Implementing an ERP- What must you consider?

Sept 7th, 2020 / Haroon Juma / Software Blogs

As your business grows, efficiently managing operations at lower cost and control of resources becomes a challenge. Most businesses turn to implement an Enterprise Resource Management. They aim to integrate the company’s processes to better manage their complete operations.

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 an inconsistent track record. Approximately 60% of ERP projects failing to meet the desired business objectives.

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

How could an ERP benefit your business?

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

An ERP often sits at the heart of this strategy. They enable an enterprise to manage a range of business workflows from customer-centric processes such as sales, e-commerce, and support 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 more efficiently controlled.
  2. Allow accurate & timely information and make better decisions.
  3. Higher productivity & deeper insights to streamline business processes and avoid unnecessary resources.
  4. Less room for error by removing redundant and inaccurate information. Only the facts remain part of the data. It also ensures regulatory compliance with the country’s laws.
  5. More competitiveness to operate at a leaner cost.
  6. Provide new products and services at lower cost with faster time to market.
  7. Real-time view of your business. Generate a comprehensive view of operation performance, overall company performance and support operational decisions.

How should your companies approach this project?

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

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

These lessons include:

 

  1. Business Strategy & Requirements. Longer-term considerations were not fully assessed. The project was defined as an IT initiative with limited business engagement. This can have major impacts on the technology selection, prioritization of business goals, and consequently frustration on final results.
  1. 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.
  1. Project Sponsorship & Leadership. An ERP is a major change to any company. Top-down sponsorship, proper steering, and project empowerment are essential. Difficult decisions may be required. Strong leadership and decision-making will keep the project on course.
  1. 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 long-term decision. One should consider the consequences if you change your system in 3 years and assess swap impacts.
  1. Roll Out Planning. Prioritize rollout with minimal impact to users to gain internal expertise and familiarity. A quick win builds confidence. Selecting an area or process that affects a part rather than the whole company will create momentum.
  1. Technical & Project Skills. Ensure you bring in expertise to support your internal teams. More likely, they are already overloaded on daily operations. Consequently, they will lack headroom and/or key skills to deliver successfully.
  1. (Related to item 2). A strong ERP platform selection will provide out of the box workflows and options to minimize customizations. Customizations are not only costly but create project delays and complex issues in the future adapting your system.
  1. Change Management & User Training. Place high importance in managing change. Engage key users in the roll-out. Plan 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. As such you should place strategic weight on 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.

Our best in class cloud Enterprise management solution can help your organization automate and master your business processes Designed to be UAE VAT compliant with FTA Audit File support with complex Tax Group functionality, Our ERP solution is available in both in English & Arabic.

 

Contact us at 043445338 or visit our website www.simplysolved.ae.

 

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Serving over 200+ clients we know the challenges your business faces operating cost effective, compliant and efficient back office operations in Finance, Tax, Human Resources Management, IT and Marketing.

As an FTA Accredited Tax Agency with ISO 9001 Quality & 27001 Information Management Certification, we offer a quality-based approach to our services supported by dedicated team of certified professionals.

We support our clients with defined processes, platforms and expertise to deliver advisory, project and outsourced services in Accounting, Tax, Auditing, HRM, IT & Marketing. Our offerings are specially designed to meet the UAE Regulations to put you in control of your information, comply to the regulations and help you make better business decisions.

 

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