SYSTEM INTEGRATION
Systems integrators generally have to be good at matching customers needs with existing products. An inductive reasoning aptitude is useful for quickly understanding how to operate a system or a GUI. A systems integrator will tend to benefit from being a generalist, knowing a little bit about a large number of products.
Systems integration includes a substantial amount of diagnostic and troubleshooting work. The ability to research existing products and software components is also helpful. Creation of these information systems may include designing or building a customized architecture or application, integrating it with new or existing hardware, packaged and custom software, and communications infrastructure.
ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of core business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.
These business activities can include:
- product planning, purchase
- manufacturing or service delivery
- marketing and sales
- inventory management
- shipping and payment
- finance
ERP is usually referred to as a category of business-management software 'typically a suite of integrated applications' that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from these many business activities.
ERP provides an integrated and continuously updated view of core business processes using common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources 'cash, raw materials, production capacity' and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that provide the data.
ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders.