To some nothing, to others everything…

Why? Org or organization is a common business term that is used slightly differently in each company, another word that that can have many meanings, but lets stick to org.

Checking the dictionaries online, first of all it can be an adjective or a noun, hmmm. Noun: a) the act of organizing or of being organized b) an administrative and functional structure (as a business or a political party); also : the personnel of such a structure — taken from Merriam Webster!

Why do orgs matter in ERP software? we need “buckets” to put stuff. Setups (rules) and Transactions (data) have to belong to something. Since org is a fairly generic term, our “buckets” are called orgs

Now comes the hard part, software designers need to determine which processes run where and with what rules, how do we do this when each customer’s definition of org can be different.  Well we kinda cheat – cheat by making assumptions on what we believe is most likely for the customers we are designing for. Why is this necessary? mainly for performance and integrity of data. 

An example is Accounting data, since all roads lead to GL, the GL must be the queen of all rules in which data flows to it, ie GL is the centre of the universe (another topic for later, how many centers of the universes exist?) You may think this seems ok, however the transaction data and setups which is used to create accounting data may need to have some limitations as well so it will not create “invalid” data for GL.

Since this is software and we can pretty much do anything, the dilemma is when to validate the data/rules going to the center of the universe? At the earliest point (ie you are subject to rules on any data/setups you enter that has any affect on the queen! The queen’s favorite color is blue, you can only buy blue clothing, but there is another kingdom which says blue is outlawed) OR at the latest point possible (ie you have walked 1000Km to visit the queen and the queen’s guards tells you, entry to the city is only possible if you are wearing black since its Monday)

So what do we do? we check at the last gate, a bit looser in the front end but it depends on the flow. What does that mean to the customer? They need to understand which rules and data partition is best for their org, based on the functionality attached to the “artificial” org in the software.