As your business grows, efficiently managing operations to a consistent outcome at lower cost and control of resources becomes a larger challenge. Most businesses turn to implementing an Enterprise Resource Management to integrate company’s financials, operations, supply chain, reporting and human resource activities in one platform to seamless integrate business processes and improve efficiency.

Whether your company is looking to implement a new platform or replace legacy systems, successfully delivering an ERP program must take into account several key factors. ERP projects have a inconsistent track record with approximately 60% of ERP projects failing to meet the desired business objectives.

In this blog we discuss some universal considerations to your approach that could improve the probability of success in delivering an ERP system to your business goals.

How could an ERP benefit your business?

The greater the competitive intensity in your market, the greater the need to operate at lowest cost with highest levels of internal efficiency. Technology will play a critical role to manage growth, deliver efficiency and support any digital transformation to manage your market facing processes.

An ERP often sits at the heart of this strategy to enable any enterprise to control a wide range of business workflows from customer centric processes such as sales, e-commerce, support, manufacturing, project execution to control of internal resources in stock, human capital and financial reporting.

Therefore a successfully implemented ERP is designed to:

1. Integrate and automate processes and enable internal tasks to be better and more efficiently controlled.

2. Allow Accurate & timely access to valid information for more reliable information to make better decisions.

3. Higher productivity & deeper insights to adapt, streamline business processes and avoid unnecessary resources.

4. Less room for error by removing redundant and inaccurate information so that only the actual facts remain part of the data. It also ensures regulatory compliance to the country laws.

5. More competitiveness to operate at a leaner cost base and provide new products and services at lower cost with faster time to market.

6. Real time view of your business with comprehensive view of operation performance, overall company performance and for major analytical decisions.

How should your companies approach this project?

Any ERP project is a strategic decision that will have lasting consequences and impact to the financial health of an enterprise. It is more that an IT project.

Global empirical research highlights several broad issues that led to businesses assessing their investment in an ERP as failures where the projects were not delivered or delivered to a greater than 200% overruns on budget/cost.

These lessons include:

1. Business Strategy & Requirements. where longer term considerations were not fully assessed and the project was defined as an IT initiative with limited business engagement at inception phase. This can have major impacts to the technology selection, prioritisation of business goals and consequently frustration on final results.

2. Adapt & Improve. Investment in a new platform is an ideal opportunity to redesign inefficient processes and adopt better working practices. There are inherent risks to miss these benefits through internal compromises.

3. Project Sponsorship & Leadership. An ERP is a major change to any company. Top down sponsorship, proper steering and project empowerment is essential to take timely decisions. Difficult decisions may be required and strong leadership and decision making will keep project on course.

4. Business Goals & Timelines. Realism with resources, goals, budget and timelines must be taken. Often projects are under budgeted and short term planning horizons are taken. An ERP is a minimum 5 year decision. One should consider the consequences if you need to change your system in 3 years and assess swap impacts.

5. Roll Out Planning. Prioritise roll out with minimal impact to users in the first phase to gain internal expertise and familiarity. A quick win builds confidence and selecting an area or process that affects a part rather than whole company will create momentum.

6. Technical & Project Skills. Ensure you bring in expertise to support your internal teams. It is likely they are already overloaded on daily operations and lack headroom and/or key skills to deliver successfully

7. (Related to item 2). A strong ERP platform selection will provide out of the box workflows and options to minimise customisations. Customisations will not only be costly but introduce project delays and lead to more complex issues in adapting your system in the future.

8. Change Management & User Training. Place high importance in managing change through key user engagement in the roll out, communications, training and monitoring. User change is often underestimated and leads to business frustration, data corruption and delays.

Conclusion

An ERP is a business changing decision that can provide immense competitive and operational benefits. It is more than an IT project and as such you should place strategic weight to its impact and plan accordingly.

At SimplySolved, we deliver our ERP solutions with embedded ISO 9001 & 27001 Quality standards under a business workflow centric agile methodology . Through our approach we possess the process domain and IT expertise to advise, plan and deliver our solutions to a consistent outcome that will grow with your company

About ISM

We know the challenges your business faces when operating cost effective, compliant, and efficient enterprise processes. At ISM, we have invested in the best business workflows and IT methodology and standards.

Our approach and solutions automate internal operations to deliver superior efficiency, improve customer and revenue processes to drive growth while providing operational transparency and insight.

Our solutions are specially designed to meet the country regulations and put you in control of your information help you make better business decisions.

Your business can rely on ISM as a partner that focuses on quality-driven delivery, managing risks and continually innovate to deliver superior solutions.

Schedule a no obligation consultation with us today! See how we could transform your enterprise to the next level of productivity and performance. Contact us at +971 43445338 for more information.