The 10 Principles of Success & How to Apply them to: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
With everything in life there are foundational principles one needs to know and practice to achieve success.
These foundational ERP success factors can also be applied to when a company is trying to choose the:
- Right Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System
- Right Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Implementation Partner
- Right Benefits from using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System
In this Blog Series the EstesGroup ERP staff thought it would be interesting to share with you:
The 10 Principles of Success & How to Apply them to: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
As with most things these days the concepts included in this paper aren’t all that revolutionary or original, but their foundation comes from a newspaper that has been in circulation for many years, Investor’s Business Daily (IBD). This is a daily newspaper aimed at helping stock market investors understand what good growth stocks to invest in, based on what the current overall market conditions are. You might find it odd, as I did, that an investment newspaper would take the time and effort each day to devote an entire page of their paper to discussing these 10 Secrets to Success. Investor’s Business Daily does this because they firmly believe that if an individual applies the 10 Principles/Secrets to Success to not only how they approach investing in the stock market, but everything in life, they’ll achieve success.
It’s EstesGroup’s hope for those that read this, that’ll they will be able to use these “10 Foundational Principles” to achieve ERP success at the start of your journey when choosing an ERP system that’s right for your business, implementing your ERP system and the on-going use of the ERP system to continually improve your company’s execution.
So what are the 10 Principles of Success?
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.
How does the 1st Principle of Success, “How You Think is Everything” apply to Choosing the Right ERP System for Your Business?
If your organization has chosen, implemented and is using its current ERP system wrongly (which is frequently what we hear) there undoubtedly will be negative thoughts/feelings/frustrations from the people in your organization involved with the ERP system. These negative thoughts/feelings/frustrations will carry over to how you approach a reimplementation of your current system (if the ERP system selection was done properly) or the selection of a new system. It’s important for your organization to understand specifically what these negative system feelings are, who in the organization they’re coming from, how it adversely impacts people’s job and what you as an organization need to do to get back on the right track.
Once all of the negative thoughts/feelings/frustrations are known, written down, circulated to the stakeholders for them to review/discuss you can develop an action plan for resolution. If your organization does not know where to start or it doesn’t have an individual to lead this process, ask for help. A good consulting firm with experienced consultants that possess years of business experience in your industry will be able to shed some light on your situation.
Cost justifying the consulting dollars to ferrite out those negative ERP system thoughts/feelings/frustrations can easily be done; so a new positive environment for how your company approaches the selection of your next ERP system or the reimplementation of your current ERP system can be achieved.
A hint in how EstesGroup accomplishes creating a positive business environment for an ERP system selection, implementation and use revolves around 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’re in a “Positive” frame of mind, in our next ERP blog in this series, we will shed some light on our second principle of success, deciding on your goals.
What your “Goals” in the ERP system selection are, who from your organization should be involved, and what the process is to determine them.