With market forces working positively for almost all industries, large and midsize clients across geographies are at their peak of performance and are supporting each other in bridging demand and supply gap. The resource management and optimisation needs have fuelled appreciation of ERP at work. As per estimates, the market for ERP software will reach almost $50 billion by 2011.
An ERP system allows integrating engineering, customer services, planning, materials, manufacturing, finance and human resources across a single facility or across multiple locations. Manufacturing traditionally makes up the largest share of ERP spending but its share now stands challenged from sectors such as retail, real estate, telecom, finance and healthcare.
With most of the large enterprises across sectors being supported by global ERP applications like SAP, Oracle, People Soft, JD Edwards and others, the growing midsize sector -- already competing in the global market and being influenced by their larger partners -- is realising the RoI an enterprise solution can bring to it.
Every business decision-maker realises that his or her enterprise relies upon resources and that planning is essential to optimise how those resources are acquired, allocated and used. Over the next few years it will be difficult to operate and tap new opportunities globally if a company is not running its business enabled by an ERP solution.
With enterprise solution as a fundamental to businesses across the globe, there are multitudes of opportunities offering highly rewarding career to those aspiring career in ERP.
In the current environment there is a greater opportunity for us to choose an appropriate career path in ERP, at a very early stage of our career. For management graduates coming from finance, commerce or technical background there are a host of opportunities as ERP covers all the facets of business, whether it is finance, materials management, project management, CRM, production planning, sales or human capital management.
One can start a career as a domain specialist and progress through to service delivery and leadership role. Besides domain specialisation, the nature of one's contribution can help one understand the functioning of the entire resource planning process. A good enterprise solution can help one innovate, adapt and manage the scale and spectrum of business needs.
The typical ERP professional has the option of transitioning his/her career across the organisational functions. In addition, with inroads made by players such as SAP and Microsoft in the growing midsize businesses, ERP professionals have the flexibility to contribute to different size of businesses, either large or small, in India or abroad, as the core functionalities and the usage of a particular enterprise solution remains the same globally.
A management graduate who aspires for a career in ERP should possess strong subject knowledge of the domain he/she wants to specialise in. The keyword is enterprise -- an ERP software system should potentially address most of the critical processes and functional areas of the company.
To become a successful ERP consultant, let's say in material management, besides having theoretical knowledge, the person should have hands-on experience and should have worked for at least 2-3 years in roles offering material planning and material management. While strong fundamentals is the basic strength required to tackle unique problem situations, it is the practical experience of execution that makes one an expert at doing so.
Looking at the hiring trend of the past few years, most of the IT consulting firms, global and domestic alike, including ours, have strong demand for ERP consultants and offer attractive compensation, and a lot of exposure to Indian as well as global markets.
Source: The Financial Express
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