If we talk about Indian environment of business and approach of the ERP users it is very complex and versatile. This environment is generated because of following reasons:
On one hand there are very huge products involving capital of thousands of crores. On the other hand there are very tiny units which are operating at small room. There are medium sized industries but the universal point is all these industries are engaged in manufacturing . They are sourcing raw material during certain processes and clearing finished goods. This is the reason that the software requirement of one company differs from other company.
The turnover also varies from company to company. There are certain companies doing turnover of not more than 20 crores. Some are doing turnover in millions and others are doing in billions of crores.
The nature of Input and its sourcing also varies from company to company . Some are procuring material from indigeneous sources. They are further divided into two categories (1) procuring directly from manufacturers (2) procuring from trader or depot of the manufacturer. The inputs in some cases are tax paid and in some cases are exempted from tax or nontaxable. Likewise imported material is procured from different -different categories of suppliers . The accounting treatment, tax implications and adjustments varies from case to case. This requires scope of customization in the software.
As discussed in the case of inputs , sale of raw material and its distribution also varies to a great extent from company to company . Some are giving material to EOU and others are giving material to end users. Some are selling good directly to consumers , others are using distribution network or own sale depot. This is also one reason which requires scope for doing changes in ERP system.
There is one more thing which fluctuate from time to time in an industry i.e. requirements and availability of manpower. A company may purchase a ERP system according to the present requirement but later on in future the size of company is change because of change in turnover which may be increase or decrease according to which capacity of employee also changes. Therefore there is a need to have ERP system which can be modified according to changing requirements of the user.
The user companies also have different approaches for procurement of goods , its handling, storing and distribution. There may be some companies strictly adhere to the procurement of goods as per PO strictly without any change in quantity and value or they may follow the system for selected goods according to the importance of material and volume of purchase. There may be policy for strict quality control which may be applicable to selected goods and may not be applicable to some other goods. Because of all these reasons there is a requirement of ERP system which can be modified from time to time according to the requirement whether they are temporarily and permanent.
Considering all these facts people get developed customized software which are fit according to their requirement but there are some practical problems which are as follows:
The process of Customisation is very lengthy and technical .Because of this implementation time increases beyond the expected time. During customization lot of changes are made in ERP , the impact of which remains unnoticed and comes into picture very late. The major problem is that during customization the representatives of user company and ERP supplier participate with lot of ideas which remains unrecorded for which generally no documentation is made. Later on after two three years when a requirement of change comes it becomes very difficult for the both side to understand the scope of change as well as the procedure to be applied for the change . For example: they don’t know which are the columns of tables path manipulated or modified during customization. This becomes very difficult when some change relating to law comes into force and require to be introduced immediately.
In first part of this discussion we came to know that Customization is very necessary and cannot be avoided but in the second part we came to know about the results of the customization . Now if this is the situation that there is demand of customized software which can be change according to the size ,turnover, nature of business, distribution system, manufacturing process and availability of manpower of the user. At the same time it should be a standard software so that the future changes can be introduced without delay and efforts.
Considering all these facts TT ERP is designed which is a standard ERP but can be customized according to the fluctuating requirement at the user end by the user themselves. The process of Customization does not require any programming language.
The SMEs sector engaged in the manufacturing of goods is largest in numbers. There may be only five thousand school or colleges as well as the number of hospitals, hotels, construction companies need ERP in one thousand only considering PAN India basis. But there may be more than 20000 units may be located in a single industrial hub. This gives huge customer base to the TT . Even if we go to the involvement of technicalities as well as importance of transactions this is very high in case of manufacturers because all the laws relating to the commercial activity are applicable to the manufacturing units and all types of transactions whatever are considered in accounting comes in accounting of manufacturing units . A manufacturer being engaged in various types of transactions is a customer who is ready to pay for a ERP system which provides information on line basis to him.
Considering all these reasons we are focused on ERP software relating to manufacturing concerns.
The ERP software TT is developed by a team of CAs because of this the accounting transactions are handled carefully and beautifully. Most of the companies engaged in the development of ERP are using only technical people for development of ERP because of this somewhere the commercial concept left behind. The team of TT is a blend of technical Engineers and CAs and because of this the ultimate objective of making standard ERP with compatibility and customization at user end could be achieved.
TT ERP is a standard product but it can be customized by the user. For this purpose a control panel is framed in the ERP. The user simply by putting the button of control in ON or OFF position get the software designed according to his requirement. For example: for quality control you can click the button of compulsory quality which will not permit the material to enter without quality check. Likewise the procedure of PO according to the user choice. You can switch off the requirement of PO and switch on the requirement of PO but switch off in the approval. Likewise you can permit interim material without PO or restrict the quantity of material upto the numbers given in the PO or the price given in PO. You can also permit variation but upto the certain percentage defined by you. For example: you may allow entry of material 5% more than the given in the PO . In number of cases it happens that the vendor supplies some additional material than the requirement given in PO. For example: you have given a order for 100 pieces but the vendor sends 110 pieces because there was vacant space in the transport vehicle. So with a purpose to save cost of transportation he may do so. In some cases you give order for 10 numbers of castings but suppliers provide 12 numbers because that is minimum lot he has to manufacture. May be sometime he can send extra material considering the chances of rejection. So according to the nature of business and raw material you may do modification in ERP system .It is as do as making a Pizza of your choice or a coffee of your taste.
