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Goal #9 in Selecting Your The Best Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System:
Communicate and Deal with People Effectively

The 10 Principles of Success

We continue to review the 10 Principles of Success and how they’re applied to ERP Selection with the 9th Goal for Success: Communicate and Deal with People Effectively!

The 10 Principles of Success are:

1. How You Think is Everything! 

  • Always be positive.
  • Think success not failure.
  • Be aware of a negative environment.

2. Decide on What Your True Goals Are!

  • Write down what your specific goals are.
  • Write down a plan/time line in how to obtain your goals.

3. Take Action!

  • Goals/Plans are nothing without action.
  • Don’t be afraid to get started – “Just Do It”, it doesn’t need to be perfect to start, nothing ever is!

4. Never Stop Learning!

  • Get on-going training so use to better your organization.

5. Persistence and Hard Work Pay-off!

  • Success is a marathon, not a sprint.
  • Never give up on the goal/plan that you created in number 3 above, original or revised!

6. Learn How to Analyze the Details!

  • Get all the facts/input you can – Learn from your mistakes.

7. Focus Your Time And Money!

  • Don’t let other things and people distract you!

8. Don’t be Afraid to Innovate and Change – Be Different!

  • Following the way that it’s always been done is a sure way to achieve nothing.

9. Communicate and Deal with People Effectively!

  • Learn to understand what motivates the people you work with and what they need to be successful. No person is the organization or is indispensable.

10. Be Honest and Dependable!

  • Take Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.

As a disclaimer, these 10 Principles of Success come from Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) newspaper aimed at helping stock market investors understand what good growth stocks to invest in, based on what the current overall market conditions are.  EstesGroup believes that a company can apply these 10 Principles of Success to ERP systems; that is selecting, implementing and using them.

How does the 9th Principle of Success apply to:

Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?

Principle #9:  Communicate and Deal with People Effectively!

  • Learn to understand what motivates the people you work with and what they need to be successful. No person is the organization or is indispensable

Communication and Dealing with People Effectively in your organization when selecting an ERP system should be fairly obvious, but you’d be surprised how few companies actually do it properly or even at all.  What happens is that most companies start out in their ERP selection process in a disciplined way by creating an ERP review team, with a leader (typically a person from IT or Finance) being in charge of the group and the ERP project.  As the review of ERP systems proceeds, more and more of the review team start to lose interest or are not kept apprised by the ERP selection leader of the details of what’s taking place throughout the selection process.

It’s imperative to have weekly written status updates as well as weekly meetings with the entire team to communicate where the group is at with selecting a new ERP system; in relationship to the timeline that was defined at the start of the ERP system selection process.  Keep in mind what we discussed with the 8th Principle of not being afraid to innovate and change your company around the new ERP system’s “Best Practices” comes the need to over communicate to your review members what is taking place and the changes the organization is going to need to make when the new system is selected and more importantly why it’s beneficial.  Also it’s important to remember in your communication to the review team members most people in your organization will be very apprehensive about change; with the majority feeling that a new ERP system will create more work or eliminate jobs.  Therefore it’s very important for the leader of the ERPselection group to choose their words carefully as well as positively, since the review team members will come from all areas of the company and they’ll have a tendency to share what’s taking place in the ERP selection process with other people in the company, prior to management wanting that information known.

So to effectively deal with each ERP system review team member, it’s important to over communicate efforts/results in writing as well as to meet regularly (weekly).  Below are some of the communication points that an organization (ERP system review leader) should be doing to ensure they’re effectively engaging its ERP review team members.

  1. Weekly mandatory ERP review meetings; that includes upper management.  A “meeting agenda” needs to be included so the ERP system review team knows what to expect.
  2. A written report that includes the list of the potential ERP systems that are candidates for selection.  Demonstration dates of each system that your company is considering and the reasons why should be included/updated in this written correspondence to everyone on the review team.
  3. A written Pros/Cons list for each ERP system being considered should be included in the weekly written communication and updated as discovery happens.
  4. Individual review members should have their own weekly written instructions on what they’re specifically tasked with in selecting the right ERP system for the organization.  These written instructions should be updated weekly with new tasks that need to be done for each review team member as they are known.
  5. Individual ERP review team members need to respond in writing, weekly, to the ERP selection team leader (copying the group) with what they’ve accomplished to keep the overall ERP system selectionprocess moving along.
  6. Upper management should not be excluded in the written weekly communication by the ERP review leader as well as be assigned/completing tasks/homework for the selection of an ERP system.
  7. Continually communicate the ERP selection timeline and the tasks that have been done as well what needs to be completed and why.  This should be updated weekly and emailed to everyone on the review team.
  8. Nicely communicate weekly to team members that have not completed their review tasks/homework they need to have it done by the next weekly meeting or it will be assigned to someone else on the team.
  9. Schedule well in advance the ERP system demonstrations and communicate that weekly to the review team members when the demonstrations are, so no one misses the demonstration.  The ERP system demonstration is one of the most important tools available to the review team to select the right ERP system.
  10. Schedule follow-up calls with the ERP software vendors for each team member after the ERP system demonstration to ask questions and communicate the answers back to the other team members in the weekly meetings.

If you’d like to learn more about what and how to effectively communicate to your people while you’re selecting an ERP system, prior to buying it, give EstesGroup a call, we can help!  We’ve been providing this type of help to the manufacturing/distribution industry for years.

Pick up the phone and call 888 300 2340 and together we will:

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