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Understanding the Value of a Project Manager

by | Feb 12, 2022 | Business Consulting, Business Direction, ERP Consulting

Project Management & the Future of Your Business

In the next 5 years almost 88 million people around the world will be working in Project Management. More importantly, project-oriented activity will have reached $20 trillion in value. With this many projects and this much value in play, the success and value of projects is a high priority. Yet many leaders don’t appreciate the value of using projects and see them as the exception to the normal business process. Why is this?

At a high-level there are two types of efforts a company undertakes:

1) Operations:

Running the organization

2) Projects:

Changing the organization

The first type of effort is day-to-day. It includes sales, customer service, finance, manufacturing, and IT. It focuses on efficiency, productivity, and speed. And that focus is mostly short-term. For success in operations the organization depends on command and control to get results.

The second type of effort is more about the future of the organization. It is about adaptation, innovation, transformation, and longer-term value. Its focus is medium to long-term. It is successful when it is led by entrepreneurship and collaboration.

Both efforts require teamwork, but one focuses on continually tuning the current environment and the other focuses on adapting to the future. And while Operations keeps the organization afloat, it is not able to alone ensure the survival of the organization. The reason is that change is permanent for most industries because of competition, government rules and disruption. More efficient Operations help but cannot create the cultural and operational changes necessary to stay relevant in the market. That’s why anticipating, managing, and driving strategic change has become a top priority.

So, if strategic Projects are essential how does an organization ensure that they are successful?

It’s no secret that less than 40% of most projects are successful. And everyone has a story of a failed project, right?

To avoid these failures, there are many things that can be done. One of the most important is to develop Project Management skills in the organization. And those skills need to be practiced by both Executive sponsors and the Project Manager(s). It is not enough to put someone in charge of a project, they need to be skilled and supported to ensure success. Then the organization gets the real benefits of project management.

And what are those benefits? I would offer that they always include these eight items:

Clear Ownership for Project Success

Team members of the project are working towards a common goal, but they focus primarily on their individual responsibilities. The Project Manager is always considering the overall project, the resources, the upcoming tasks, the costs, the risks, communication needs and schedule. They look above the day-to-day activities to see what is happening across the project and the future. This provides clear ownership and a chain of command for the organization.

Project Organizing and Planning

The Project Manager works with the team to create and track schedules and budgets for the project. They also provide clear direction and expectations for the project team, steering committee, and end-user involvement. The organization knows that someone is continually reviewing progress of the project so that issues can be addressed earlier and more efficiently.

Project Accountability

The project team makes commitments, and the project manager holds them accountable for those commitments usually on a weekly basis. The team knows they have to provide updates to the project manager on their progress. This protects the organization from delays, extra costs and missed steps.

Project Scope / Budget / Schedule / Resource Management

Every project has a risk of either expanding or contracting the scope of the effort which can lead to missed objectives. It also has a budget and a schedule that should be monitored continuously. The Project Manager guards the scope of the project and ensures that objectives are met within the parameters of time, cost and resources. They know the best methods for tracking each of these and reducing the risks entailed. The organization is better protected from wasted efforts and missed objectives which can cost thousands of dollars in rework when a Project Manager is at the helm.

Project Rigor

Projects are complex and expensive. A Project Manager has invested (and continues to invest) time in learning and applying best practices to each project. They bring prior project experience and skills that are not found in other members of the project team or sponsors. They know how to manage project risk, scope creep, and organizational politics. They understand project measurements like Earned Value, Cost Performance Index, Schedule Performance Index, Planned Value and the variances to track. Because of this, organizations reduce the risk of project failure when they have a competent and focused Project Manager involved.

Team Building

While accomplishing the objectives of the project is a priority, that happens best when the project team is working well together. Building relationships of trust and negotiating conflicts is part of the job of the Project Manager. They know the stress incurred during projects and help ensure a healthy working environment that engages and values everyone. Organizations improve the quality of the results when the Project Manager is building and supporting the team responsible for delivering the project.

