ERP Implementation

ERP Implementation
Introduction
ePathfinders Research
Hyderabad, India 500075
epathfinders@gmail.com
epathfinders@indiatimes.com

ePathfinders is a research Organization aimed at ERP research. With a
team comprising of professionals engaged with various ERP applications
for over 10 years and experience spreading across conceptualizing,
designing, developing, implementing, upgrading and supporting various
ERP products, ePathfinders shares knowledge on various aspects of ERP
world.
We share information about ERP lifecycle covering various aspects that

help ERP professionals and user community for making critical ERP
decisions and supporting the ERP applications in use.
We keep sharing our experiences with you all regularly through our web
blog, e-books and articles published with other research companies. If
you need any specific help for
Selecting ERP product for your organization

Managing your ERP implementation/upgrade projects
Setting up and managing of a production support assignment
Learning ERP products
Please feel free to write to us at epathfinders@gmail.com or

epathfinders@indiatimes.com our experts will be very happy to respond
to your queries and offer guidance.
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Introduction

ERP applications are becoming increasingly complex. With an aim to cover all aspects of an
enterprise, ERP Vendors are looking at finding solutions for highly niche areas in enterprise
management or acquiring products to find solutions. Integration of additional features to
improve enterprise management is also fuelling the complexity. From basic document
publication solutions to tracking inventory movements using RFID all types of features are
getting embedded into ERP applications.

Implementing an ERP product involves huge financial outflow and effort because of the
impact it can have across the Organization. Industry specific and region specific requirements
together with basic business functions add to the complexity of implementation. Business
process changes, increased transparency in executing various business functions and strict
time monitoring of execution of tasks bring in major change in the way employees operate.

Often IT professionals confront situations of managing ERP projects either from the
implementation part team or from the Organization’s IT team that is implementing ERP
product. This document is aimed at providing a high level introduction to a typical ERP
implementation project covering various phases, deliverables of each of the phase and issues
to watch. This may help as a basic guideline to start understanding your role as a project
manager on either side for an ERP implementation project.

Phases of Implementation
Various ERP products use different methodologies which are more of variants of a basic
model. The implementation methodology explained below is a basic model. This covers each
of the phases relevant for ERP implementation. If you are implementing a specific ERP
product such as SAP or Oracle eBiz, please align this with the prescribed application
implementation methodology used for the application.

Project Initiation
During this phase all important structures for the implementation will be built. The strength of these
foundations will determine the success of the implementation.

A few of the foundations to be created during this phase includes

Team Building – Very critical activity before starting of an implementation project. This involves
different levels of team building.
If you are managing the implementation team of a consulting partner then you need to build your
team first because people join your project from different teams and you may not have emotional
relationships built with all the team members.
If you are managing the IT team of the Organization in which ERP Implementation project will kick off
then, ensure that your IT team works like a team. You also need to take up team building activity
involving your IT team and key users identified by the business.
If you are managing the overall program, ensure that all the teams involved in the implementation
including the team from the implementation partner, IT team to be involved in the implementation
project and the key users from the business.

Communication Protocols – Second critical activity for the success of implementation project is setting
up communication protocols. During this phase try to identify the influential members in each of the
teams involved in the implementation – partner team, IT team and key users team who can exert
influence on other members of their teams because of their knowledge, capability or nearness to the
top management and channel the formal and information communications from those members.

Project Charter – As a project manager it is important for you to publish the rules of the project and
publish a list of key stakeholders and key members of the project. Create and publish a project charter
covering the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders and members of the project, communication
and reporting structures, activity out of scope, high level timelines and major risks with mitigation
plans.
This activity is critical for the project manager who is in‐charge of the whole project delivery. This may
be from the implementation partner team or from the implementing Organization team.

Recasting the Project Plan – Being the project manager, you should take a re‐look at the project plan
you have inherited. The first project plan normally created during the evaluation phase and may form
part of the pre‐sales cycle when you are choosing the implementation partner. This plan will not be
accurate because good amount of facts will not be clear during evaluation/pre‐sales phase and so it
has to be reviewed and updated before starting the project.

Hardware and Software Requirements ‐ Since the project plan gets updated, the project impact will be
much clearer at this phase and hence hardware and software requirements arise during the project
implementation should be planned and published at this level. This helps the stakeholders to plan their
capital outflows appropriately.

Instance Planning ‐ Number of instances of the application required during the implementation cycle
should be planned at this level.

During the initial phases of an implementation project, the Customers will be very

watchful and try to understand the capabilities and responsibility levels of the
implementation team members. The implementation team from the partner should try
to establish their credentials quickly, build strong relationships with the project team
members including the key users which will pave way to the success of the project.

