ERP Management

ERP Management Tips for Smoother Enterprise System Implementation

ERP Management Tips

ERP management is a responsibility that is not taken lightly. There is an overall perception that a full scale erp system will take multiple years to get it fully implemented and deployed. This belief is justified to some extent when recounting horror stories of the first wave of ERP management botches in the first Fortune 100 companies guinea pigs of the late seventies and early eighties. Even today some of the big, complex ERP implementations for large corporations may still take a few years to fully deploy.

However, for many organizations today the solutions on the marketplace has evolved significantly and with the right enterprise solution and the right management, full scale ERP management solutions can get rolled out quickly and effectively in months, not years. Here are some ERP management tips.

1. Don’t attempt to force the new ERP software to look like your legacy enterprise system. A big mistake organizations make is trying to keep the look and feel identical or as close to the former enterprise system which will escalate the end costs of the integration and lengthen the implementation time without getting any additional value form the implementation. This will destroy the project’s ROI. New enterprise solutions should be better than previous versions and more user friendly and should be adopted and deployed as they are. Current employees may be indeed familiar with their current systems but that does not mean that the system that is in use is the best one, in fact the opposite is true.


2. Optimize your business processes and company long term strategic goals before the implementation process begins and not while it’s happening. A company-wide ERP system implementation will force managers and department heads to take a look at the way they do business including business process flows. Given the day to day pressures, in many cases this may be the managers’ first time they look at the big picture with respect to the business process flows. Unfortunately, this is too late when dealing with enterprise systems deployment. Companies many times fall into the trap of scrambling to stay afloat on a daily basis let along dedicate the time to assess the optimization of current processes. Make sure that managers and stakeholders have the proper resources and time carved out for the strategy work before an enterprise solution is even sourced let alone implemented.


3. Get your key employees that use the system on a daily basis involved with the selection process and the implementation process. It’s important to key a good balance of employee types in the ERP management team. It’s critical to have senior company managers on board as well as key employees from departments that utilize the enterprise system on a daily basis.


4. Companies usually don’t have the right resources and experience within the company to implement a full ERP system. Even though the IT department and CIO may be brilliant at what they do, the chances are low that they have worked on more than two enterprise system implementations in their lifetime. And most likely they have not worked on implementation with the latest ERP offerings and technologies currently in the market. It would be a good idea to hire enterprise consultants who work with ERP systems implementations on a daily basis particularly with companies in business sector and size.

Written by :

aniseo