Communications

Most projects have multiple stakeholders, a sponsor, a customer, internal/external resources, a steering committee, and vendors that must coordinate to accomplish the project objectives. Ensuring that these participants are informed and kept up to date is a key role of the Project Manager. They use email, phone calls, status meetings, Zoom-type meetings, text messages and one-on-one meetings to ensure that everyone is informed to perform. There is no one approach to communication and organizations benefit from the focused communication that a Project Manager brings to the table.

Change Management

Completing a project is only part of the success of a project. The other is that the end-customer needs to be prepared for the changes that the project brings. The ability to educate and prepare for change is more important than most realize. Many projects are successful on one hand yet fail because the organization never adopts the solution. A skilled Project Manager brings a change management strategy and rigor to the effort. They are working with the customers of the project to ensure that the solution is accepted, that customers are trained to use it and that there is ongoing support for the solution. Organizations that have a robust Change Management process led by the Project Manager increase the impact of the project on organizational performance.

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This Old IT: The Modify vs. Rebuild Software Quandary

by | Jan 24, 2022 | Business Consulting, Epicor, Epicor 10, Epicor Kinetic, ERP, ERP Consulting, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21, Software

When should you start from scratch?

When I was about ten years old, my family lived in an old frame house. I have a lot of fond memories from our time there, but it had some quirks.

Originally a two-bedroom house, a third bedroom had been added onto one side. Built in sort of a lean-to style, the roofline didn’t match, of course. And it was added against the dining room/kitchen side over what was formerly the back door, so you could look out the kitchen window into my parents’ bedroom. It was built on a concrete slab instead of the pier-and-beam construction of the old house, so you stepped down into it, and then there was another back door in the bedroom opening to the backyard. It was an interesting place.

I’m reminded of that house occasionally when I encounter an aging software package that we’re replacing with a modern Epicor ERP system.

When the old stuff was installed, the implementation team made modifications to tailor it to the company’s operation and crafted operating instructions to guide the team. Over the years, the company and its requirements evolved, so more changes and additions were tacked on, old features were abandoned but not removed, and documentation was bypassed in the name of expediency. “Spaghetti Mess” is the technical term for what you get after ten, twenty, or thirty years. That’s just the way of life.

Eventually, a company makes the painful choice to start afresh with current technology and fresh eyes, and we find ourselves on the brink of an adventure. As we all know, adventure is rarely experienced without peril, sacrifice, and hard work. But it also can bring us reward and satisfaction.

When IT comes to IT, our consultants will be there.

The EstesGroup will be excited to be your partners in this journey. Need help with technology solutions or cloud services?  Is it time for help with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system? We’ll be there before you know it!

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Leveraging Union Queries in Epicor Kinetic BAQs

Leveraging Union Queries in Epicor Kinetic BAQs

by | Oct 13, 2021 | Epicor, Epicor 10, Epicor Kinetic, ERP Consulting, ERP Implementation

BAQs — Becoming One Data

A fundamental value of your Epicor ERP system is the data that it holds — all that data sits there, nicely organized and begging for consumption. But good data needs to be converted into information to be of value. As such, getting good data out of your ERP system is key. Often, it takes a good query to perform that information transformation. A Union query is one tool in the Epicor BAQ toolbox that can perform this action.

Within the Epicor Business activity query toolset, Union queries combine multiple data sources into a single results set. Union queries are a great way to combine data from different tables that are, for whatever reason, sufficiently similar as to combine them into a single dataset. Some examples might include:

  • You are using the project module and wish to combine project phases and project tasks into one single set of activities
  • You are tracking the completion of manufactured parts in a mixed mode environment, and need to merge the Job Assembly and Job Material tables
  • You are reviewing sales activity for a customer and wish to combine open orders and open quotes

The UNION command in some ways functions like a JOIN command. It is used to select related information from two related tables. The biggest difference is in how the two tables are related and returned. A JOIN returns multiple table data elements combined into a single row, while with the UNION command, the records from different tables are returned as separate rows. It’s important to note the following: because records from different tables are being combined into a single set of rows, the rows returned need to be of the same data type. We will spell this out further below.

