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Goal #2 in Selecting Your The Best  Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) System: Decide What Your True Goals Are
The 10 Principles of Success

You may recall that 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!

  • ERP-SuccessTake Responsibility – Otherwise 1 through 9 above won’t matter.

As a reminder, these 10 Principles of Successcome 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.
Its EstesGroup’s objective that this information will help your company take the appropriate steps necessary to select, implement and use an ERP system for its overall betterment.
How does the 2nd Principle of Success apply to:

Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?

Principle # 2:  Decide on What Your True Goals Are!

When your organization is going through the process of choosing your next ERP system (or your first ERP system) it’s critically important to determine what your company GOALS are for the new ERP system.  More importantly after you decide what your company GOALS are for a new ERP system, you need to write them down so their visible to everyone in your organization.  Established ERP system GOALS that are written down and visible then need a plan/timeline for when they will be achieved.  This sounds simple in theory, but a number of organizations (that we talk to) just don’t do it or they don’t know where to start.
The big picture (GOALS) of any ERP system are:

  • Increase Sales/Revenue
  • Reduce Expenses, (by being more efficient)
  • Provide Employees Information so 1 & 2 above are achieved.

So far I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.  Therefore the next step in establishing your company GOALS for your ERP system is to more clearly define the three general GOALS above to be something more tangible/specific for your company to achieve.  You then need to personalize your specificGOALS of the ERP system to the stakeholders of the system, your employees.  An example of what might be a more specific GOAL is:

  • By using an ERP system’s Customer Resource Management (CRM) module, sales will have a better visibility to marketing leads.  This will help us improve our sales follow-up time by 25%, which will lead to an increase of sales of 10%.  Based on where Sales are today (i.e. $1,000,000.00) that will help us generate an extra $100,000.00 of sales revenue.

I think it’s important for everyone in your business (large or small) to share what they would perceive to be aGOAL of a new information (ERP) system.  Don’t over complicate this task, just grab a clipboard and start walking around your facility (department by department) asking everybody you encounter for at least one idea they can think of off the top of their head in how a new information system would help them do their job better.  Such as:

  • The CNC operator telling you that it would be great and save time if he knew the schedule of jobs he needed to work on each day at his machine center Vs having to look at an out of date report or ask a supervisor that was hard to find.

You’ll be surprised what you hear!

Once you’ve completed gathering the ERP system GOAL information, put it in a spreadsheet noting the number of like suggestions (potential new system GOALS) you’ve received.  Depending on the size of your company, this entire process shouldn’t take you more than a week to complete.  Post the spreadsheet (as well as email it) to everyone in the company that participated in the random survey and schedule a follow-up meeting with them by department.  Plan the department meetings around a lunch time (bringing pizza in) so that you can share with them what you’ve learned from them individually and see if you can add to the “GOALList” now as a department.  Each time the “GOAL List” changes, notify everyone of what the changes (additions/substitutions) are.  Dates/deadlines should be established and communicated for each step of thisGOAL setting process.  Don’t let the ERP system GOAL process drag on, give yourself 30 days (60 days if you’re a larger organization) and call it good.

If you feel your company needs to have your ERP system “GOALS List” reviewed or polished up for completeness prior to looking for your next (or first) system, you can always look at using a professional consulting organization (i.e. EstesGroup) that knows your industry and what GOALS your business should expect by using an ERP system.  A hint in how EstesGroup accomplishes the GOAL setting process for selecting an ERP system revolves around our industry experience and how we conduct our Business Process Reviews.   For more information on this, please leave your name and email address below and we’ll have one of our industry experienced sales people share that with you.

Now that you’ve decided what your ERP system GOALS are (they’re written down with dates) and you’re still in a Positive” frame of mind (Principle #1), the next release we hope to shed more light on Principle #3, “Taking Action” to choosing the right (or first or next) ERP system.

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