TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMATIC ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS PART TWO
THE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION FOR SUCCESS
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TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMATIC ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS
PART ONE: EXAMINING PROCESS ROLES
If you read Part One of this series carefully, you know what we at EstesGroup have learned through hard-won experience. We consider four factors mission-critical to the success of any Business Process Implementation (BPI). Once again, those factors are:
- Executive Sponsorship
- Project Organization
- North Star Principles
- Proper Resources
Given our emphasis on these four points, it may not surprise you to hear the following:
When EstesGroup is called upon to consult on failed Business Process Implementation, we typically find that one or all of these four key points was completely ignored during the client’s ERP implementation.
- No wonder their implementation failed. Consider what the client was working against.
- It had no general commanding its army (Executive Sponsorship).
- The implementation team set out without a concrete plan of attack (Project Organization).
- The implementation process commenced without first nailing down the outcomes considered mandatory for success, or without communicating these outcomes to the implementation staff (North Star Principles).
Finally and perhaps most harmful to the overall process:
The implementation effort was expected to produce win without being assigned the proper personnel, budget, or time frame to do so (Resources).
At this point in our blog series, we’d like to suggest the proper mindset for a successful ERP implementation.
Hiring an ERP consultant is never enough.
Successful Business Process Implementations are a marriage of equals. The client organization must bring as much to the table as the implementation specialists do.
ERP implementations involve a lot of hard work. They most certainly involve the client company because no one knows their business better than its employees know it.
Good ERP consultants don’t wave magic wands to produce success. We partner with our clients and draw from their expertise to understand their business as best we can. Only then can we help them understand how to improve their business processes and express them as data within the chosen ERP solution.
Deficiency in any one of the four Project Roles can (and most likely will) lead to an unsuccessful project implementation.
With this in mind, let’s drill deeper into each of the four Project Roles so that you and your business can prepare yourself properly for the BPI that takes your enterprise to the next level.
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TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMATIC ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS
PART THREE: STRONG EXECUTIVE SPONSORSHIP