Let’s look at the attached Epicor BAQ example and better understand the UNION command in an Epicor business activity query.

The following query combines three sets of supply-side data into a single dataset:

  • Purchase Orders
  • Jobs
  • Inventory
SubQuery1 is the top-level query. It pulls data from the PartBin and PlantWhse tables:
Epicor SubQuery1
SubQuery2 is a Union query, from the JobPart and JobHead tables. Note: the data types are organized in the same order as the top-level query:
Epicor Kinetic SubQuery2
SubQuery3 is also a Union subquery that returns data from the PODetail and PORel tables:
Epicor Kinetic SubQuery3
Note: UNION command requires all selected columns to be of the same data type. If these returned values are not of the same type, you will receive error messages, per the screenshot below:
Epicor Kinetic Union Command
The value of Union queries is far-reaching. For example, the above query can then be used in a job shortage dashboard, such as the one below. In the following dashboard, the main query returns all past-due job material records where the material’s related operations have been started, but the material has not been issued. The main query published out the material part number, such that the child query can subscribe to this value and present the collected supply for the part in question, whether coming from inventory, from a job, or from a purchase order:
Epicor Kinetic Job

Need help with Epicor Kinetic BAQs?

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Employee Retention: The Attrition Mission

by | Sep 29, 2021 | Business Consulting, Business Direction, Distribution, ERP, ERP Consulting, Manufacturing Innovation

There’s a significant shift occurring in the job market. And our manufacturing and distribution industries will not escape the impact.

For the past few years, it has been an employer’s market and many workers were unable to find jobs. But that has changed in the last 18 months and there are growing concerns about employee retention.

In the past 5 months, over 15 million US workers have quit their jobs.

Plus, in recent surveys, 40% of employees are considering leaving their jobs in the next 3-6 months. Rather than cooling down, there are projections that more attrition is coming.

There are many reasons this could be occurring. And many strategies to consider. What’s clear is that if your organization is not understanding the root issues, it will increase your employee attrition rate rather than reduce it.

Before we can answer what it takes to retain your best employees, it’s important to understand the dynamics of the situation.

Differing Perspectives

Disconnects between organizations and employees are likely contributing to employee dissatisfaction.

The article highlights that organizations often focus on increasing compensation and financial perks as a first step to stop employee attrition.

But is that scratching the itch that employees are feeling? What if there is “more at work” (pun intended) than making more money? And if compensation is not the driving issue, how should your organization respond?

Let’s start with the emotional toll of the last 18 months during the pandemic. Behind it we can learn more.

Most employees have experienced rapid change. Illness, online meetings, hospitalizations, new work procedures, vaccines, deaths, politics, changing recommendations, school closings, and daily unknowns have been their daily diet. At work their relationships were frayed by new routines and rules. Constant fear contributed to few social interactions, no get-togethers and limited travel. And with it the use of masks limited our ability to communicate visually.

Employee Expectations

The result has been a change in employee’s work needs. Studies are showing that employees are looking for these benefits in their work:

  1. A sense of value from being in the organization
  2. The potential for advancement
  3. Having caring and trusting teammates
  4. Options for a more flexible work schedule
  5. Feeling more valued by their managers
  6. A sense of belonging

Shared Expectations

Both employers and employees do agree on some things. They both believe that these issues need to be addressed:

  1. Work-life balance
  2. Unmanageable workloads
  3. Feeling disengaged at work
  4. Help with caring for families

Organizational Focus

This leaves us to consider whether employers are right in focusing primarily on these issues which may not be valued by employees:

  1. Creating more opportunities
  2. Accommodating more remote work
  3. Improving the health of employees
  4. Discouraging employees from looking for new jobs
  5. Taking steps to limiting poaching by competitors

Suggested Focus

Organizations should start by listening to employees and including them in discussions. This signals that employees are valued.

