An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a software is an all-in-one software for businesses and organizations. It is considered a business management software. It can handle your HR needs, accounting needs, purchasing & sales needs, and even your reporting and analytics.
ERP systems are also cloud-based, which allow you to use other cloud-based solutions that can connect.
An example is one of our partners, Sage Intacct. We partnered with Sage Intacct for a few reasons. They are the best-in-class with the accounting focused ERP system, they continue to reinvest in their product (they usually have new functionality releases each quarter), and it can be synced with such a large variety of other industry leading cloud technologies.
Every organization and businesses operate in their own unique way. So very few organizations can function optimally using an "out of the box" type of accounting platform (e.g. QuickBooks).
Sage Intacct has modules for purchasing [going from purchase requisitions to approved purchase orders (POs) to accounts payable using custom workflows], order entry [sales requisitions to sales orders to accounts receivable], inventory, employee time & expense tracking, as well as your customary modules like cash management, general ledger, and reporting.
Since all of these modules can be customized, it is easy to see how an organization can now fit the software into their processes instead of having to adjust their processes to the software.
Lets say your business is heavy into inventory and you think the inventory module is not automated enough. You can use a cloud-based inventory software that is expert in inventory and be able to sync with Sage Intacct so that you can still streamline your accounting and reporting. You can use this same methodology with accounts payable, purchasing, human resources/payroll, point of sales software, etc. To see more, here is the Sage Intacct marketplace to see which other programs tie seamlessly with Sage Intacct (https://marketplace.intacct.com/)