Connecting ERP and E-Commerce Systems

MASARYKOVA UNIVERZITA FAKULTA}w¡¢£¤¥¦§¨ INFORMATIKY !"#$%&'()+,-./012345<yA| Connecting ERP and e-commerce systems DIPLOMOVÁ PRÁCA Ján Segé ˇn Brno, 2014 Declaration Hereby I declare, that this paper is my original authorial work, which I have worked out by my own. All sources, references and literature used or excerpted during elaboration of this work are properly cited and listed in complete reference to the due source. Ján Segéˇn Advisor: Ing. Leonard Walletzký, Ph.D. ii Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to Ing. Leonard Walletzký, Ph.D. for his guidance and assistance during the writing of this thesis. Furt- hermore I would like to thank my family, friends, flat mates and my girlfriend for the continuous support and faith they have given me. The final thanks goes to my newly acquired angry birds mascot who has supplied me with luck for the duration of writing this thesis and hopefully will continue to do so. iii Abstract The goal of this thesis is to analyze and compare the way different online shops store and process information. Find useful similarities and utilize them to implement a tool that enables the open-source ERP system iDempiere to establish a communication link to the electronic stores categorized as compatible, effectively giving iDempiere e-commerce capabilities. iv Keywords ERP,iDempiere, e-commerce, e-shop, electronic store, eConnect, plug- in, data connector, import, export, data synchronization v Obsah 1 Introduction ............................ 1 2 ERP Systems ............................ 3 2.1 History of ERP ........................ 4 2.2 ERP classification ...................... 6 2.3 Current trends in ERP ................... 7 2.4 Adapting ERP ........................ 8 2.5 Open-source ERP ...................... 10 3 iDempiere ............................. 12 3.1 About iDempiere ...................... 12 3.2 History ............................ 12 3.3 Working with iDempiere . 13 3.4 Development of new features . 14 3.5 Community ......................... 15 4 E-Commerce ............................ 16 4.1 Introduction ......................... 16 4.2 History ............................ 17 4.3 Online shopping ....................... 18 5 Connecting ERP and e-commerce systems . 19 5.1 Introduction ......................... 19 5.2 Current situation ...................... 20 5.2.1 iDempiere export and import functionality . 20 5.2.2 E-shop side data connectors . 21 5.2.3 Middleware . 22 5.3 Summary ........................... 24 6 eConnect .............................. 25 6.1 Analysis of demands .................... 25 6.2 E-Commerce systems analysis . 26 6.2.1 Data architecture similarities . 27 6.2.2 Specific example . 27 7 Implementation .......................... 33 7.1 Custom tables creation ................... 33 7.2 Custom tables registration . 36 7.3 iDempiere plug-in ...................... 37 7.3.1 Export processes package . 38 7.3.2 Import processes package . 40 vi 7.3.3 Utility classes package . 42 8 Testing and Deployment .................... 43 8.1 Problems encountered during implementation and testing .............................. 43 8.2 Universality of eConnect . 44 8.3 Setting up eConnect ..................... 47 8.4 Functionality scenarios ................... 47 9 Conclusion ............................. 49 10 Electronic attachments ...................... 50 11 Literature .............................. 51 vii 1 Introduction Information technology has changed the way we live, how we work and how we conduct our daily affairs. E-mail, instant messaging and voice transfer software enables us to communicate more efficiently and comfortably than ever before. Text and table processors allow us to work with higher amounts of information with the same ease. The internet has provided us with a connection to the whole world. It is also the largest information repository known today. Businesses were also influenced in many ways by the advance- ments in information technology. One of the many impacts it had is the introduction of automated company and business process management, which is nowdays present in the form of an Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. This system integrates key business components, such as manufacturing, sales, business partner management, human resources, and many more. By correctly implementing and utilizing the ERP software, it can bring many advantages to the company in form of process optimalization, increased data accessa- bility and transparency and ultimately in internal savings. A very important factor that impacts the success of a company is a correctly chosen ERP that optimally fits the company’s business processes. A large scale of different ERP systems is currently available on the market. Companies should devote a reasonable amount of time and resources to analyze what ERP system is the most su- itable depending on many implicite factors. One of the factors is the ERP system’s capability to incorporate e- commerce solutions. The modern business slowly moves its sphere of influence to the internet, which is a fresh and evloving market. The popularity of e-commerce applications is rising rapidly, and are becoming a standard part of the modern business. The goal of this diploma thesis is to provide e-commerce connection capabilities to the open-souce ERP system iDempiere. This is achieved by developing a tool called eConnect, which is capable of accepting specific settings that allow it to establish a connection, migrate and synchronize data with variety of today’s electronic stores, thus present a certain level of universality which allows companies to implement e-commerce tools that currently, due to various 1 1. INTRODUCTION reasons, don’t have a connection method available. This document is divided into nine chapters. The first four are devoted to more closely introduce the role of ERP and e-commerce systems, and also acquaint the reader with the history and role of iDempiere in today’s ERP environment. The fifth chapter explains why and how the connection between ERP and e-commerce is es- tablished. The last four chapters are devoted to the eConnect tool, its implementation, testing and deployment. Also present is a functional analysis and a final conclusion summarizing the benefits of eConnect. 2 2 ERP Systems An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is the name for a type of business process management software that is dedicated to integ- rate all departments and functions across a company into a single computer system. ERP systems incorporate most or all of the company’s core stages of business [1], which are: • Product planning, cost and development • Manufacturing • Marketing and sales • Inventory management • Shipping and payment Each department typically has its own customized information system optimized for the particular way that department works. The ERP system provides the same functionality and apart from that, also incorporates each department subsystem into a central database which allows for improved communication and information sharing between individual departments. This integrated approach can dra- matically increase the company’s internal savings if used correctly. It is helpful not only from a financial perspective. It also has high time-saving capabilities which come from increased data visibility and workflow automation between departments. This integrated approach also brings some negatives consisting of increased initial overhead. Hidden costs for training, integration and testing, customization and data conversion are followed by symp- toms like continuous implementation or so called “Post-ERP dep- ression”. New risks to the company are also introduced in form of greatly increased responsibility requirements cast on its employees. A minor fault in one department’s subsystem can now become a ma- jor issue for the firm as a whole, since all parts of the company now have access to each other’s data, which can be misinterpreted. Stan- dardization of processes and schooling of employees is crucial. A high 3 2. ERP SYSTEMS level of responsibility and accountability is required from each and every person that comes into direct contact with the system. Application suites that provide broad-ranging integrated functionality and which are used outside the manufacturing market, for example by service providers, hospitals and general business offices are also marketed as ERP solutions [2]. 2.1 History of ERP The term “ERP” was first introduced by the Gartner Group [3] in the year 1990 as a replacement for its predecessor “MRP”, which me- ans Material Requirements Planning, later Manufacturing Resource Planning. MRP is a software suite that big companies like IBM deve- loped during 1950s to increase transparency and introduce automation within their warehouse and inventory management. Key components of the MRP were bill-of-material processors, inventory management programs and material requirements development programs. The MRP and its functionality is still being used as a core com- ponent in today’s ERP systems. After noticing the huge potential of MRP systems, additional functionality such as production and purchasing control, master planning and forecasting, financials and costing were introduced to incorporate a larger portion of the company’s infrastructure. This gave birth to a cross-functional, integrated application suite called the MR- PII, which allowed to consolidate and communicate information th- roughout the company and its operations [1]. The continued growth of MRP and

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