That doesn’t happen when management decisions are handed down without employee input. Such decisions are often seen as indicators that management is uncaring and disconnected from employees. And who wants to work in a place like this?

There are positive things that can change the tone in organizations. And they involve asking hard questions about your organization and then moving to address any problems.

  1. Is our organization sheltering toxic leaders who do not value, inspire or motivate their employees?
  2. Are the right people in the right roles in both our management and non-management ranks?
  3. How can we make our culture more collaborative and open to conversations?
  4. How do we replace transactional approaches with relational approaches that stress collaboration and value?
  5. Are our company benefits aligned with employee priorities that are top-of-mind?
  6. What career paths and development opportunities do our employees really have?
  7. How can we build community at work by encouraging better relationships?

From Ideas to Action

Each of these questions focuses on increasing the collaborated relationship across the organization. They send the message that the organization is empowered by trusted relationships and a shared future.

So, what can we say at this point?

First, it is clear is that the employee/employer relationship has changed over the past 18 months. Employees are wanting a more relational approach to their work, more connectivity and more value from their workplace.

Secondly, there are real opportunities for your organization. Those manufacturing and distribution organizations which lead with dialogue and listening will find ways to benefit from the changes.

They will retain top performers because they communicate value, a shared future and positive opportunities.

Now, what can you do to get this moving with your team?

UP YOUR GAME WITH A BUSINESS PROCESS REVIEW

Struggling with turnover?

Discover how cloud technology can support smarter talent management and reduce employee attrition. Please fill out the form below or chat with an EstesGroup business consultant now to get your guide to cloud solutions. See how cloud services can help with business management strategies, talent retention, and more!

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ERP Culture & Digital Transformation

by | Sep 22, 2021 | Business Process Review, ERP, ERP Benefits & Features, ERP Consulting, ERP Implementation, ERP Risks and Challenges, Software

Who says you have no culture?

Eric Kimberling and the team at Third Stage Consulting serve as thought leaders in the digital transformation community, helping customers through software selection, change management, system implementation, and the integration of technology and business. Their “Transformation Ground Control” podcast series engages the larger business and technology communities to address various topics related to business strategy and digital transformation. Recently, I was able to sit down with Eric and discuss a topic that had become quite important to me in the field of ERP implementation — ERP culture.

What is ERP culture?

In our discussion, I defined “ERP Culture” as the set of attributes or characteristics of the company’s overall business culture that support or inhibit the successful implementation of an ERP system. Over the course of an hour, we covered several of these attributes and how they apply to a given implementation.

This topic formed organically enough — I had recently worked with two companies that had gone live on an ERP system within a similar timeframe. The two companies had a number of striking similarities:

  • The two companies were of similar size.
  • Both companies were privately-owned, family businesses, headquartered in the same state.
  • The firms both worked in roughly-analogous market environments, providing products of comparable complexity.
  • Both companies were coming from antiquated, 40-year-old business systems.
  • They were implementing the same ERP system and using the same system integrator.
  • The companies had similar project budgets and similar core team contributions.

The two companies had so many similarities, and yet one implementation was a ringing success and the other was a frustrating mess. In trying to perform forensics to understand just why one implementation was successful and the other a failure, I began to wonder whether the differences between the two projects were due to the significant differences in the cultural makeup of the two companies.

Having once worked in the area of Lean Six Sigma, the idea of “Lean Culture” had been well documented — the notion that a successful implementation of Lean methodologies was highly contingent on the culture of the organization. I tend to think that the same applies to the ERP community: that the success of an ERP implementation rests heavily on the cultural foundation of the implementing organization. That said, what are the elements that comprise the company’s cultural foundation?

ERP Culture & Digital Transformation

Clarity of Focus

Successful companies are constantly separating wheat from chaff — separating key initiatives from tertiary activities. They tend to be good at taking initiatives to their successful conclusion. They are good at avoiding distractions. In the words of Jack Welsh, they “pick a direction and implement like hell.” And when and ERP project occurs, they becomes the primary focus of the organization, and other initiatives get put on hold. Unsuccessful companies tend to be distracted by shiny objects and this distractibility infects their implementation projects.

