An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can go a long way toward making your business run efficiently. Among other things, it can help your business keep scheduled delivery dates, make the most efficient use of inventory, and provide accurate cost estimates and delivery dates. It can also help automate your order entry system so you can do business over the Internet, rather than relying on phone and fax.

One such ERP solution is SAP* R/3. In a white paper entitled "Building a Platform for Success," a multinational Fortune 100 company tackles the process of deploying a SAP R/3 ERP system.

The implementation was achieved in three phases. Divisions were brought online one at a time in order to minimize the business impact on customers. Eventually, the company realized several benefits, including but not limited to:

• Easier product ordering for customers.
• Increased delivery reliability to more accurately calculate the date a product must ship if it is to meet a customer's required delivery date.
• Improved tracking abilities so representatives know exactly which product, lot number, and quantity ships, and when.

Ultimately, however, the company realized it needed a more powerful hardware infrastructure to support the ERP solution. To that end, it created a classic three-tier system with a powerful central database server, a series of application servers, and custom-built front-end workstations deployed worldwide.

Such a redesign required the use of newer, higher performance servers. The new servers were able to support the demands of SAP as well as the additional demands of an aggressive push to e-Commerce. The new servers alleviated the increasing capital and maintenance costs, which were caused by these new demands.

Read the entire white paper of how one company implmented an ERP solution.