An ERP implementation is a time-consuming project. One of the key ingredients to making it a success is "focus. Try not to include everything in the project, don't get hung up on details or peripheral issues, and be determined when it comes to making decisions.
Don't put everything into ERP
ERP software is comprehensive, but not the perfect solution for everything in your organization. Putting everything into ERP makes the project far too complicated and also gives you a result at go-live that is far from optimal. For example, prefer to use a drawing program for technical drawings and deliberately keep some processes out of the scope of the project and only include them later, when improving with your ERP system.
Focus on standard processes
ERP software supports business processes throughout the organization. What those processes look like you will define with your colleagues and with your software partner. In doing so, you will quickly get an accumulation of exceptions to the rule. And of course it's good to take into account that sometimes a process runs differently or has an intermediate step, but you don't want to accommodate every exception in ERP. After all, you don't want to focus your attention on something that has happened once before or happens once every few years. Focus on the standard processes; how do they happen and how can you best automate that in the ERP system? If you solve that well, you will soon have a good system. Those few exceptions to the rule can be solved with a work-around, a solution outside the system or, if necessary, customization.
Make decisions
Left or right, an ERP implementation is going to present you with some important choices. You'll have to think about how you're going to set up processes. Will you opt for centralized or decentralized purchasing of parts? What tasks will your mechanics get and what will you deliberately not bother them with? How structured will your sales department work and how much freedom will they retain? It is important that you make informed decisions about this. Put all the pros and cons in order and then make your decision. With that you are going to disappoint people and with that you are going to have certain disadvantages. But that shouldn't stop you and your team from being decisive and decisive. Too often difficult choices are postponed and pushed aside, causing delay and confusion. Delve into the choices regarding the processes, listen to the experts in your organization and at the software partner, and then make a decision that you and the entire project group support.
Follow-up steps
The go-live with the software is an important moment, but not the end. Once you are successfully running the ERP system, you can start focusing on the things you left out during implementation. You start optimization processes to further refine processes and put additional functionalities into use. This is how you turn an ERP system that runs well into an ERP system that runs great.
Luuk Busschers is a Consultant at Dysel and helps customers achieve their goals by deploying industry-specific ERP software.