Attention to Detail

Successful companies are process-oriented — they understand the importance of specific activities and are not prone to “skipping steps.” At times they are methodical to a fault. This is especially the case when you compare them to “cowboy companies” — companies that play it “fast and loose” in their daily business lives. In the execution of an ERP system, these tendencies quickly become evident, especially when implementing ERP functionality such as labor time entry and inventory management. Successful companies take great pride in the cleanliness of the data involved in these processes. Less successful companies tend to let their data devolve into chaos. And you can never successfully implement ERP from a foundation of chaotic data.

Preparation

Initiatives such as an ERP implementation are not unfamiliar to successful companies, as such companies tend to plan out initiatives before they do them. They understand the value of a plan and its execution. Unsuccessful companies operate like a headless chicken — lots of activity, but very little direction. The value of such a tendency is self-evident: companies that don’t plan to get to a certain point rarely get there.

Empowerment

The term “empowerment” generally elicits eye rolls in the manufacturing community, as it sounds like something you’d hear in a mandatory diversity training seminar. If I were to give the term a more rigorous operational definition, I would describe it as the tendency to clearly define individuals’ areas of responsibility, making them accountable for clear outcomes in those areas, and providing them the resources and autonomy to achieve those outcomes. Unsuccessful companies tend to have a domineering management style, where a few “alpha dogs” fight over decisions, while the rest of the organization resembles an army of chronically depressed lemmings. A fundamental tenant of implementing Lean is the ability for teams to define the processes in their areas of responsibility. Such is the same in an ERP system, where configuration decisions can greatly impact process performance. Such a monumental task requires a team of individuals that have the responsibility, accountability, and support to see it though.

Proactivity

By nature, successful companies are proactive — they are perpetually looking to understand how the chess game plays out. The tendency to look ahead imbues the sometimes tedious steps of an ERP project with a degree of value that is easy to neglect. Such companies tend to be quick to solicit and receive feedback. Proactive cultures also tend to be quick to have honest conversations of the state of a project, when things are not going as planned. Such candor is not a mere complaining — it is the willingness to be accountable for uncomfortable circumstances. The opposite of these tendencies is passivity. In a passive organization, individuals might have trepidation or concerns about a given issue, but lack the proactive tendencies to get ahead of these concerns and bring them to the surface

Sense of Ownership

Ownership is the flipside of empowerment. Highly-empowered employees tend to develop a strong sense of ownership. They are not looking to have things done for them — they’re looking to understand the intended outcomes of a given task and take ownership of them. These are the best kinds of team members to have on an ERP project, as they are self-motivated and are constantly looking to move the ball forward. It’s a question of push vs pull:  I’ve had project managers on projects where the team had a lack of ownership, describe the initiative as “pulling teeth” — they were perpetually having to drag the team along. This is generally an indication of ownership issues.

Cross-Functionality

Companies vary considerably in the degree to which they encourage their employees to understand the overall company processes, outside of their individual silos. Successful companies tend to have a greater degree of cross-functionality then their unsuccessful counterparts. They recognize the value of understanding an organization from front to back.  As a result, their team members are not content to just understand their own small areas of the map — they want to know the whole thing. One of the great outcomes of an ERP project is the level of cross-functionality that it affords.

Cultural Tendencies & ERP Success

An early mentor of mine once told me that an implementation is equal parts technical and cultural, and if you neglect the cultural, you’ll never achieve the technical endpoint that you desire. My life in ERP has proven this maxim time and again. ERP projects are never easy. But if a company lacks some basic cultural tendencies to support a successful implementation, they will find themselves struggling to achieve their lofty goals.

