A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Digital business 

applications 

infrastructure

Applications that provide 

access to services and 

information inside and 

beyond an organisation.

Enterprise resource 

planning (ERP) 

applications

Software providing 

integrated functions for 

major business functions 

such as production, 

distribution, sales, finance 

and human resources 

management.

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Part 1  Introduction

Figure 3.5

(a) Fragmented applications infrastructure, (b) integrated applications 

infrastructure

Source: Adapted from Hasselbring (2000).

Business process

architecture

Application / data

architecture

Technology

architecture

Business process

architecture

Application / data

architecture

Technology

architecture

Business process

architecture

Application / data

architecture

Technology

architecture

Procurement and logistics

Finance

Marketing

Functional barrier

(a)

Functional barrier

Business process

architecture

Application / data

architecture

Technology

architecture

Procurement and logistics

Finance

Functional integration

Marketing

(b)

new software into the application? Thus managers are faced with a precarious balancing act 

between standardisation or core product and integrating innovative systems where appli-

cable. Figure 3.6 illustrates this dilemma. It shows how different types of 

applications tend to have strengths in different areas.

ERP systems were originally focussed on achieving integration at the 

operational level of an organisation. Solutions for other applications such 

as business intelligence in the form of data warehousing and data min-

ing tended to focus on tactical  decision-  making based on accessing the 

operational data from within ERP systems. Knowledge management soft-

ware (Chapter 10) also tends to cut across different levels of management. 

Figure 3.7 shows only some types of applications, but it shows the trial 

of strength between the monolithic ERP applications and more specialist 

applications looking to provide the same functionality.