benefit from its limited resources by

forcing effective utilization methods and

central planning.
Unlike Sales Automation applications with
a financial-enabled backbone + CRM
(Customer Relations Management), ERPs

SID.ASD

enables corporations and organisations to

Copyrights reserved.

widely used application/system in which it

SID.ASD InCommPacks. 2016.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a

Service Reports:

that it works?

On: ERP Selection

Amr.Shaltoot@Yahoo.co.uk

How to have an ERP

Judging on
ERPs
Part I

Prepared by Amr Shaltoot, MBA

Counsellor and Educator at GLGResearch

have been invented to align corporate

strategy goals with departmental and team

Lean 6 Sigma Black Belt

Amr.Shaltoot@Yahoo.co.uk

goals.
ERPs are for services and manufacturing as
well. ERPs could be self-hosted or cohosted, three-tier internet enabled or
cloud-enabled. It is what type of business,
capabilities, and competition what dictates
the proper solution to invest in.

Page |1

team-oriented customer-focused
organization?
4- To what extent do our corporate managers
and employees ready to open up to

Understanding ERPs

transparency and accountability and not to

invent numbers or hide mistakes? ERPs could

Enterprise Resource Planning systems are

intended to do what lies beneath its obvious
name! To successfully plan ones enterprises

be fooled easily!

When a corporate decides to adopt an ERP

many limited resources efficiently and smartly.

system, a strong robust and reliable

Above all, it must align departmental and

technological environment assessment must

projects goals to corporates ones, which is

take place on terms of:

the usually missing intelligence within many

1- Business continuity and Disaster Recovery.

claimed ERPs.

2- Required speed of transactions and uptime.

Reporting!

5- Readiness to run on both sides of your

shall look up in any ERP when making

Supply Chain!

Readiness!
The second important items to question
before buying any ERP are:
1- Is my corporate ready to implement
such a technology?
2- Are my employees have the enough
knowledge to run promptly and smartly
on an ERP?
3- Have we walked enough distance to
transform from isolated-islands
department-oriented corporation to an

Page |2

4- Future scalability and portability.

any top management decision maker

the decision to buy one.

assure policy and

corporate goals are
implemented across
all teams and
departments.

3- Simplicity! Is it simple and easy?

Yes, reporting is the most outcome that

Technological foundation:

ERPs are made to

TCO and ROI:

Total Cost of Ownership and Return on
Investment. In the end, you decide to invest
in an ERP to bring your
corporate/organization forward.
1- Application License cost. Open-source or

ERP implementation is not as

easy as 1,2,3! It is a hard, long
journey, and embarks hefty
types of investments to be
poured in.

proprietary?
2- Maintenance and upgrades costs.
3- Implementation & Training cost. This is
reported to be 40% of the TCO.
4- Technological environment costs.

ERPs are a tool for

communication with rivals and
customers!

5- Launching teams embedded costs, i.e.

time consumed by employees to prepare
data, mistakes, stops, success/fail iterations,
raw materials, and traveletc.

Why are we implementing

an ERP?

Gap Analysis, a mustrun diagnostic before

its too late!
You must run scenario-based gap analysis

Before stepping into deep waters, your strategic

which few are capable of carrying it out. A

committee (if having one) must answer these

short-to-medium term goal must be pre-set

simple questions. Are you following fashion? Or,

between corporates strategic committee and

are you trying to spread control over cost? Is it the

ERP consultant to undergo a successful and

manufacturing process that dictates

cost-effective gap diagnostics.

implementation? Or, is it a perquisite by an OEM

(Original Equipment Manufacturer) or a Franchisor?

against crystal-clear goals those would lift the

If you cant decide upon which of these is the most

difference. Among them are:

organization and make a measurable

implement?

methods are not the reason to invest such a bulk.

Yes, it is not the urgent need dictates the

There are other tools can do the control with far

department, readiness do. Otherwise,

less spending.

chosen department must be ready.

enabled ERP? Does it have an out-of-the-box

reports those can be easily bespoke? Is it all interlinked and correlated? Yes, integration must be
seamless!

Page |3

ERP success is the joint

responsibility of many parties.

Which department is most ready to

Balanced-score-cards and other benchmarking

Instead, you need to ask, is it a Lean Six Sigma

one which provides

you with semantical
information before
competition tighten
or rivals take over!

Gap Analysis is a costly process. It must run

Is it following up on sales?

demanding cause, then, wait?

A good ERP is the

Scale of implementation:
Implementation area must be carefully
selected. It must be easy, simple, and
measurable. It will encourage other
managers to follow a successful path.

ERPs are not a sleek gadget.

ERPs are either empty barrels
making noise or a catapult in
the war of competition and
growth making.