Main Activities during the Project Initiation

Making of Project Charter and Reviewing and updating the Project Plan

Building strong implementation team involving all members of the implementation project

Defining and establishing the project infrastructure such as hardware and software

Planning and establishing the application environments to be used by the project teams

Main Deliverables during this Phases

Project Charter covering the team structure, responsibility charters and communication protocols

Project Plan duly updated considering the new conditions and risks

Infrastructure requirements document

Application Environments

Key Challenges

Establishing a communication protocol that is acceptable for all stakeholders in the project – user
community, IT team members and implementation team.

Planning and establishing application instances to be used by different project team members. Striking
consensus here is a bit challenging considering the balancing to be dong between budget availability and
team requirements.

Business Process Analysis

Business Process Analysis is the first critical phase of the implementation project. During this
phase the implementation team will document the current business process which is very
critical to map the business process with the ERP delivered processes.
This phase often overlaps with the Project Initiation phase because when the stakeholders
are busy establishing the infrastructure etc. the users and the implementation team
members will work on documenting the business processes.

Current business processes
It is important to bring up all possible scenarios for discussion during this phase and find
required answers relating to all questions the implementation team bring up for each of the
business process. Any error in documenting a specific process may lead to huge rework
during later phases which can be very expensive from the project perspective.
While recording the current business process, it is important to document the business
process flows covering all possible scenarios. Appropriate examples to describe each of the
scenarios will help improving the fitment with the delivered business process.
In addition to building a strong foundation for the project by establishing all requirements in
detail, this phase also is very critical from the perspective of establishing the relationship
between the implementation and user teams. The amount of business knowledge and
flexibility to understand industry specific practices displayed by the implementation team is a
key factor for success during this phase.

Main Activities during the Business Process Analysis Phase

Making the implementation and business user teams working together

Studying each of the business process and documenting the critical flows

Making business process diagrams with appropriate examples

Main Deliverables during this Phase

Business Process Diagrams

Current Business Practices or As‐Is process document


Key Challenges

Making the teams to think through all possible scenarios

Building the business process diagrams covering all possibilities and exceptions

Makin the business and implementations strike a balance to build a strong relationship which will be
critical during next phases of implementation project

Solution Design

During solution design phase, the implementation team together with the user team will
establish the required business processes to be configured in the ERP product. These
processes might be existing business processes or changed business processes defined after
a brainstorm between the implementation and user teams considering the features offered
by the ERP product.
During this phase all those features not covered by the delivered features of the ERP product
will be identified and documented. Solution for all the requirements that can be configured
within the ERP product will be created and workarounds of customizations for all those
requirements which are identified as gaps considering the delivered features of the ERP
product.
Interface designs, security architecture and initial configuration of the application will be
planned and documented.

To Be Business Processes
During an ERP implementation, implementing organizations always attempt to utilize the
best practices to streamline the existing business process. This exercise will lead to a new
business process from existing process which will lead to the final solution design for the
organization.
Though the attempt is not to lead towards a complete re‐engineering of the business
process, certain amount of process corrections and streamlining the processes will be
attempted.

Final Solution Design
During this phase a complete solution of the finalized business processes the implementing
organization attempts to create for running their business operations will be created.
The solution maps will drive the configuration of the initial set up data and conversion of
data for reaching a desired state of the system.
While making the solution maps from business processes mapped into the ERP application,
the implementation team should attempt to find a near complete solution fitment within the
application for all business processes.
All the scenarios for which a direct solution is not available within the ERP application should
be recorded as gaps before attempting the workarounds. If workaround solutions are
attempted at the time of initial solution mapping the completeness of solution will suffer.

Conference Room Pilot
During this activity, all the agreed business processes and their respective mapping into the
ERP applications will be discussed in detail by the implementation and the user’s teams.
The implementation team will present each of the business process maps in the ERP
application and bring up the clear gaps of the business requirements discussed and agreed
upon.
The implementation team can bring up the alternate/workaround solutions for discussion
during this phase.
Conversion Plan
While designing the solutions, data from existing application should be planned.

Main Activities during the Solution Design phase

Defining the future business process or To Be scenarios for the business

Creation of detailed design books covering mapping of existing business processes with the delivered
business processes of ERP product

Writing of functional specifications for all the features found to be not mapped with the delivered
business processes.

