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Home | Best Practices for Effective ERP Implementation

Planning an ERP and implementing the project is a challenging venture for any company. Here are some best practices that will help you implement smoothly and effectively.

Get buy-in from the top

ERP selection and implementation requires research, purchasing, customization and implementation, and each of these steps takes time and resources. You’ll need support from the senior executives at your company, which can be challenging as you’ll have to justify the financial and human resources required. Ensuring your senior management understands the importance of this technology, and the extent of which a proper ERP can help your business grow.

Choosing the right solution

Choosing the right ERP solution is critical. Many vendors will try and oversell you on their product, and get you excited about features it offers, even if these are features that you’ll never use. ERP customization is key to a successful implementation, so choosing an ERP consultant that knows the product options, has learned your business and has a good understanding of which modules your company needs (and which is doesn’t), will be critical to helping you find the right solution for your company, without overpaying for modules and features you won’t use. Select your consultant carefully. Look for one with experience in your industry, and be sure to invest the time into building their knowledge of your business and every element of its operations.

Build the right team

Even after you’ve selected your consultant, a successful implementation requires a group of dedicated problem-solvers whose full-time job is this project. Find the brightest minds in your organization and assign them to this task. Because this will require back-filling their current positions, this is challenging to do, especially if you don’t have full buy-in from your senior executives.

Assign a strong leader

The best ERP implementations are led by diligent, curious, inspirational leaders who prioritize research and experimentation and do whatever it takes to stick to deadlines. This person should have both leadership and project management skills.

Scope creep

Every project manager at every company in every industry has battled scope creep. At some point, a stakeholder will push to broaden the scope of the project which typically diverts the project from its original purpose and causes deadlines to be moved and missed. The strong leader you’ve assigned should be empowered to push back and let stakeholders know that their requests can be tackled after the initial project is complete.

Invest in training

It’s important that your team is properly trained on the ERP system before you launch. About 30% of the resources dedicated to this project should be used for training and support.

Implementing ERP isn’t easy, but it’s certainly worthwhile. Things will go wrong at some point, but if you’ve implemented properly and trained thoroughly, you’ll prepared.

Home | 5 Phases of Planning Your ERP System

Choosing a good ERP system isn’t just enough; it is also vital for every organization to have a laid down procedure of how to plan this system. Following a structured approach to planning from discovery, process analysis and planning to Going-Live and support gives the organization a better opportunity to realize the full potentials of the software.

5 Phases of Planning Your ERP System   

There are essentially five stages of planning your ERP system, and they include the following:

• Discovery, Process Analysis, and Planning: Before searching for a solution, it is essential to carefully conduct an inventory of the organizations need. This also includes creating a group that consists of employees from different departments who make use of the ERP system. The overall aim of doing this is to have a comprehensive understanding of what the organization needs, challenges, tools, and resources are. An essential part of this stage involves group members having a meeting to develop a comprehensive project plan that will serve as a guide all through the project planning process.
• System Design: This stage involves designing a new enterprise system and mapping out ways of using the system to meet the need of an organization. In this stage, the project and implementation teams work together to map-out various configurations for new systems, documenting standard procedures and defining new roles for the organization.
• System Build-out: This stage involves the development and configuration of a solution customized using the specification listed in stage two to meet the need of an organization.
• Training and Testing: Once the new system design has been deployed for use, it is essential to carry out a training program that addresses the needs, training scope and schedules of the organizations. While some employees may need just one-day training others may benefit from three or four days of training. In addition, it is vital to ensure that the system is tested thoroughly before rolling it out company-wide.
• Go-Live and Support: The final stage involves making the solution Go-Live for use. There is also a need to provide support at least for the first one month to employees who might be using the system for the first time. The project team must be available to answer questions that may arise. In addition, once the ERP system goes live, the role of the project team changes, all they need to do is provide adjustment and changes to the system configurations when needed.

Finally, an ERP system is of great importance to every organization; it has the capability of transforming how people work, streamlining task, automating actions and optimizing processes. As stated earlier, having a good ERP system isn’t just enough, there are laid down processes that must be followed when planning your EPR system to ensure you get maximum value out of your ERP investment. At ERP Advisers, we will be there every step of the way during the implementation of new technology in your business. We will work with you to not only improve your services and processes but to also improve  your bottom line.

Home | ERP Implementation at Cadbury’s

Here is a short case study and success story on implementing ERP System at Cadbury’s.

Company Introduction
Cadbury India is a fully owned subsidy of Kraft Foods Inc. With annual revenues of approximately $50 billion, the combined company is the world’s second largest food company, making delicious products for billions of consumers in more than 160countries. They employ approximately 140,000 people and have operations in more than 70 countries.

The ERP initiative was to bring about a completeintegration of the major processes in the business. The major processes being procurement system, finance system, the Human Resources and other departments.These were functioning in a completely decentralised manner. Cadbury’s have four branch operations and 13 manufacturing operations and each had their own systems running in isolation.

Benefits of ERP System specific to Cadbury’s

• Cadbury was on a fast paced growth and could not continue with the existing systems and the pace was too slow due to added inefficiencies down the chain. ERP implementation handled all the issues and added efficiency and guided the fast paced growth.
• Cadbury standardized the processes within the 16 locations.
• The implementation of ERP brought in a new way of warehouse management system and brought in structure to branch offices and the depots.
• The manufacturing in itself had 13 operations and each was operating in a silo. This had increased the work in progress and the integration of the processes has done well for the company.
• The ERP vendor was also selected from among the best in classvendors which helped the process occur in a streamlined fashionand avoided any possible chances of hiccups during the initial implementation phase.
• The system has also been deployed up to the vendors. They have a portal called vendor connect where they can see their inventory movement and make plans accordingly. Hence the restructuring happens not only internally but also across to the supplier which will add on to the benefits for both parties.

Selected and managed well, ERP Systems can bring extrodinary value to any organization and address many challanges being faced. If you’d like to chat about ERP systems or their selection, give ERP Advisers a call today!

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