The collection of these inter-company systems and the underlying intracompany ERP system is called an application suite. Suite vendors, such as
SAP and Oracle, provide fairly comprehensive collections of applications that
offer an enormous amount of functionality and cover most of the standard
business processes.
Figure 2-4 identifies the various capabilities that are part of an application suite and illustrates how they connect to other members of a company’s
business network. It is important to note that one of the key benefits of utilizing a complete suite of software is that the data and processes are integrated
among the systems in the suite. That is, although they are separate systems,
they are designed so that they work together in an integrated manner