Application Configuration for Conference Room Pilot

Planning and designing interfaces and reports

Designing application and user security matrix

Identifying the qualified flows and planning Batch Schedules for auto execution


Required or To Be Business Process Document

Design Books showing the solution plans and sample configurations

Functional Specification Documents for Customizations, Interfaces and Reports

Application and User Security Matrix

Batch Schedule Plan

Key Challenges

Key and feasible mapping acceptable to all stakeholders is very critical

It is important to cover all possible scenarios including exceptions. Any wrong mapping at this level can be
found only during the UAT phase which can lead to project delays

All business process fitments in the ERP application should be showed to the users and allow them to
check and get a signoff at this level

Any workaround solutions to be agreed during Conference Room Pilot for finding solution to any to be
business process should be documented clearly and signed off to avoid conflicts during later phases

Development

During the Development phase, most critical activities of the project will take place. Creating
configurations to map the fit business processes, development of customizations and
interfaces, creation of conversion scripts are the critical activities.
During configuration the master configurations should be created to make the organization
structure and other set ups. All required data relating to countries, currencies, chart of
accounts, budgets, invoice types, voucher types and so on should be created in the
configuration instance.
A copy of the finally configured instance should be archived before progressing for the next
phase.

Data Conversion
During this phase the existing customer’s transaction data will be converted into the ERP
application. The best practice for conversion is to convert the opening balances of the year
and the open items up to the date of conversion using the data conversion scripts. The data
should be provided by the user teams in a required format which can be used as input for the
data conversion scripts.

Main Activities during the Development Phase

Creation of master and transaction configurations

Development of Customizations, Interfaces and Reports

Unit testing of all newly developed components

Creation of conversion data and conversion scripts


Configurations

Developed Components/Objects for Customizations, Interfaces and Reports

Data Conversion Files

Data Conversion Scripts

Key Challenges

While creating Configurations it is important to explore optimum solutions else the solutions will not
be convincing for the users.

It is important to execute functional unit test carefully to confirm the developed feature is confirming
to the functional design.

If huge amount of data has to be converted, few important aspects should be considered

The users should be aware of the impact of huge amount of data conversion on their involvement for
creation of data files and verification of data after conversion

If the more than one year finance data as to be converted important risk is to convert one full year
data and have the finance books tallying in the financial year to populate the correct opening
balances.

Testing

During the testing phase complete system testing with new customizations, interfaces and
reports and User Acceptance Testing will have to be executed.

System and Integration Testing
If your implementation project have good amount of customizations it is important to test
entire business flow including the customized piece to ensure that the customization is not
impacting the overall business process.
Once all customizations tested, then the integrations among different modules and
applications should be tested.
If the implementation involves any modules that will be used by a huge number of users then
load testing should also be performed. If the application should be accessed remotely or
though a network then it is important to perform the network testing as well.

User Acceptance Testing
During this phase the finally configured system with converted data should be copied into a
new instance to create the Test Environment.
The test environment represents the possible live scenario and the testing by users on this
instance can bring up the actual issues that need resolution to reach the Go Live phase.
The users’ team should provide a list of scenarios they believe to be very critical and complex
for their business and the implementation team should bring up the test cases to facilitate
the testing of these scenarios. The test cases show a systematic flow showing which screen
after which screen to be used, what data to be inserted and what is the expected outcome.
This helps the users to navigate through the ERP system for testing the focused scenarios
faster and the results will be reliable as well because this can reduce the knowledge issues to
a large extent.

Main Activities during the Testing Phase

Functional Unit Testing

Stress and Network Testing

Creation of Test Scripts for User Acceptance Testing

Execution of User Acceptance Testing


Test Scripts for User Acceptance Testing


Issue Logs

Fixes and Patches for solving the problems found during testing

Key Challenges

Building extensive scenarios in the Test Scripts for complete testing to establish completeness of
testing

Participation of users in the User Acceptance Testing is a critical factor

Production

This is the preparation for Going Live. Production Instance should be created and initial
configurations should be created in the system. The configured Production System should be
used for configuring the Security as per the agreed Security Matrix. Opening Balances should
be populated and the data conversion should be executed.

Main Activities during the Production Phase

Creation of Production Instance

Execution of Security matrix

Final Data conversion


Final Production instance with configurations, security and data

Key Challenges

Security should be planned and executed considering all constraints and compliance requirements
such as SOX

Transition

During this phase the users’ team will be prepared to take over the fully configured ERP
system to run for their business. The final configurations created in the production system
will be documented for the purpose of user reference.
The users will be trained on the application to understand and execute their business
transactions comfortably.
Training documentation including presentations and user guides will be created for the
purpose of current and future users.

Main Activities during the Transition Phase

User Training

Training Documentation

Final configuration documentation for future reference


Final production configuration document

Training Documentation

Key Challenges

User Training should cover practical scenarios to make the users understand and follow the training

Training documentation should be simple and exhaustive


ERP Implementation

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We share information about ERP lifecycle covering various aspects that

Selecting ERP product for your organization

Please feel free to write to us at epathfinders@gmail.com or

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