If your business is looking for the best team to assess a faulty Business Process Implementation, look no further.
Quite often, we at EstesGroup get called upon to assess (read: consult upon) a deficient ERP system. The scenario goes something like this:
A client comes to us knowing that something is amiss. Their ERP solution doesn’t function the way its implementers promised it would. Perhaps reporting features have stopped working, or information isn’t available in real time. Perhaps processes that the system should track aren’t falling into the workflow. Maybe information that should be available throughout the entire organization only filters down to a few departments.
While the specifics differ on a case-by-case basis, the core situation stays constant:
Clients contact us because their ERP system fails to meet expectations, and inefficiencies should not be the product of Business Process Reengineering.
Always remember: The ERP solution that’s the right fit right for your business should solve problems, not create them.
Having troubleshot many such cases, EstesGroup knows there are three general culprits for malfunction:
- The chosen software may not have been a good fit for the business in the first place.
- The implementation partner may not have had the capabilities or the understanding of your business to deliver the system with proper due diligence.
- The problems might be produced internally. Meaning that the enterprise’s workflows doesn’t correlate to streamlined expressions in their ERP solution.
Each times EstesGroup consultants on a standing Business Process Implementation, we begin by examining the project’s four Project Roles. These include:
Executive Sponsorship
Does the project have an informed patron or patrons at the executive level who understand the importance of an ERP system? Are these individuals willing and able to marshal and commit the resources required to make the proper implementation viable? Without an engaged and motivated executive sponsor – someone who can marry the organization’s vision to its expression in Enterprise Resource Planning software – most ERP implementations can and will fall flat on their faces.
Project Organization
The structure of a project is critical to its success. EstesGroup examines the implementation team’s reporting and documentation protocols to see if these workflows allowed errors to occur and breed during business process construction. In essence, we’re looking to see if the organization was set up to support a proper implementation in the first place. If it wasn’t, we’ve found a likely place to begin making recommendations.
North Star Principles
Structure is dictated by vision. Does anyone jump in their car and try to get someplace specific without having directions? Of course not. That sort of thinking defies logic. ERP implementations are no different. You have to have a clear idea of where you want to go before you can get there. Clear ideas of what constitutes success are what we at EstesGroup define as your organization’s North Star principles. Please note that North Star principles extend far beyond ordinary project metrics like accomplishing the implementation on time and at or under budget. Rather, they encompass the expected outcomes that made you want to undergo Business Process Reeingeering in the first place: the expected outcomes by which (and only with which) your organization will consider its ERP implementation a success.
Proper Resources
A lack of proper resources is the number one reason we at EstesGroup see most ERP implementations fail. Did the client organization allocate the proper personnel to the implementation? Did they give them enough bandwidth to function properly (time, budget, and oversight)? Did they build in phases to model each workflow properly before setting it in stone?
This blog series will examine each of these Project Roles in turn, and other factors that equate to a successful ERP implementation.
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TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMATIC ERP IMPLEMENTATIONS
PART TWO: THE UNDERLYING ASSUMPTION FOR SUCCESS
