As a business grows and the environment within which it operates becomes more complex with the demand for extensive analytics to stay ahead of the game and the need to divide data and monitor several business process under one roof, there comes a need for an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to offer these solutions.
However, sourcing for a suitable ERP system can be downright baffling with so many vendors in the market, each promising their piece of heaven. The result is many manufacturing business spending money on systems that are not tailored to their specific requirements.
Here are tips for implementing a ERP solution that will actually work for you.
It’s practically impossible to get an ERP solution that is tailored for your business you haven’t properly defined what your needs are.
A common draw near among businesses is to simply automate the existing processes with an ERP system without having a review of their impact on service relief. This doesn’t solve any of your business problems.
The better way towards realizing a successful ERP system implementation I s to clearly define the problems you seek to solve and have a clear scope of the requirements you expect of your system. This way your vendor can then know how best to tailor your system to handle your specific needs as opposed to one that simply automates everything, whether they are helpful towards realizing your business goals or not.
A customized system is important but you also have to think about the future when implementing an ERP system. Your system should be able to be impeccably upgraded to accommodate growth in your business.
You need to consider number of factors such as cost, support, reliability, etc., before you straighten out on a suitable deployment model.
There are three implementation models to choose from, namely on-premise ERP, cloud-based ERP and SaaS, each with its pros and cons.
Even with the best planning, it’s difficult to predict the outcome of an ERP system realization so it’s important to allow sufficient time for the change to be smooth. Do not skip through some of the implementation phases in a bid to save on cost or hasten the outcomes of the system.
More importantly, you need to properly manage the uptake of the new system across the whole spectrum of your business from the staff and the processes to the technology. You need to train all the staff in all the departments to be on get on with new ERP system.