Glossary

Batch traceability means being able to follow a production batch seamlessly from raw material to delivered end product.

A bill of materials lists all components, raw materials and quantities that go into manufacturing a product.

Business intelligence refers to analytics and reporting features that turn raw ERP data into metrics and dashboards.

Cloud ERP is a deployment model where the software runs on the vendor's servers and is used over the internet, usually on a subscription basis.

The contribution margin is the difference between sales revenue and the variable costs of a product or order.

Cost center accounting assigns costs to the departments where they arise, cost object accounting assigns them to the products or services they arise for.

EDI refers to the structured, automated exchange of business documents such as purchase orders and invoices between the computer systems of different companies.

Enterprise Asset Management plans and documents maintenance and the lifecycle of physical assets and infrastructure.

ERP refers to business software that manages core processes such as finance, procurement, inventory and production on a single shared data foundation.

GxP is an umbrella term for regulatory "good practice" guidelines such as GMP (manufacturing) or GDP (distribution) in pharma and life sciences.

HACCP is a food safety system that identifies critical hazard points in production and monitors them systematically.

Lot size one describes manufacturing individually configured single units with the same industrial efficiency as series production.

Merchandise management handles purchasing, stock levels and sales of goods end to end in one system.

An MES controls and monitors production in real time on the shop floor, between high-level planning in the ERP and the actual machine controls.

MRP calculates from bills of materials, stock levels and orders what needs to be procured or produced, and when.

Multi-company capability lets several legally separate companies or sites be managed within one shared system instance.

OData is a standardised protocol for accessing data through REST interfaces with a uniform query language.

On-premise ERP runs on servers in the company's own data centre or with a local hosting partner, and the company itself stays responsible for operations and updates.

Open-source ERP makes its source code openly available, often paired with a paid enterprise edition offering extra features and support.

Pre-calculation estimates the cost and price of a job before it starts, post-calculation compares actual costs against that estimate afterwards.

A property management system handles room bookings, occupancy and reservations in hotels and hospitality businesses.

The QR-bill is the Swiss payment standard in force since 2020, using a machine-readable QR code for the payment slip.

Recipe and formula management represents products as proportions of ingredients or substances, instead of a fixed bill of materials.

A REST API is a programming interface through which other systems access an ERP's data and functions over HTTP in a standardised way.

SaaS refers to software used exclusively as a cloud subscription, with no local installation or purchase option.

BDE and MDE capture feedback from production and machines, such as run times, quantities and downtime reasons, and feed it back into the ERP.

SMEs are, under common definitions, companies with fewer than 250 full-time employees, a category that in Switzerland is central to statistics and economic policy.

Swissdec is the Swiss standard for electronic, audited payroll data transmission to insurers and authorities.

A transportation management system plans dispatch, routing and scheduling for vehicles and drivers.