Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are considered to be the backbone of many organizations. Their capacity of integrating information across diverse business applications provides support in business process automation and decision-making. The ERP projects are usually more focused on recovering transactional features rather than improving other important aspects such as their decision support potential for strategic functions. This capability can be achieved by incorporating business intelligence techniques such as data mining. This article addresses the way ERP systems can take advantage of these tools which provide enterprise managers with intelligent mechanisms for decision-making.

Enterprise business processes involve many areas, such as sales, marketing, finance, manufacturing, human resources, etc. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems make possible the integration of diverse processes of the organization, starting with planning products until reaching customer services or dealings with suppliers. Many ERP systems deploy Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) techniques in order to reduce costs, while maintaining or improving service levels by appropriately merging information to customer, suppliers and manufacturers [Symeonidis et al., 2003 and Yen et al., 2002].

The ERP systems endowed with these characteristics are powerful tools that provide support in business process automation and decision-making. However, company directives expect ERP applications to improve decision-making potential for strategic functions. This capability can be achieved by incorporating business intelligence techniques such as data warehousing, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Multidimensional Data Analysis (MDA), and Data Mining.

This article deals with the last advances and future trends on ERP, especially in the field of business intelligence and data mining. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 contains the latest technology that can be used in ERP system. A description of the main techniques of business intelligence is presented. Different application areas of the data mining techniques in ERP systems for adding them more efficient decision support capabilities are explained. The conclusions are exposed.

Projects and Profits Magazine, ERP Systems, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, Business Intelligence Techniques, Business Process Automation, Decision-Making Process, Data Mining, Customer Relationship Management, CRM, Supply Chain Management, SCM, Online Analytical Processing, OLAP, Multidimensional Data Analysis, ERP Applications, Data Mining Techniques.