What should you look for in an ERP consulting firm?

When implementing an ERP system, companies have a number of different options. Implementation of an enterprise system requires an advanced expertise of the system itself. This is especially true of software solutions like Epicor ERP. With so many options available, how will you know if the best business solution is coming to you from an ERP solution provider you can trust?

ERP Software Selection and Implementation

There are different ways to acquire enterprise resource planning expertise. Users could spend months working through the training modules and independently learning the system. This amounts to a trial-and-error approach that often results in unsuccessful implementations. That is to say, if you do not have a core team that is already familiar with the system being implemented, you are under significant risk of your project running late or over-budget. Worse still, you risk implementing the system in a manner that sub-optimizes its strengths, and reduces the potential benefits to the organization. For that reason, most companies implementing ERP systems spend a lot of time looking at ERP reseller websites and comparing the ERP software vendor culture during the software selection process.

ERP Software Selection is Only the Beginning

When working either to implement or optimize you ERP system, you normally have one of three options when selecting an ERP consulting partner:

• Vendor Consulting: Software vendors generally are built around the design and sale of software modules. Some also offer services to support the implementation of their software.
• Value Added Reseller (VAR): Reseller partners work under the direction of the software vendor to sell and service the vendor’s ERP software.
• Independent Consultant: These might refer to an individual contractor (or a full-fledged consultancy) who is contractually unrelated to the software vendor, but who has experience in the implementation of the software itself.

Separation of ERP Project Duties

In many organizations, especially those who are publicly traded, the separation of duties relates to the logical division of responsibilities in a business process, as to avoid errors, fraud, and conflicts of interest. For instance, dividing the activities of placing a purchasing order from the activities of receiving the purchased product when it arrives provides a natural check & balance. Questionable purchases would soon be discovered at the time of receipt. In software implementation, similar conflicts can occur, in which the implementing party is implicitly expected to serve the needs of the software sale. These conflicts can have an adverse effect on the implementation project itself.

Consider, for example, a circumstance in which the needs of the business do not overlap perfectly with the software that was sold—that ERP modules were purchased that add no value to the organization, or else a key module is badly deficient in meeting the organization’s needs.

When a party responsible for selling the software is also responsible for its implementation, there is always the temptation for the implementing members to avoid contradicting the statements, perceptions, and promises made during the sales cycles. This can be to the detriment of the ERP project. In many cases, a source of project failure is linked to an inadequate separation between the sellers and the implementors.

What is an ERP vendor?

Sage, QuickBooks, SysPro, Epicor Software (E10 and Prophet 21), Infor, SAP, Oracle… ERP vendors are everywhere, but they all, essentially, want to help you with your business functionality. However, a consulting firm that is independent of all ERP resellers can give you an unbiased look at your business, your project, and your software investment. At the end of the day, an independent ERP consulting firm cares about your product and your people and not about maximizing profit from a ERP reseller agreement.

Our independent ERP consultants have the ability not only to train your organization on the use of your chosen ERP software, but we can also assist in the selection process and in application setup.

We can translate your company’s business requirements into a configuration designed to satisfy you. Our EstesCloud division can provide managed application hosting for your ERP, and we’ve long specialized in Epicor cloud and hybrid cloud solutions.

Our ERP experts, particularly our Epicor consulting team, also provide a framework for implementing your application. You can take a deep look into our 17+ year history of serving as an ERP and IT consultancy. Read our Epicor implementation case studies and our ERP success stories.

Our ERP consultants will work with you though all phases of your project, from the initial planning through to the successful cutover and stabilization activities. Across the life of the project, a consulting partner assists with the gradual process of handing over the task of setting up, configuring, and ultimately supporting the application to the organization’s core team.

Who should you work with when implementing your ERP?

As an independent consultancy, we are uninterested in selling and upselling software. We are solely interested in successfully implementing the software, as to maximize its benefit to the organization. When implementing software, there can be only one customer. As an independent consultancy, our only customer is you, the company implementing the software.

If you have been sold modules that won’t help you, we’ll tell you as much. If the software does not support your business needs, we’ll be up front about it, and we will present the options available to making it work. Our interactions with you will be focused on your success, not on upselling new features or modules. When working with the EstesGroup, you can be assured that your company and its success will be our only goal.