NU12#4: What pisses me off at the office: ERP Problem by Gio Mendoza

Perennial ERP Central Server Problem

By Gio Mendoza 

A year have passed since our head office in Delhi, India have decided to centralize all customer databases from different Asian offices including our Philippine office. A central server was put into place in Delhi and we started to go live with our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. On a daily basis, we will have to access our weblink online in order to enter customer data to the central server thru a user interface or UI, i.e. each customer inquiry we get or acquire has to be directly entered into our ERP database thru this UI via the weblink. The central server and software generates an inquiry number for the company and a quotation number, called an "EQ number". This EQ number will be used as reference number for each price quotation we prepare and send to Philippine customers. However, this business process encountered repeated problems such as not being able to access the central server at times prior to 11am and frequent stalling during data entry sessions. Data entry is also very slow, server response takes a lot of time. This results to a long queue of inquiries awaiting for an EQ number which we have to deal with almost every week. It's a bottleneck and a source of frustration to the marketing personnel here. Though the ERP software vendor and service provider is one of the big players in its industry globally, the system still lacks the speed and responsiveness we need. We also came to know that the server is switched on only by 11am Indian time ( 8:30am Philippine time) and gets switched off after normal office hours. So we have to wait for them everyday to switch it on, and customers will have to wait as well. That's not really good service.

In order to improve this internal business process, I am proposing to install a thin server in our local office which will go online as soon as our office opens and no need to wait for the head office's central server to go online. The central server will automatically link with the thin server once it comes online to acquire all new data entries made on the thin server. Since the thin server is located in our local office, the speed of generating the EQ number is a lot faster with speedy access thru LAN. If any problem will occur with the thin server, we can troubleshoot it right away since it is physically with us. Data entered will also be secure since the central server can only access the thin server to take data from it. If the central server is also down, we will not be handicapped by it since the thin server is still operational, serving like a back up. Though some investment has to be made to install a thin server, the benefit of satisfied customers, efficiency and higher productivity by eliminating this bottleneck will be definitely worth it.  4  brilliant