Luna's Midnight Bakery had done something miraculous. What started as a single cozy shop on a cobblestone corner had become three thriving locations — Downtown, Riverside, and the new Airport Kiosk.

Business was booming. But behind the scenes? Things were falling apart.

Sound familiar? This is what happens when a growing company relies on disconnected systems — separate spreadsheets, separate software, separate versions of the truth.

Let's see exactly what's going wrong. Click each department to reveal the chaos hiding inside Luna's bakery:

One evening, after discovering that the Airport Kiosk had run out of sourdough for the third time this month, Luna sat down with her laptop and did something she'd been putting off.

She Googled: "How do big companies manage all their departments together?"

And that's when she found it.

Luna learned that ERP systems are built from modules — each one handles a different business function, but they all connect to the same central database. She found out there are four major module categories that most ERP systems share.

Click each module below to "connect" it to Luna's bakery ERP. Watch how each one solves a specific problem from Act 1!

Luna also learned some important things about ERP software. It wasn't as simple as downloading an app.

She wrote them on a sticky note above her desk:

And here's something that surprised Luna: an ERP system doesn't have to come from a single vendor. You can mix and match modules from different companies. Though the biggest ERP vendor in the world is SAP, and Microsoft's offering is called Microsoft Dynamics (which tends to be better suited for smaller businesses).

When Luna needed to analyze historical trends beyond her daily ERP reports, she learned about another tool:

With her ERP system up and running, Luna noticed something incredible: transaction processing was happening automatically.

This is the power of real-time data integration. Before ERP, Luna's team had to manually update four different spreadsheets for that same sale. Now the ERP handles it — eliminating reposting errors and ensuring a common vision is instantly displayed.

Luna's ERP system was transforming her business. But one morning, she walked into the Downtown kitchen to find 200 burnt baguettes. The oven had been running 15°F too hot all night, and nobody noticed until the damage was done.

There was. It's called the Internet of Things.

Luna started adding IoT sensors throughout her bakery. Click each sensor to see what it does and how it feeds data into her ERP:

As Luna's business grew, she realized that ERP wasn't just about internal departments. It was about managing her entire supply chain — from the wheat farmer to the customer's hands.

She studied how SAP, the world's largest ERP vendor, organizes its supply chain software into four main functions:

Luna also discovered some powerful collaboration features within SAP's system:

Luna now understood the three major functional areas of her internal supply chain:

Purchasing → Manufacturing → Sales & Distribution

Tight cooperation between these three is essential for effective manufacturing planning and control. ERP provides the data to measure how well they're working together through performance metrics — things like fill rates, cycle times, cost per unit, and on-time delivery rates.

Let's see how well you know your ERP vocabulary! Match each term to its definition:

Six months after implementing ERP and IoT, Luna looked at her bakery and barely recognized it. Let's compare the before and after:

Let's put everything together. Here's your final knowledge check — six questions covering the key concepts from Luna's ERP & IoT journey: