Though implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) systems sounds massive investment of money, resource and time, the advantage that a business can acquire from the ERP software is peerless. From streamlining the workflow to optimizing the costs, an Enterprise Resource Planning System helps the business to revive afresh.
The lapsed work lost productivity, delays in communication, everything can be recouped with the help of an integrated ERP system in the workplace. However, while making a choice over the ERP, there must be some considerations to be taken care of because ERP is a ballgame and not everyone can play it well.
There are found many mistakes committed by people while choosing their ERP solution.
This blog pinpoints those mistakes and considerations an individual should make while choosing their business management software.
Top things to consider while choosing ERP
Set Your Priorities
Prior to making a decision over the ERP solution, firstly set your priorities. Take time to comprehend what you truly need in your software solution. As ERP touch every forefront of your business, it is highly essential that you incorporate every key users and board of executives in the meeting. The participation of people from various business departments thus helps in prioritizing and incorporating every business need. This inversely reflects in the quality of implementation delivery.
The success of an ERP solution is not undermined how successfully it got implemented. It depends on how the software behaves in future in accordance to the company workflow and how far the users succeed in converting the inputs into efficient results in the form of improved efficiencies, enhanced revenues, reduced expenditures, profitability, faster ROI and so forth.
Similarly, the choice between an integrated ERP solution and a best-of-breed software solution. The software priority should be made on the basis of size and structure of your organization, issues that your organization is trying to resolve and opportunities your organization is trying to capture.
For instance, in case you're a little to an average-sized organization with a constrained budget plan and restricted assets, probably going for an integrated management software can be of great benefit. Because this kind of framework will help you to streamline your business procedures and accomplish improved efficiency at a lower cost and with the lesser resource.
However, if you are opting for a best-of-breed software solution, it demands broad knowledge of both database constructs and business rules. This is because your ERP framework needs to keep running in unison so as to keep all your information consistent and accurate.
Choose the Right Vendor
The success percentage of ERP implementation depends on the choice of your service provider. Many businesses opt for freelancers over authorized service partners for performing their implementation process in order to save money. However, the percentage of success cannot be guaranteed with a freelancer for many reasons.
On the other hand, choosing the right vendor, an implementation partner who is well expertized in different industry base can better cater to your business requirements. Industry-specific knowledge, functional and technical expertise are the checklist for a good ERP implementation partner and they will help you to bridge the gap of your current business process by following the best ERP practice.
ERP implementations that are more inclined towards the best practices are seen to be more successful and durable. Best practices include prioritizing and understanding of key requirements, documenting business process flows when implementation is complete, limited customizations (lesser the customizations, lesser the tension of ERP breakage). Therefore, invest in those partners who possess an in-depth understanding of your business workflows and follow industry standards. Avoid putting yourself in a place where you need to teach your implementation partner your business. Also, go for a long-term relationship with your implementation partner so as to assure the growth of your business in the coming phase.
Speed and Agility
The present business keeps running at the speed of idea. Furthermore, if the ERP fails to meet the desired speed, it generally ends up with one wheel behind the end goal. Business organizations always fall prey to the speed and nimbleness shown by the ERP service provider.
The demos introduced are by and large designed and preset on servers, or local machines, making it hard to comprehend the genuine capacity of the ERP. Therefore the most ideal approach to assess the true ability of the software solution is to run a trial instance by yourself. There are many ERP service providers like Odoo, who provides end-users the trial instances which can keep running for two or three weeks or a month. The business organizations can, therefore, go for the real test and realize whether the speed is sufficient.
Total Cost of Ownership
Today is the day of cloud ERPs, and choosing cloud ERPs can significantly diminish the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the organizations owning it. Numerous organizations really miss figuring the TCO for an ERP before putting into it. This is something every organization must do.
An attractive TCO will likewise get your ROI sooner and will make it look much better. Cloud ERPs can guarantee to get a sound ROI within months.
Also, your choice among integrated business management software and best-of-breed software arrangements affect the TCO. In case, if your needs are exceptionally limited, going for an integrated ERP arrangement over best-of-breeds can lower your total cost of ownership. Utilizing separate best-of-breed arrangements can drastically sum up your license fees and implementation costs, also decrease by and large your overall working efficiencies. With a best-of-breed software arrangement, you may also not get shielded from version obsolescence, which can bring about extra expenditures later on.
Test your Software
It is the general thought process of the business that if they hire an expert ERP implementation partner, there is no necessity for a test run. However, this is not true. Software testing can act as a platform to distinguish any mistakes or misunderstandings in the process streams before their live deployment. Much of the time, issues will be found during this testing procedure that may require some minor alterations before going live. So as to limit blunders after deployment and boost the capability of your new ERP software, it is critical to test the majority of your information, systems, and procedures before software launch.
Data Migration
Many think that data migration is moreover similar to the transferring of records on the web. Well, it isn't generally just about transferring. Data act as the foundation of any ERP and lesser attention to it causes irreparable loss to the business. A significant percentage of migrating a system constitutes with migrating the information.
ERPs comes with various data structures or tables and requires mapping endeavors to really push information the manner in which it is required. Therefore, while choosing an ERP implementation partner, you should go for those who have the range of abilities to perform data migration such as data profiling, cleansing, transformation, and other migration techniques. Documenting the migration processes at both functional and technical level is also advocated for further reference.