The ERP as a Social Network

"ERP systems are all about some people putting information into a database and other people trusting this information." This is how a member of the "erp-select" mailing list recently defined ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. In this article we want to explore the inherently collaborative aspects of ERP systems and how to enhance them by using Web 2.0 techniques.

The ERP as a Web 2.0 Platform

According to this definition, an ERP is a place where people meet, collaborate and share information. Obviously, the type of information shared is different from MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the other Web 2.0 social platforms. But there are still some important similarities — particularly if the ERP is based on Web technology.

So the questions for us (the developers of the ]project-open[ project-ERP system) is how we can leverage these new ideas in order to improve our customers' business processes.

The Essence of Web 2.0

So what are the lessons we can actually learn from Web 2.0?

Here are my personal favorites:

• User-generated content:
  Provide the users with incentives and they will produce the content themselves. This apparently works better then centrally controlled content generation.

• Using Wiki to reduce "write permissions":
  The main idea behind a Wiki is that basically everyone can create, modify, and extend existing content. Instead of creating permission hurdles to protect content, a Wiki focuses on social self-correction. In economic terms: The cost of not creating content is higher then the cost of eventual removal of contents. Even if certain users' content revisions cause heavy damage, a superuser can usually recover past versions of content, keeping the benefits higher than the costs.
  

• Tagging and folksonomies as lightweight semantic markup:
  The omnipresent tag clouds have managed to replace semantically precise domain models in many applications. Tagging is imprecise, and often nobody can exactly say what a tag means — but it works! No more questions asked.
  

• Interactive (AJAX) GUIs:
  The user-friendly GUI of Web 2.0 applications is an important condition to encourage users to contribute.
  

However, there is one important difference: Web 2.0 applications tend to host a homogeneous group of users, while ERP systems have to deal with widely varying user privileges. For this reason we have to add an important point:

• Powerful but easy-to-understand permissions:
  ERP systems need to provide graded access privileges to collaboration facilities based on the user's hierarchical position and membership in departments, offices or projects.
  

How to Implement the ERP V2.0

Once an ERP system provides a Web GUI, it isn't that difficult to implement some of the Web 2.0 techniques. The following few components make up the Web 2.0 features of ]project-open[:

e-Rooms:

• Everything is an e-Room:
  Projects, customers, users, and other important objects are implemented each as a kind of e-Room (virtual collaboration space)
  
• Access permissions on e-Rooms:
  The rich information in e-Rooms are protected by permissions
  
• Basic collaboration options per e-Room:
  Each e-Room provides a separate discussion forum, space for file storage, Wiki, etc.

Flexible surveys :

• User-definable surveys allow users to express their opinions about ERP objects such as providers, projects, etc.
  

The techniques presented above can flexibly be used in a variety of ERP modules:

Provider Management

By setting up an e-Room for each provider (with forum, file storage, and a survey to rate the provider) you can:

• Keep track with each provider's performance over time
• Engage in a mutual learning process
• Share information with the provider if appropriate (when necessary, negative information can be used to get better deals or spur provider performance increases)
  

Customer Management

By setting up an e-Room for each provider (with forum, file storage, and a survey to rate the provider) you can implement:

• CRM collaboration, by keeping all quotes and contracts used during the customer acquisition phase
• Customer satisfaction tracking, by using the survey facility to acquire customer satisfaction surveys.
  

HR Processes

• 360° evaluations
• Project "postmortem" reports
• Project progress reports
• Satisfaction survey for customers and project members

Knowledge Management Reloaded

The Web 2.0 techniques may actually revive Knowledge Management, because they resolve one of the most difficult aspects:

• KM does not require a separate application with different logins and permissions sets. Instead, KM is integrated directly into the ERP.
  
• The ERP provides a rich context for knowledge-carrying documents because documents are related to people and projects.
• The creation and use of knowledge resources can be directly tied to bonus payments.
• Tagging and other markup of customers and projects may be used to tag the respective documents.
• Clumsy domain models and ontologies are now replaced by "tag clouds" and folksonomies.
  

Summary

Web 2.0 and the ERP seem to be an excellent fit when an ERP is based on a Web GUI or a platform that allows for similar user interaction. ]project-open[ provides a sample implementation capable of demonstrating most of the techniques explained above.