10 Tips to Optimize Your

ERP Initiatives
Enterprise relationship planning, or ERP, is notoriously complex to implement. Horror stories abound about failed
installations, unresponsive vendors, and wasted investments. As daunting as ERP can be, many organizations cant
operate without it ERP brings together different aspects of the back ofce for greater efciency and insight into
business processes. Todays ERP offerings are still complex, but smaller companies especially have more choices
in ERP solutions designed for their requirements. Working closely with your vendor to congure and customize the
solution as necessary, choosing the right delivery model for your organization, and following this list of 10 tips can
help you optimize your ERP initiative.
Consider Web-based ERP solutions. 1.
Even the big guns of ERP notably SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft have moved into the cloud and now
offer full-featured hosted ERP solutions that are delivered via the Internet. If you dont have the IT staff
to support a premise-based ERP solution, an SaaS offering is now a viable alternative. Hosted solutions
can also lower the total cost of ownership because youre not purchasing any software or new hardware
to support it.
Understand your organizations business goals and decide how ERP can support them. 2.
ERP is intended to boost your companys bottom line by optimizing your business processes, so it
needs to be linked to your organizations business goals. Its crucial, then, that you identify the ERP
functionality from advanced nancials to supply chain management (SCM) to sales force automation
(SFA) to workforce management so it can help you attain those goals.
Focus on the ways ERP can optimize your business processes. 3.
First you must understand how your organization operates, and then you can identify the ERP function-
ality that can support your various business processes. Its important to be open to some change,
however; an ERP implementation can alter some business processes, and your organization will need to
adapt its processes to match.
Understand your back ofce workows. 4.
ERP is vast and impacts your core business workows in nancials, supply chain and inventory, human
resources, and more. You need to know how your employees perform their jobs every day as well as
which business applications should be integrated in the ERP solution to best support them.
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Involve employees from IT and the departments impacted by ERP in the implementation. 5.
The employees who will be using the ERP solution day to day, such as accounting and HR staffs,
should have some responsibilities in the ERP implementation. They know best what functions they
need ERP to deliver to help them make better decisions more quickly.
Dont expect the ERP solution to go live overnight. 6.
Most ERP deployments take several months or even a year to be fully implemented. ERP modules
should be installed in phases, one at a time, and they must be thoroughly tested. Employees need
training, which can further slow down the process. But your implementation is more likely to be
successful if you take the time to test and train.
Dedicate members of your IT staff to your ERP implementation. 7.
Even if youre working with a vendor to install an ERP solution, you should have some employees
focused only on the implementation. This project team should include employees from IT plus from
the functional areas that will use ERP, who will return to their usual jobs when the implementation is
complete.
Limit customization of the ERP solution. 8.
Many core ERP functions are similar across solutions, and enough solutions exist to nd one that will
generally align with your organizations business processes. Some customization is usually necessary,
but the less you need to customize the solution, the easier it will be to maintain and upgrade, particu-
larly if your current IT staff changes roles or leaves the company.
Budget for training. 9.
Most modern software is so user-friendly that most people can boot up and go thats not ERP.
Leave room in your budget for extensive training for everyone who will use ERP. This includes how-to
classes and detailed instructions for each function in the system.
Prepare data for the migration earlier rather than later. 10.
Business data is at the heart of every ERP solution, and it must be migrated from your legacy
databases to the new ERP software. To be effective in the system, data must be accurate, complete,
and consistent that means cleaning it before migration. Start cleaning your data early in the imple-
mentation and create data entry standards that will be in place by the time the system is live.
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INSIDE-ERP | CHECKLIST | 10 Tips to Optimize Your ERP Initiatives
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