  Cloud-based enterprise resource planning (cloud ERP) systems have existed in
the business market for around ten years. Cloud ERP supports enterprises' daily
activities by integrating organizational back-end systems in the cloud
environment. One of the critical functions that cloud ERP offers is the
purchasing application. The purchasing function of cloud ERP enables
enterprises to streamline all the online purchasing transactions in real-time
automatically. Even cloud ERP is deployed quite often these days, organizations
somehow still lack the knowledge of it; to be specific, there are many issues
attached to cloud ERP implementation yet to be solved. Hence, this paper
compares four leading cloud ERP platforms in Australia and proposes a hybrid
cloud ERP framework to process online purchasing transactions. By adopting a
case study approach, a purchasing web-based application is designed and
presented in this paper. In general, the proposed hybrid cloud ERP framework
and the integrated web-based purchasing application allow user companies to
process online purchasing transactions with short operation time and increased
business efficiency; in the meantime, the proposed framework also reduces
security risks attached to the public cloud.
