Drawing on our experience implementing solutions for hundreds of mid-market and enterprise organizations, has developed a proven approach to ensure that ERP deployments are completed on-time and on-budget. In this two-part series, our senior consultants share two proven strategies. These strategies can help your organization ensure the success of a new ERP implementation.
PART 1: Insist on Value-Added Project Management
With the already high costs of an ERP implementation, Project Management overhead can be a bitter pill to swallow. Part 1 of our two-part series provides advice to ensure that your vendor’s project management adds value beyond simply checking off tasks and delivering status reports.
your mission-critical ERP is among the most challenging, high-stakes projects your organization can undertake. As with any project, success depends on your ability to effectively manage the budgets, schedules, tasks, and resources involved. But an ERP deployment carries several additional layers of risk and complexity: restructuring business processes, preserving data integrity, functional testing of the software, and managing change effectively across the organization all add to the demands of managing an ERP project.
With so many dimensions at play, managing an ERP deployment requires a specialized skill set. Sticking to the traditional narrowly focused Project Manager role, fixated on the tactical elements of the budget, schedule, and status reporting, adds to project overhead and neglects an opportunity to ensure that your ERP drives successful business transformation. The key to success is to combine project management expertise with functional expertise. This includes deep knowledge of software, systems, and processes. As well as effectively elevating the role of project manager from pure overhead to a value-added resource.
At Western Computer, all project managers are experts in ERP software and business process analysis. Our project managers are also experts in project management methodology. Rather than waiting for project resources to report in or simply aggregating status reports, our project managers play an active role. They look into the systems to independently verify progress, determining not only that a task has been completed, but that it has been done right and to our exacting standards. In this way, Western’s project managers add a layer of quality assurance and proactive troubleshooting. This not only maintains your critical path, but it also helps to ensure successful outcomes.
and learn if you are effectively implementing your ERP solution.
by Western Computer