There are 450 controls given in the control panel which are divided category wise .The authority to change the control may be delegated from transaction to transaction to various persons.
Sometimes it happens that because of change in the control the transaction cannot be processed . For example: the button of PO requirement is on with a condition that no material can be entered in excess of quantity given in PO . This situation may create a problem at the user end and the user may be confused at the time of feeding entry in ERP. To cope up with such type of problems the control button is added up in every transaction form which gives information regarding the switch position of the control.
In the circumstances discussed above if a user face problem in entering the PO because the position of button is ON he can easily verify the reason why the computer is not permitting the transaction . He will go to the control position and see which button is operating . He can talk to concern person for permitting him to process the transaction or the treatment to be applied.
The control panel provides facility to customized the ERP according to the availability of manpower . Suppose if a company starts business with a small strength of 4-5 persons and purchases TT ERP at initial stages it can easily used TT ERP by switching on by pass buttons of various transactions like it can permit entering of material without gate entry or without PO or without quality check but later on when the turnover of the company increases one by one it can introduced various workstations according to the capacity to appoint the staff. There may be one more interesting situation in the case when the manpower of the company fluctuates from time to time . For example: if the company is engaged in manufacturing of seasonal goods than the requirement of staff and number of transactions will increase during the season . In this case the ERP users can start various workstations for better control and management but after the season is completed he can again switchover to the previous position of working and operations. All these he can do using control panel.
The success of ERP in a company depends on the simplicity of the ERP. It includes two things . First is how much time a user takes to learn it and if the user is absent whether the ERP can be handled or not. To serve this purpose following features are added in TT:
In a route tracker if a user is absent or left the company, the other person can easily handled his work as the complete route of steps followed by the user are shown.
In TT ERP a lot of reports are there , reminder can be set of the required reports on day wise or date wise basis. The selected reports will be shown on the system as and when these are saved in the system.
In this feature it is not compulsory to follow a particular path in order to go to the required report one can easily select the report from the index of the reports.
In this feature, explanation button is given with every page where one can easily understand the purpose of the page.
Every page of the TT ERP is having a control button which permits the user to do the transaction on that page or not so that the user having the authority can only work on that page.
Shortcuts can be set of the important page on main screen of the ERP so that one can have in front of the him the main activities he want to do continuously
The using of ERP is very simple as all the modules are designed in a similar way like Masters- Transactions- Reports.
The success of ERP in an organization to a great extent depends on the participation of the user team. Sometimes because of personal hidden interest or laziness user do not participate in the implementation of ERP with full enthusiasm but it becames very difficult for management to notify the reason and area of failure of ERP implementation. To handle these situations following features are added:
In this feature one can have a complete look of the present position of a particular transaction in the organization. If one wants to see the action taken against a particular PO, one can easily see how many steps have been taken on the PO raised.
Sometimes the users of the ERP don’t perform their work as desired from them due to any reason so the Mgt can see the utilization report of the ERP
The seniors in the organization can see how much time is taken by every user to perform his tasks and compare them with the required time to perform the work. Therefore efficiency of the every user can be easily find out with this feature.
User can do the edit work in the transaction. This feature can be used to see the edit work or to see the original work edited by the user.
ERP can be run on multiple servers so the worry of loosing of data is negligible.
Back up is taken automatically on daily basis.
In addition to these various features are added to make working smooth and effortless. These are as follows:
There are certain documents which are required at later stage for any purpose. These can be kept safe in document library for reference at a later stage.
If a person has a certain idea about what he wants to see from the ERP he can easily find that with help of the Search Engine.
It also supports the printing of the cheques . The format of the cheque is designed in the system for the purpose of taking the printouts of cheques.
The attendance of the employees can be easily available from the attendance machine.
There is four layers of quality control in TT ERP i.e. gate entry, work in progress, finished goods and pre dispatch
The data can be easily available to the user either in excel, pdf or word as per the requirement.
The job work and contract labour play important role in working of manufacturing industry .It is a difficult task to control Job work account because the material is dispatched in different form and return back in different forms. For this the following features are added:
It is a general problem faced by manufacturing unit that they depute contractor and checking of the bill raised by the contractors becomes a difficult job. To handle this situation, there is a provision to check contractor bill. The contractor can provide manpower; in this case the user generates invoices on the basis of manpower provided. In this case the contractor bill is directly generated from the bio metric machine and cross check with the bill raised. There may be a second situation on the basis of piece rate process wise. For eg. Contractor charged Rs. 20 per piece for machining and Rs. 2 per piece for painting. In this case, the estimated bill of contractor is generated through the production module when the production is feeded in the computer. Every stage is described with the reference of the contractor. This also provides information relating to rejection so that suitable action can be taken against the contractor for rejections and any amount on account of rejection may be debited.
The HR module is equipped with the following features:
The customization may vary from company to company in following ways:
A Report provided by us may not suit the requirement of the user. For this purpose there is a facility of crystal reporting. The user can design the reports himself. All the reports generated by the ERP are produced using certain data given as input or maybe produced after processing of these data so a list of inputs given in various modules maybe produced. The user may easily drag these inputs to the desired report and can design the report himself. For example, you have to prepare a list of employees containing only three columns which are name of employee, date of birth and phone no. You can prepare this report by dragging information from the list of input given to you. Further the header of reports using various logo or fonts can be designed by the ERP user himself.