Glossary

ERP

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning.

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ERP is a system that integrates all data and processes used by an organization into one unified system. ERP is also widely used as a business management system that includes all facets of the business from planning to manufacturing, through sales and marketing.
ERP provides an integrated real-time view of core business processes, using common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track business resources—cash, raw materials, production capacity—and the status of business commitments: orders, purchase orders, and payroll.

The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, accounting, etc.) that entered the data. ERP facilitates information flow between all business functions, and manages connections to outside stakeholders.
Enterprise system software is a multi-billion dollar industry that produces components that support a variety of business functions. IT investments have become the largest category of capital expenditure in United States-based businesses over the past decade. Though early ERP systems focused on large enterprises, smaller enterprises increasingly use ERP systems.
Organizations consider the ERP system a vital organizational tool because it integrates varied organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and production. However, ERP system development is different from traditional systems development. ERP systems run on a variety of computer hardware and network configurations, typically using a database as an information repository.

CMS

A content management system (CMS) is a computer program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface.

Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade. CMSs have been available since the late 1990s.
CMSs are often used to run websites containing blogs, news, and shopping. Many corporate and marketing websites use CMSs. CMSs typically aim to avoid the need for hand coding but may support it for specific elements or entire pages.

BI

Business intelligence (BI) is a set of theories, methodologies, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.

BI can handle enormous amounts of unstructured data to help identify, develop and otherwise create new opportunities. BI, in simple words, makes interpreting voluminous data friendly. Making use of new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy can provide a competitive market advantage and long-term stability.
Generally, Business Intelligence is made up of an increasing number of components, these are:

• Multidimensional aggregation and allocation
• Denormalization, tagging and standardization
• Realtime reporting with analytical alert
• Interface with unstructured data source
• Group consolidation, budgeting and rolling forecast
• Statistical inference and probabilistic simulation
• Key performance indicators optimization
• Version control and process management
• Open item management

BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.

Though the term business intelligence is sometimes a synonym for competitive intelligence (because they both support decision making), BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes while competitive intelligence gathers, analyzes and disseminates information with a topical focus on company competitors. If understood broadly, business intelligence can include the subset of competitive intelligence.

BPM

Business process management (BPM) has been referred to as a “holistic management” approach to aligning an organization’s business processes with the wants and needs of clients.

BPM uses a systematic approach in an attempt to continuously improve business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with technology. It can therefore be described as a “process optimization process.” It is argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient, more effective and more capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach.

These processes can impact the cost and revenue generation of an organization. As a managerial approach, BPM sees processes as strategic assets of an organization that must be understood, managed, and improved to deliver value-added products and services to clients. This foundation closely resembles other Total Quality Management or Continuous Improvement Process methodologies or approaches.

BPM goes a step further by stating that this approach can be supported, or enabled, through technology to ensure the viability of the managerial approach in times of stress and change. In fact, BPM offers an approach to integrate an organizational “change capability” that is both human and technological. As such, many BPM articles and pundits often discuss BPM from one of two viewpoints: people and/or technology.
BPM or Business Process Management is often referred to as ‘Management by Business Processes’. The term “business” can be confusing as it is often linked with a hierarchical view (by function) of a company. It is therefore preferable to define BPM as “corporate management through processes”.

By adding BPM the second meaning of ‘Business Performance Management’ used by August-Wilhelm Scheer in his article “Advanced BPM Assessment”, BPM can therefore be defined as “company performance management through processes”. And it’s this resolutely performance-oriented definition which is chosen here.

Dominique Thiault, in Managing Performance Through Business Processes, defines BPM as a management-through-processes method which helps to improve the company’s performance in a more and more complex and ever-changing environment.

Management through processes is a management method based on two logical levels: process governance and process management:
• Process governance is all of the company’s governance activities which, by way of allocating on the processes, work towards reaching its objectives, which are both operational and progress-related.
• Process management is all the management activities of a given process which work towards reaching the objectives allocated for this process.

