Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

a broad set of activities that help a manufacturer or other business manage the important parts of its operations, including product planning, parts purchasing, maintaining inventories, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, and tracking orders; ERP is sometimes also done in human resources and finance.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software offers an integrated set of applications that help manage various aspects of the business activity of a company (e.g., orders, production schedules, supply chain and inventories, accounting and bookkeeping, human resource management). Usually, an ERP application consists of a number of specialized modules that still offer a consistent user interface and integration of all relevant parts of the company data base system. Examples of widely used ERP applications are products of SAP and Oracle.
See also, Enterprise-wide Software Systems .