Organisations tend to organise their working areas by function, e.g. production, warehouse, sales and marketing, etc.  Business processes occur across these functional groups requiring considerable cooperation between functional groups in order for the organisation to work in an efficient and effective manner.  This is particularly so in geographically dispersed companies.  In more recent times Enterprise Systems (ES) have been developed to support the cross-functional nature of business processes and it is claimed ES 'are essential to the efficient and effective execution and management of business process.

Your task in this assignment is to:

1. Discuss the advantages of functional structure of the traditional organisation and the challenges that structure presents for the cross-functional nature of business processes.

2. Explain the nature and purpose of an Enterprise Systems.

3. Using the flow/use of the organisational data, discuss in some depth howan ES mayfacilitate the integration of business processing across the following functional areas:

a.  Financial accounting,

b.  Procurement,

c.  Fulfilment,

d.  Production, and

e.  Inventory and Warehouse management.

General Instructions:

This assignment is to be a product of the knowledge you have developed and as such is to be written in your own words.  Where you use the ideas of others as part of your discussion you must cite that sourcein text and their details in the referencing section using the harvard referencing style.

The assignment is to be presented in report style with a cover sheet, table of contents, report body, conclusion, references, and if absolutely necessary an appendix or two.  A covering letter and executive summary is not required for this assignment.

I anticipate that the report will be very close to 10 pages in length with left justified and single spacing. Diagrams may be included to illustrate a point but do seriously consider if they are really necessary before adding them.