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Manufacturing in America, Made in Colorado

Manufacturing in America, Made in Colorado

by | Sep 15, 2021 | Business Direction, Disaster Recovery, ERP Consulting, Manufacturing Innovation

Made by Colorado Manufacturers

Like many areas in the US, the Colorado manufacturing scene has been scrambling to adjust to the ongoing movement of the pandemic and its aftershocks. Changes in demand, fluctuations in labor, and radical shifts in supply and availability have resulted in new and unexpected challenges, and manufacturers across the state have, out of necessity, worked to devise clever solutions to a shifting array of problems.

Made in Loveland Colorado

Made at the NOCOM Manufacturing & Trades Show

The NOCOM Manufacturing and Trades Show 2021 conference, coming soon to the Larimer County Fairgrounds in Loveland, exemplifies one such clever strategy, which is actually an old methodology that we sometimes forget we have — in-person, mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart collaboration. It’s this type of energy that has not only kept the manufacturing industry afloat during the pandemic, but also allowed many of us to survive the seemingly endless virtual office hours.

At the recent P21 CONNECT conference, an in-person Epicor Prophet 21 user event, I realized how much I missed the benefits that come from being able to gather under the guise of a common association. There is a surprising amount of value that can be gained by the act of simple collaboration.

There are great benefits to sharing challenges facing one company (or an entire industry), and it often takes a community to surface the steps needed to prevail. Together, companies can work to delineate the quick and effective measures that can be taken and perform the actions required for mitigating risks. In the distribution industry, with community knowledge at the core, Prophet 21 consulting is largely revolving around supply chain issues, cybersecurity threats, and the shift from on-premise servers to cloud-based technology. 

As we’ve seen in our preparation for NOCOM 2021, the manufacturing industry is facing similar challenges: supply and demand shifts, ransomware and malware threats, and cloud availability amid outdated technology trends. 

So, what is your manufacturing strategy, and how has the pandemic changed community involvement in your business culture?  

The sharing of the intellectual property of daily problem solving is something that just didn’t translate into online forums and Zoom calls. As we stagger back into some semblance of “normal” life, we look once again to share the value of in-person business meetings and socialization.  

As we’ve faced together more than a year of volatility, we’ve learn that the solutions to problems in one industry might have applicability in another. We’ve learned that our problems may not be things that we have to bear on our own. In manufacturing and distribution, the ability to adapt quickly results in success. 

There’s an old saying that goes “you are your friends” or “you are only as good as your friends.” In enterprise resource planning (ERP) consulting, we learn from our friends, so that we can adapt and succeed in our projects. 

What can we learn from our friends as the Colorado manufacturing industry reopens?

The “Made in America” movement continues to find new applicability, as companies struggle to supply products locally, products that have been historically outsourced. The reactions are inconsistent — in some commodities, I hear of manufacturers and supply chain companies switch back to offshore supply as soon as it becomes available.  

In other cases, I discover commodities that may remain in North America after the dust has settled. Increasingly, I stumble across products that have been crafted in Colorado, products new to the state. Colorado, like the rest of the nation, is learning to make things again, and this is one adaptation that you’ll see in the NOCOM community, whether you’re still following along from your virtual office or attending the in-person event this year.

Next week, EstesGroup will once again be returning to NOCOM in person. While we had fun at the virtual conference last year, we’re looking forward to the friend-to-friend interactions that can only be present while walking together, sharing dinner together, exchanging stories together. Providing cloud and IT services for manufacturers and distributors throughout the pandemic has taught us much about the resolve of the nation as we work with the companies as they reshape themselves to take on the needs of a reopening world.

If you are a manufacturer facing the challenges of reopening in 2021, 2022, and beyond, EstesGroup’s ERP and IT consultants would love to help you understand industry trends. Our team will be at NOCOM 2021 BOOTH 62 on September 23rd, and we’re hoping to see you there!

Are you a manufacturer struggling with cyberthreats? We fully support manufacturers remotely and in person! Our coast-to-coast consultants circle out from our Loveland office, supporting Colorado manufacturing and beyond, even throughout Canada!