ERP Requirements for Supporting Management Decisions and Business Intelligence

Nowadays, scientific management of organizations requires appropriate applying of information and communication technology tools such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Therefore, identifying and studying these systems, especially from a management perspective, are highly essential. One of the dimensions of this study is to review the relationship between ERP systems and business intelligence, which should be done in the form of studying the requirements for ERP systems with the purpose of supporting management decisions. In this paper, the fundamental expectations of managers of various levels of ERP systems for supporting their decisions are surveyed. Based on the analysis of management specifications and the decision context of managers, some hypotheses about the relationship between ERP systems and management decisions are studied. In addition, the significance of the requirements for decision support (business intelligence) is investigated via statistical analysis tools. In the rest of the paper, in order to cover the identified requirements for management decisions support and building business intelligence for ERP systems, some Business Intelligence (BI) solutions are recommended. To present a practical framework for applying the solutions, the best order of solution implementation for meeting the requirements is searched by means of Multi Alternative Decision Making (MADM) methods. Furthermore, by using Anthropy Shanon method, the weight of criteria (requirements), and by applying the Technique Ordered Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model, the priorities for implementing the most appropriate solutions are determined