How ERP Is Changing The Way The Government Runs Their Business

Public service agencies and government organizations are designed to help society in a number of ways. This can involve providing affordable housing to people, developing waste management programs, giving free healthcare to underprivileged citizens, or numerous other goods and services. These goods and services are available to all people living in the United States, as government employees ensure that people are aware of and qualify for these programs.

Like any private business, government offices must operate efficiently to reduce operation costs and stay within budget. These back office operations allows the government to keep track of general office workflow, accounting procedures, grant management, and other government operations. Due to the complexity of these operations, more government offices are adopting enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions.

What Is ERP?

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) are tools and resources that a business adopts to help manage all their activities to increase overall performance and reach corporate objectives. Most common in the private business sector, ERP systems consist of software that can manage projects, plan out product creation, allow companies to purchase inventory, track orders and provide superior customer service.

Employing ERP throughout a business involves implementing new work techniques, retraining employees to use the new system optimally and continuing analysis of operations to ensure the ERP system is working effectively. Integrating both internal and external information toward an automated system such as ERP provides improved management where information sharing can be more easily accessed throughout the business.

How ERP Is Being Used By The Government

Government offices and public sector organizations have more complicated information management systems. This is due to the sharing of information within several different agencies all across the country. When adopting an ERP system that can handle the back office workload of government organizations, most ERP software and hardware solutions were first designed for private sector companies and was changed over to facilitate government operations.

Government ERP systems help automate the following office operations:

• Accounting Services: Government agencies use ERP to track payments and expenditures, allow for budget and auditing inquiries, manage grant programs, and oversee financial performance.
• Recordkeeping: Information and records support is essential between different agencies and individuals. ERP allows for government to citizen (G2C), government to business (G2B) and government to government (G2G) work process compatibility and information sharing tools.
• Information Security: Security of information is as important to the government as it is to any other business holding personal information of clients. ERP permits information security compliance for government offices and organizations.
• Procurement Capabilities: ERP software tools allows for procurement of goods and services to be efficient and cost-effective for government offices so they can stay within their required budgets.

ERP Systems And The Government

As technology grows, more advanced ERP systems will be developed to handle the multitude of tasks in government offices. These systems will help automate needed services so employees become more efficient at their tasks as government agencies can better track accounting records and information.

Bryan Grayson writes about government, ERP software, and more.