Overview

Today, more than ever before, boundaries are getting blurred in all areas of human existence and work. Where one system ends, another has already started. What happened in one corner of the company seems to have an effect in a different location. Managers want to know what is happening, owners want to ensure that there is no duplication of effort, workers want to do the right thing, vendors want to get paid and above all the finance department wants to ensure that all is recorded, reconciled and correct.

Mindmill – ERP is quintessentially an Enterprise Resource Planning system: an organization -wide computer software system used to manage and coordinate all the resources, information, and functions of an organization from shared data stores which can be deployed in whole or in parts by any organization. Typically this system is used by organizations which have multiple offices. It is a a comprehensive, integrated & scalable software product which helps to improve operational efficiencies across the organization.

Mindmill offers enterprise solutions that are deeply focused on the unique needs of different industry verticals. The flexible ERP software product is capable of addressing the evolving business priorities and process changes with its SOA based architecture.

Mindmill's expertise in the ERP domain dates back to 1999, allowing it to provide ERP products with a decade of industry-specific research, backed by strong domain expertise.

The result is ERP software with the right combination of innovation and practicality; solutions that address the industry-specific needs without time consuming and costly customization; products that deliver rapid ROI and world-class capabilities without complex implementations.

The organization could be a simple multi-location retail shop or a ministry department of a country, which needs to manage their entire operations with a holistic approach.

Even though all modules are fully integrated and extensive reuse of objects has been made, for the purpose of explanation, we have divided the application into modules. The Mindmill – ERP consist of an Integrated Financial Management Software along with several other modules which are specified below:

Integrated Financial Management Software

• Mindmill - Accounting: Financial Accounting with Purchase Approval Workflow
• Mindmill – Treasury: Borrowings & Investments
• Mindmill – Asset Liability Management (ALM)
• Mindmill - BankMill: Complete Banking Operations

Other Modules:

• Mindmill – Supply Chain Management (Inventory Management)
• Mindmill – HRMS & Payroll: Human Resource Management & Payroll
• Mindmill – CRM: Customer Relationship Management & Sales Process Management
• Mindmill – Project Tracker: Project Management
• Mindmill – Upper Management: Decision Support Systems

The complete data for all the modules mentioned above is modeled carefully into a single database data warehouse.

Each of these can exist independently of the others and are explained in the following chapters individually.

Business Benefits

Improvise productivity – Mindmill ERP software product helps you to improve your operational efficiency and productivity within and beyond your enterprise. Mindmill boost employee productivity by empowering the employees with timely information and informed sound decision making capabilities.

Organizational visibility - The Mindmill ERP software product provides real time visibility across the organization by streamlining the information accumulated across various servers and functional units of the business house.

Informed Decision Making – Mindmill’s ERP product is equally competent and efficient in providing a prudent, comprehensive view of the complete business process execution which in turn influences decision in the most productive and profitable manner.

Cost Efficiency –The cost efficiencies are achieved with process standardization and granular information repository availability leading to informed profitable quick decisions. The extended transactions, information exchange and integrated business processes leads to higher business ROI.

User friendly product – Mindmill ERP product is genuinely designed to ensure the ease of usage and navigation associated with such enterprise level information systems.

Easy to Use and Administer      

Mindmill - ERP provides the Organization with an ERP architecture which provides:

• Centralized Database
• Single Server Application Deployment
• Global Reach
• Global Employee and
• Global Benefactor

Implementation

Implementing a full blown ERP requires business process reengineering. A consequence of this is that changes will be made to the way the staff works. This aspect will lead to a certain amount of resistance from various quarters. In order to make the implementation of an ERP system a success, it is important to identify all work that has to be done and how, who and when it will be done. Typically the work can be divided into the following categories:

• Consulting (to identify why and what is really needed and to oversee all other aspects of implementation)
• Customization & Migration (ERP system is highly configurable and needs to be customized for each organization. After it has been customized, data from existing systems needs to be moved into the ERP system). This aspect is detailed again in the separate section below.
• Support (to provide a one stop help desk for administrators, users and strategists to ensure that the current work happens and future can evolve)

Core System Configuration, Customization & Extension

The Mindmill – ERP lends itself easily to Configuration, Customization and Extensions.

Configuration: The system is highly parameterized and can be configured to work according to the various needs of the business by changing these parameters which are in form of “Masters” in the database tables.

Customization: Mindmill offers customization services to allow the user to add/change a “market beating” process by doing extra programming.

Extension: The system offers easy hooks into itself in form of industry standard interfaces such as ISO 8583 for financial systems and data warehouse exposure to allow companies to integrate 3rd party systems and hardware with the system. SOA based architecture allows easy extensibility with 3rd party software and hardware.

Security Features

Security is provided using the following methods:

• Audit Trails: Audit trail of each transaction in the system is kept with date, time and user-id stamp.
• 3DES Encryption: All data between a device and the backend is transmitted after encrypting it with industry standard 3DES encryption. This prevents any snoopers to sniff the channel and get financial data information.
• MD5 Encryption: All passwords are kept using industry standard MD5 encryption. This prevents the administrator from knowing the passwords of any user.
• Data Security: Data is kept secure using database login and password
• Access Security: By Role and Rights explained more in Administration Features.

Administration Features

• Masters, Control Values and other Parameters: High level of parameterization available
• Service Outlet Concept: Each branch or delivery channel is designated as a service outlet and each transaction can be tracked at a service outlet level.
• Maker Checker Concept: Allows the Organization to have double or triple checks in place by having one person make an entry, another to verify it and sometimes if necessary a third to co-verify or next to enable it.
• Multi Lingual (on request)
• Multi-Currency
• Multi Country
• Multi Location
• Roles and Rights: An organization can create various roles (designations) based on its Organization Chart and associate view, create, modify and delete rights on each screen as well as access to the screen itself.

Delivery Channels

The following delivery channels are available with Mindmill – ERP:         

• Internet
• SMS based transactions
• Short Code Service Based transactions
• Touch screen kiosks
• IVR
• Email Alerts and
• Other customizable channels such as BlackBerry, Nokia Devices, Notepad, IPAD and other devices.

Technology

The structure is a 3 tier structure and consists of a browser based application written in applets which communicate with the middle layer sockets. The system has a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Data interchange happens via encrypted and compressed XML structures.

The software has been written in Java and is platform agnostic. It can work with any standard RDBMS such as MS SQL, and Oracle.

3rd Party Software Requirements

Client Machines
• OS: Windows/Linux/Unix/Thin Client
• JRE
• Internet Explorer or Netscape
Application Server & Backup Application Server
• OS: Windows Server/Linux/Unix
• Tomcat
• JDK with JRE
Database Server & Backup Database Server
• OS: Windows Server
• Database: MS SQL
General
• Antivirus (Enterprise Edition) for Servers
• Individual antivirus licenses for each client in the Organization. (To be renewed on a yearly basis)
• Firewalls