has been recognized as an effective management
system leading to excellent planning and scheduling capability
and significant improvements in productivity. It also provides
dramatic increases in customer service, much higher inventory
turns, and greater reduction in materials costs. The enterprise
resource management (ERM) organizational assessment
checklist provides a simple and practical reference to
determine whether companies are ready for today's compe-
titive business environment. In this study, the checklist has
been surveyed within the companies using ERP systems
through a questionnaire. The survey data were analyzed to
determine whether the companies (using ERP software) in
Turkey are ready to implement ERM..
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Received September 2002
Revised March 2003
Accepted June 2003
Tanyas,
50
Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management
Volume 15
.
Number 1
.
2004
.
pp. 50-56
# Emerald Group Publishing Limited
.
ISSN 1741-038X
DOI 10.1108/09576060410512284