ERP solutions do influence Enterprise Transformation in all sorts of ways. Particularly when moving beyond the classical ERP solutions the degrees of design freedom explode. These need to be contained in order to prevent e.g. SAP-rich environments from growing out of control. ArchitectedERP not only points out how to do this but it also provides many examples from the ERP field illustrating for instance how the Services Thinking concept works in practice. The book therefore is of great value to people tasked with the preparation of decision-making around ERP or with the planning for and delivery of projects that include any services-based ERP solutions. There is much to say about ArchitectedERP but here are it's main characteristics.

Brings a connected and multi-disciplinary approach to Enterprise Transformation

Professional disciplines that deal with the people, the business or the information technology related aspects of change all have their place in ArchitectedERP. It provides a vocabulary to counter the Babel-like confusion that is lurking when these disciplines meet. ArchitectedERP draws from the various available good practices these disciplines bring to the table and moulds these into clearly partitioned and practical work package types. The topics covered range from future state visioning all the way down to the effectuation of change in the daily operation.

Converging Business and IT through Services Thinking

Process Thinking has led to end-to-end processes being supported by big ERP systems. Today, these are often perceived as risky-to-change. Services Thinking now takes another approach and aims at implementing just big enough business services supported by just big enough IT functionality. This brings organizations the much desired agility in their business domains of choice. ArchitectedERP builds on this Services Thinking concept because it enables the pro-active re-use of existing assets and it caters for simplified switching between sourcing alternatives. For the IT part, ArchitectedERP focuses on ERP-centric environments.

Guides building your foundation for execution

Making the Services Thinking concept real does require a strong and well-advanced foundation for execution. ArchitectedERP tells you how to enable the provisioning of independent and re-usable Business Services where the operational control over the sequence and the performance of the services, or, in other words, the Process Management, stands on its own. This necessitates having an integrated IT platform, like the SAP Business Process Platform. ArchitectedERP helps you deal with ERP-related intricacies, guides you when building your ERP-based Services Repository and leads you through the assembly of these services into Composite Applications.