CRYSTAL BALL FOR BUSINESS

摘要

It's time to say goodbye to the golden age of enterprise resource planning systems, say some analysts who follow the industry closely. In the old systems' stead will be more outwardly focused applications that not only give decision-makers a bird's-eye view of all company functions, but also let them tie that information in a meaningful way to events happening in the outside world. It's that tie that can offer crucial feedback for business planning, according to Brian Sommer, president of Techventive, a technology research firm in Batavia, III. The way companies acquire ERP services in the future will likely change radically, too. Midsize companies can expect to say goodbye to the large-scale systems and their steep training curves by letting someone else house the system and worry about maintenance, Sommer said. We'll leave alone the question of whether a golden age ever really existed, although certainly ERP came to prominence in its earlier manufacturing resource planning incarnation in the 1970s.