ERP, short for enterprise resource planning, is a large software suite that tries to run a whole company’s operations in one connected system, from accounting to inventory to payroll.
The idea behind ERP is one system for the entire business. Instead of separate programs for the books, the inventory, the orders, and the staff, an ERP ties them together so a sale updates the inventory and the accounting at the same time. Big, well-known ERP suites run much of the corporate world and can be shaped to fit almost any industry.
That flexibility is also the catch. A general ERP knows nothing about fuel out of the box. It does not understand a bill of lading, the per-gallon taxes, the difference between gross and net gallons, or rack pricing. To make it handle fuel, a company pays for heavy customizing, which is slow and expensive, and the result still needs experts to keep running.
For most fuel jobbers, a full ERP is more system than the business needs and more cost than it can justify. Purpose-built fuel software already speaks the trade’s language and handles the fuel-specific work the day it is installed. The ERP route usually makes sense only for very large firms with the staff and budget to bend it to the fuel business.
In useThe jobber looked at a big-name ERP, then chose fuel-specific software instead, because the ERP would have needed a year of costly customizing just to read a bill of lading correctly.
See also Back office, Cloud software (SaaS)