Tips for a Successful ERP Launch
Content
12 Tips for a Successful ERP Launch
Clear expectations and planning can improve your experience and near-term success. Improved processes and a competitive edge are the destination, but how do you get there? Whether your business is entering a first ever enterprise resource planning (ERP) experience or considering a move to an ERP that more effectively meets current requirements, clear expectations and planning can improve your experience and near-term success. The following steps will help you reach your goal. 1. Quantify ROI expectations. Know why you are implementing a new ERP and what the results will be. These should be specific to the processes you are seeking to improve, such as inventory, and the time frame in which the ROI is to take place.
2. 100% organization ´buy inµ is essential, including managers and non-managers. Buy in looks this way:
Be willing to commit the time, information, processes and resources to making this transition successful. Keep the vision of improved competitiveness and profits at the forefront at all times. Accept that current processes will change and prepare to adapt to the new processes.
3. Understand who owns the final responsibility for success.
The company is the final owner of the outcome. Consulting partners facilitate success, provide tools and expertise.
4. The CEO, COO or CFO assign individuals or a group as project managers and empower them to insure compliance, buy in and smooth process execution. Empowerment is a tool for addressing organizational resistance.
Project managers should include a key player from all departments and processes. Project managers should welcome individual input while conveying that they will have final decision-making responsibility.
5. Assume that the project will take time away from established resources for the project implementation period.
Time impacts productivity. Time may require additional human resources allocation or redistribution on a temporary basis. Plan ahead to compensate for these changes.
6. Stick to the initial scope of the project, unless a critical element has been overlooked, and save the ´wish listµ for later.
7. Acknowledge expertise gaps and bring in objective outside resources when necessary for first round implementation success.
8. Assume that change is not easy but it is the way to growth. Let go of what isn·t working for your organization. The goal is greater efficiency and competitiveness. If the old way worked, your organization wouldn·t have launched on the path for a new ERP.
9. Train to reinforce, test, transfer knowledge and insure the best delivery for your project. Training completes the cycle and takes the hypothetical to real-world success.
10. Make a clean break. Do not run parallel systems once you launch. This reinforces old behaviors and habits. Test the system before launch and make sure everything works before you go live.
11. Allocate on-site support for the first 30 days or more after you go live. Do not assume that your human resources already know how to do their job in the new construct. It·s easier to identify and fix glitches earlier than later.
12. ERP will not be painless but the process can be made easier by following these guidelines.
Clear expectations and planning can improve your experience and near-term success. Improved processes and a competitive edge are the destination, but how do you get there? Whether your business is entering a first ever enterprise resource planning (ERP) experience or considering a move to an ERP that more effectively meets current requirements, clear expectations and planning can improve your experience and near-term success. The following steps will help you reach your goal. 1. Quantify ROI expectations. Know why you are implementing a new ERP and what the results will be. These should be specific to the processes you are seeking to improve, such as inventory, and the time frame in which the ROI is to take place.
2. 100% organization ´buy inµ is essential, including managers and non-managers. Buy in looks this way:
Be willing to commit the time, information, processes and resources to making this transition successful. Keep the vision of improved competitiveness and profits at the forefront at all times. Accept that current processes will change and prepare to adapt to the new processes.
3. Understand who owns the final responsibility for success.
The company is the final owner of the outcome. Consulting partners facilitate success, provide tools and expertise.
4. The CEO, COO or CFO assign individuals or a group as project managers and empower them to insure compliance, buy in and smooth process execution. Empowerment is a tool for addressing organizational resistance.
Project managers should include a key player from all departments and processes. Project managers should welcome individual input while conveying that they will have final decision-making responsibility.
5. Assume that the project will take time away from established resources for the project implementation period.
Time impacts productivity. Time may require additional human resources allocation or redistribution on a temporary basis. Plan ahead to compensate for these changes.
6. Stick to the initial scope of the project, unless a critical element has been overlooked, and save the ´wish listµ for later.
7. Acknowledge expertise gaps and bring in objective outside resources when necessary for first round implementation success.
8. Assume that change is not easy but it is the way to growth. Let go of what isn·t working for your organization. The goal is greater efficiency and competitiveness. If the old way worked, your organization wouldn·t have launched on the path for a new ERP.
9. Train to reinforce, test, transfer knowledge and insure the best delivery for your project. Training completes the cycle and takes the hypothetical to real-world success.
10. Make a clean break. Do not run parallel systems once you launch. This reinforces old behaviors and habits. Test the system before launch and make sure everything works before you go live.
11. Allocate on-site support for the first 30 days or more after you go live. Do not assume that your human resources already know how to do their job in the new construct. It·s easier to identify and fix glitches earlier than later.
12. ERP will not be painless but the process can be made easier by following these guidelines.
