Is integration of OA and ERP feasible?

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In recent years, when talking about enterprise informatization, ERP has become a hot topic. The emergence of ERP seems to have brought a huge change to enterprises, it has also become the "new darling" for enterprises to achieve informatization ". However, OA was once a symbol of the times in Enterprise Informatization Construction. Compared with ERP, OA originated from the concept of "paperless" office and implemented office automation with workflow as the core. It is conceivable that OA and ERP are different representatives of Enterprise Informatization in different times, and their kernels are completely different. One focuses on the implementation of approval workflows, it focuses on the data flow between internal resources of an enterprise.
Along with the construction of information technology, various business systems with different functions and different focuses have established their respective "positions" within the enterprise, and the integration and integration problems between business systems, it has also become a high-level discussion among many hot topics. Therefore, for a basic system such as OA system, what role should be played in Enterprise Informatization compared with ERP system that implements the internal value chain of an enterprise, in order to integrate with the ERP system, so as to give full play to their respective advantages to achieve the best overall benefits of the Enterprise?
1. Relationship Analysis Between Enterprise OA system and ERP system:
The following figure shows the relationship between the enterprise OA system and the ERP system:

We can see that the OA system generally plays a "Foundation" role in the enterprise information system, implementing the most basic office functions of the enterprise, such as workflow approval and daily office management, it is usually positioned as a basic project in Enterprise Informatization Construction. Each ERP module occupies its place in different internal business fields of the enterprise. It focuses on the processing, analysis and mining of enterprise business data.
Since OA Systems and ERP systems have different focuses on each other, does it mean that they can be completely isolated? In many enterprise practices, OA and ERP systems have different advantages, if the two can be integrated together to achieve proper integration, they can make up for each other and achieve the best overall benefit.
Therefore, between OA and ERP, a bridge can be built to achieve two-way communication and sessions, so that internal data within the enterprise is "unobstructed ".
2. Analysis of the advantages of the OA and ERP systems:
2.1 The OA system is a strong player in workflow customization.
One of the main features of the OA system is its powerful workflow customization function, which provides a flexible graphical Customization Tool, it can adapt to various forms of approval forms and processes of enterprises.
The workflow of ERP products is more implemented by the logic data stream of the business, which does not focus on the approval of the administrative structure. Therefore, for many enterprises in China that cannot get rid of the administrative approval structure, ERP software is inferior in this respect. The following table is used to summarize the differences between OA software and ERP software in workflow customization:

2.2 The ERP system is a master in mining internal business data of an enterprise.
ERP is short for the Enterprise Resource Plan. Its kernel is a system that solves the huge logical relationship between business data within the enterprise. It runs through the entire lifecycle process of the enterprise, A complete business relationship data link is formed from start to end. Therefore, its strength lies in the complex Logical Data Relationship of the system itself, which can truly provide enterprises with solutions to open "Data treasures.
3. Integration of OA and ERP systems:
Here is a successful case of integration of the OA system with the ERP system:
Guangzhou Metro is the total construction unit of Guangzhou metro construction. It undertakes a huge construction task. There is a large number of contractual construction payment business relationships between the Subway Company and many contracting units, in the subway company, it is called "metering payment", that is to say, the subway construction contractor reports their respective engineering quantities to the subway company on a monthly basis. After the construction department of the Subway Company calculates and reviews the "engineering quantities, according to the contract, the finance department pays the contractor on a monthly or quarterly basis.
In this business process, Guangzhou Metro uses the powerful workflow approval advantages of the OA system to implement the process of "quantity" review from the contractor's application for payment to the personnel at various layers within the company. During this period, the OA system and the ERP system were integrated and integrated. First, the OA system reads contractor information and key contract information from the contract module of the ERP system through the contractor's number from the contractor's application for payment, for example, the contractor name, contract name, contract Line, contract price, expense type, task number, etc. At the same time, the OA system will verify the data. Secondly, during the internal personnel approval process, the OA system reads the accumulated payment data from the ERP contract module in real time to form the payment summary information, which provides a basis for the payment approval, the OA system will write the amount of contract lines and the amount of payment data after approval into the number of payments in the ERP contract module and the AP module to form an invoice to realize the whole process of price verification.
4. Discussion of integration points between OA system and ERP:
Guangzhou Metro's OA and ERP integration case opened up the idea of integrating OA and ERP: After enterprises use the OA system for workflow approval, they produced a lot of business data, these data may also be the data source of the ERP system. To avoid data duplication and ensure the uniqueness of the data source, the problem of integration between the OA system and the ERP system arises. However, this does not mean that all the data of the OA system must be imported into the ERP system. However, it is necessary to choose a proper solution based on the situation of the enterprise. As shown in the above case, a large number of metering and payment services have become part of the heavy accounting business of Guangzhou Metro. This integration can greatly ease the business volume paid by Guangzhou metro construction, it has made great contributions to the Enterprise.
We will discuss the following integration points for reference:
4.1 integration with the finance module
4.1.1 integration with AP
After the OA system approves the payment process, it writes the approval amount to the AP module of the ERP system to form the invoice data for payment.
4.1.2 integration of loan reimbursement
The approval process for borrowing and reimbursement is implemented through the OA system. After the approval is completed, the information about the loan and reimbursement expense items and the total amount are written into the iexpense, and the finance department handles the prepayment.
4.2 integration with the human resources module
4.2.1 attendance Information Integration
Through OA, the application for employee leave is approved. After the application is approved, the attendance information is directly written into HR for attendance statistics and compensation calculation.
4.2.2 integration of employee performance appraisal
Use the OA system to approve the employee evaluation documents. After the examination and approval, the results are written into the personal information of the human resources performance appraisal module.
Summary:

Integration of OA and ERP

5. Notes:
The integration points mentioned above are only the key points for discussion during the implementation process. Of course, new problems may occur in different implementations, in addition, different enterprises have different actual business needs. In this way, we need to carefully handle different situations in specific implementation, after all, it is risky to implement integration between different systems. After careful consideration, either technically or practically, only by obtaining a good investment benefit analysis can we make full use of the overall benefits and reflect the significance of integration and integration. (AMT)