Chapter 2—Enterprise SystemsTRUE/FALSE1. One of the primary goals of implementing an ERP system is to standardize processes and systems.ANS: T2. Communicating via separate databases is easier than communicating with an enterprise system.ANS: F3. Enterprise systems result in more accurate forecasts resulting in reduced inventory and costs to redistribute inventory.ANS: T4. The primary goal of installing an enterprise system is reducing system installation costs.ANS: F5. Enterprise systems potentially integrate the business process functionality and information from all of an organization’s functional areas.ANS: T6. An enterprise system should cause the organization to conduct business in a more costly manner.ANS: F7. An add-on software module in an enterprise system might be a customer relationship management system (CRM).ANS: T8. The dominant player in the enterprise systems market is Microsoft.ANS: F9. SAP has a primary focus on large Fortune 500 type companies.ANS: T10. Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) and Lawson Software focus on mid market sized companies.ANS: T11. Customer relationship management (CRM) software builds and maintains an organization’s customer-related data.ANS: T12. Customer relationship management (CRM) software aggregates, manages, and retains data across the entire organization for the identification, acquisition, and retention of vendors to maximize the benefitsof those relationships.ANS: F13. If you have made a Web purchase such as with Amazon.com you have experienced some of the functionality of a CRM system where the vendor keeps track of your name, address, and purchases.ANS: T14. Customer relationship management (CRM) functionality includes procurement and contract management.ANS: F15. Customer self service (CSS) software is often an extension of CRM software.ANS: T16. Supply chain management (SCM) software helps plan and execute the steps such as demand planning, acquiring inventory, manufacturing, distributing, and selling the product.ANS: T17. Supplier relationship management (SRM) software manages the interactions with the organization’s that supply the goods and services to an enterprise.ANS: T18. Middleware is a software product that connects two or more separate applications or software modules.ANS: T19. Enterpriseware might be used to stitch together a number of legacy systems, an enterprise system, best-of-breed applications, and Web-based applications.ANS: F20. An Application Programming Interface (API) is a means for connecting to a system or application provided by the developer of that application.ANS: T21. Microsoft Dynamics Snap line of tools is an example of an Application Programming Interface.ANS: T22. Enterprise application integration (EAI) is an approach to connect together multiple pieces of an enterprise system and to connecting across different organizations.ANS: T23. Examples of enterprise application integration include enterprise systems and customer relationship management systems.ANS: T24. Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) is a type of communications-broker software that uses standardized protocols to let event-driven applications communicate in a less-expensive manner than can the tightly-coupled, synchronous enterprise application integration (EAI) platforms.ANS: T25. DreamWeaver is a Web services platform from SAP that can be used to build applications that integrate business processes and databases from a number of sources within and between organizations.ANS: F26. Business process management (BPM) provides a comprehensive method for integrating manual and automated internal processes, applications, and systems, as well as integration to external partners and services.ANS: T27. Manual accounting systems include integration of business processes, applications, databases, and datastandards such as EDI, and XML.ANS: F28. Event driven architecture (EDA) is an approach to building and designing enterprise systems in which business events “trigger” messages to be sent by middleware between independent software modules that are completely unaware of each other.ANS: T29. In an event driven architecture (EDA) the business unit “pushes” the event to the recipient rather than waiting for the recipient to request or “pull”, the event to themANS: T30. The value chain is a chain of activities performed by the organization to transform outputs into inputs valued by the customer.ANS: F31. An organization creates a competitive advantage by creating less value for its customers than does its competition.ANS: F32. Secondary activities of the value chain include activities directly involved with marketing, producing, selling, and delivering the product or service to the customer.ANS: F33. Primary activities of the value chain provide support infrastructure such as procurement, information technology, human resources, and accounting.ANS: F34. The value chain emphasizes the separate activities or silos of the organization.ANS: F35. Dell’s value chain takes raw materials, manufactures computers and other products, and delivers them to customers in a timely manner at an attractive price.ANS: T36. The activities in the value chain, the value activities, are business processes that convert inputs to valued outputs.ANS: T37. In a disaggregated information system, the customer will be notified immediately whether the item is on the shelf and not committed to another customer.ANS: F38. Telling the customer when they will receive an item is known as available to promise (ATP).ANS: T39. A character is a basic unit of data such as a letter, number, or special character.ANS: T40. A field is a collection of related characters that comprise an attribute, such as a customer number or name.ANS: T41. A record is a collection of related data field attributes.ANS: T42. The credit limit within a customer record provides unlimited authorization for customer sales.ANS: F43. Segregation of duties includes separating the sales and credit departments.ANS: T44. Generally, when processing a customer order, one does not need to know the total price of the goods before credit authorization can be made.ANS: F45. In an enterprise system, once a customer order is completed, the purchasing function would be immediately informed that the merchandise has been sold and may need to be replenished.ANS: T46. A warehouse manager might want to have a list of all customers who have not made a purchase in the past month.ANS: F47. A credit manager might want