Strategic Enterprise Management System: A Tool for the 21st Century: A Tool for the 21st Century

Author: Fay
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The purpose of this book is to explore the significance of emerging SEM products for financial professionals and the management accounting and control activities they conduct. Specifically, this book argues that SEM is not merely a technical issue but a management philosophy that integrates the best practices in key management processes such as planning, decision-making, execution, and performance evaluation to maximize shareholder value. While technology and systems are crucial factors, this book strives to demonstrate that the successful implementation of SEM requires a broader perspective than what many practitioners currently suggest. Over the past year, many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software vendors have begun to offer software products for Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM). Currently, major suppliers believe that SEM enhances the efficiency of corporate strategic management processes by providing managers with functions such as operational performance monitoring, data consolidation, and data warehouses/business intelligence. In addition to these data and information management functions, vendors like SAP and PeopleSoft are working to incorporate other methodologies into their SEM products, such as shareholder value management, balanced scorecards, and activity-based management. In the next year and a half, SEM may become a trendy corporate buzzword. In particular, the coming months will see numerous management conferences on SEM and a surge in technical products related to SEM. SEM systems will be built on the foundation of ERP systems widely adopted by large companies in the early 1990s. While ERP systems helped large companies improve efficiency by leveraging best practices in existing industry applications, they operate at the operational level rather than the strategic level. ERP systems have not demonstrated how a company can create maximum value for customers and achieve its goals by maximizing shareholder value and fulfilling its responsibilities to employees, business partners, and the community. SEM attempts to bridge the gap between strategy and operations by making shareholder value a key criterion for decision-making and providing tools and information to support it: