Using ERP software to illustrate business processes

Many mid and large scale organizations are investing in and implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to manage their business processes. New courses are being developed at the university level in both graduate and undergraduate business curricula with major components discussing ERR A half dozen vendors have grabbed the lions share of this market. One of these vendors is the PeopleSoft Corporation. Recently the College of Management at the University of Massachusetts Lowell was awarded a grant from the PeoleSoft Corporation. The award included a copy of the database, which is used for teaching purposes. Several small exercises have been developed using the information contained in the database to illustrate business processes. The purpose of these exercises is to illustrate the capabilities of ERP systems similar to the use of spreadsheet and database software in the classroom. This paper describes the grant writing and award process and an exercise that was developed by the author.