Part - I

Introduction

Information technology today has come to influence our world in a big way. The advent of information technology has not only been phenomenal, but also encompassing a wide gamut of areas. Today, it has assumed critical importance in all business areas, and as such more and more business organizations today are leveraging the power of IT either to match their competitors or stay ahead of them.

Information is a critical resource and in today's competitive business world, properly organized and processed information has become a source of competitive advantage for various firms. storage and meaningful analysis of the data that is generated during Information technology refers to the collection, assimilation, the various transactions that are needed to carry out a business. As information as a strategic resource, has grown in stature, so also has Information Technology. Today IT finds its use in all business functions, e.g, Marketing, Productions, Human Resources, Sales and Distribution, Finance and Accounting.

The last decade has seen a major race among the business organizations of the world for implementing information systems to capture and make meaning out of the huge amount of transaction data that is generated by their business everyday. This has opened up a lucrative avenue for the various software and IT vendors all over the world. These companies have developed expertise for implementing enterprise wide information systems that cut across functional divisions and take an integrated view towards managing data for the whole organization. Such enterprise-wide information systems are referred to as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. An ERP is a software architecture that facilitates the flow of information between all functions within a company such as manufacturing, logistics, finance and human resources etc.

This paper focuses on the application of Information Technology to the area of Human Resources, and explores the various avenues within that, where the software firms can look for business opportunities. The focus is mostly on the Indian software companies because their scope of work is somewhat different owing to certain cost advantages that they enjoy relative to their global counterparts.

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* Contributed by -
Rupam Das,
The Media Cell.
XIM Bhubaneswar.