Processes, Data, and People—One Coffee Break at a Time
A practical introduction to the ideas underneath modern ERP systems — designed to help you stop seeing isolated screens and start seeing the business connections behind them.
The finalized first edition is currently preparing for release on Amazon.
What this volume does
Learn the “why” behind the click path.
ERP systems connect sales, purchasing, inventory, production, finance, logistics, and many other areas. Yet people are often taught how to perform a task without being shown how the pieces fit together.
How ERP Really Works builds that missing foundation. It introduces the connections between people, processes, and data; explains how business activity flows across departments; and shows why roles, requirements, and even small system changes deserve a wider view.
The book is written for business users, new key users, junior ERP consultants, and anyone who wants to understand the system behind their daily work without first learning a dictionary of corporate terminology.
Inside Volume 1
Six Coffee Breaks that build the foundation.
Each chapter focuses on one concept and is designed to be understood in roughly fifteen minutes.
01
What ERP Actually Is
Start with a clear mental model for ERP and the connections between software, business processes, and shared information.
02
How Business Processes Flow Through ERP
Follow work across department boundaries, handoffs, dependencies, the happy path, and the exceptions that make real processes interesting.
03
Master Data vs. Transactional Data
Understand the building blocks behind business activity and why one incorrect piece of data can travel surprisingly far.
04
Who Does What in ERP?
Meet the business users, key users, consultants, developers, process owners, and other roles that each see a different part of the ERP picture.
05
Turning a Pain Point into a Real Requirement
Learn why the requested solution is not always the real problem — and how to move from pain point to desired outcome.
06
Standard or Custom?
Explore the question behind almost every ERP change and the trade-offs between standard processes and meaningful customization.
A business you can follow
Meet Morning Peak Coffee Systems.
Instead of introducing a completely new example every few pages, Volume 1 follows a fictional manufacturer of professional coffee machines.
Morning Peak gives the ideas a business context: customer orders, production, purchasing, logistics, finance, users, key users, and system decisions can all be viewed as parts of the same connected ERP story.
The bigger idea
ERP becomes much easier once you stop looking at isolated screens and start looking at the business behind them.
Volume 1 is designed to help you make that shift — so you can ask where information came from, what happens next, who depends on it, and what problem a proposed system change is actually meant to solve.
About the author
Meet Briley Braun.
Briley Braun is the international pen name of Birgit Maria Braun, a Senior ERP Consultant and business process specialist with more than a decade of experience in enterprise systems.
Her career began at SAP’s Vancouver office and developed from customer service into business applications and CRM. Today, based in Germany, she works across the business and technical sides of ERP — from user pain points and process improvement to system logic, source-code analysis, and interfaces.
The ERP Coffee Break Series grew from her own search for ERP guidance that was practical, clear, and free from unnecessary jargon.