ECM

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization’s documents, and other content, that relate to the organization’s processes. The term encompasses strategies, methods, and tools used throughout the lifecycle of the content.

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) International, the worldwide association for Enterprise Content Management, defined the term in 2000. AIIM has refined the abbreviation ECM several times to reflect the expanding scope and importance of information management:
Late 2005
Enterprise content management is the technology used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.
Early 2006
Enterprise content management is the technology used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.
ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.
Early 2008
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

Early 2010

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM covers the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise whether that information is in the form of a paper document, an electronic file, a database print stream, or even an email.

The latest definition encompasses areas that have traditionally been addressed by records management and document management systems. It also includes the conversion of data between various digital and traditional forms, including paper and microfilm.
ECM is an umbrella term covering document management, web content management, search, collaboration, records management, digital asset management (DAM), work-flow management, capture and scanning.

ECM is primarily aimed at managing the life-cycle of information from initial publication or creation all the way through archival and eventually disposal. ECM applications are delivered in three ways: on-premise software (installed on the organization’s own network), software as a service (SaaS) (web access to information that is stored on the software manufacturer’s system), or a hybrid solution composed of both on-premise and SaaS components.
ECM aims to make the management of corporate information easier through simplifying storage, security, version control, process routing, and retention. The benefits to an organization include improved efficiency, better control, and reduced costs. For example, many banks have converted to storing copies of old checks within ECM systems as opposed to the older method of keeping physical checks in massive paper warehouses.

Under the old system, a customer request for a copy of a check might take weeks, as the bank employees had to contact the warehouse where the right box, file, and check, would need to be located. The check would then need to be pulled, a copy made and mailed to the bank where it would finally be mailed to the customer. With an ECM system in place, the bank employee simply queries the system for the customer’s account number and the number of the requested check. When the image of the check appears on screen, the bank is able to mail it immediately to the customer, usually while the customer is still on the phone.

CRM

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. At its simplest, a CRM system allows businesses to manage business relationships and the data and information associated with them. With CRM, you can store customer and prospect contact information, accounts, leads and sales opportunities in one central location, ideally in the cloud so the information is accessible by many, in real time.

While a CRM system may not elicit as much enthusiasm these days as social networking platforms like Facebook or Twitter, any CRM system is similarly built around people and relationships. And that’s exactly why it can be so valuable for a fast-growing business.
Any business starts out with a foundation of great customer relationships. You, the seller, connect with people who need your product.

Yet, as your company grows, these business connections grow more sophisticated. It’s not just a transaction between the buyer and seller. You start to manage a myriad of connections, across time, within each company you do business with. You need to share information across various teams within your own organization who are making contact with the same customers. A CRM system can serve as a vital nerve center to manage the many connections that happen in a growing business.

For small businesses, a CRM system may simply help you put your data in the cloud, making it accessible in real time, across any device. But as you grow, a CRM can quickly expand to include more sophisticated features to help teams collaborate with colleagues and customers, send customized emails, gather insights from social media conversations, and get a holistic picture of your business health in real time.

Today growing businesses manage customer connections and information in a variety of ways. Some use old fashioned note cards and Rolodex. Others store information on their mobile phone while on the go. Others use Excel spreadsheets or Google documents. While that may help in the short term when you have a small team and don’t plan on scaling your business, if you want to scale for fast growth, it may be time to consider a CRM system to help you collect your precious business data in one place, make it accessible via the cloud, and free up your time to focus on delighting customers rather than letting valuable insights and information fall through the cracks.

ICT

Information and communications technology (ICT) is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessaryenterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.
The phrase ICT had been used by academic researchers since the 1980s, but it became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997 and in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. As of September 2013, the term “ICT” in the UK National Curriculum has been replaced by the broader term “computing”.
The term ICT is now also used to refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management.

The term Infocommunications is sometimes used interchangeably with ICT. In fact Infocommunications is the expansion of telecommunications with information processing and content handling functions on a common digital technology base. For a comparison of these and other terms, see.
The ICT Development Index compares the level of ICT use and access across the world.