The global business landscape has become so competitive that successful organizations need to embrace the latest from the world of technology to be able to sustain and grow their market shares. Cloud-based tech tools offer an affordable and flexible machine for organizations to fulfill their techno-needs. In spite of being a very core and traditional technology, enterprise resource planning software is on the high-priority lists of an organization looking to renew its IT by moving applications to the cloud.
The move to a cloud-based ERP, however, is difficult to manage for an application as multifarious in its scope as an ERP. It’s difficult, yes, but not impracticable, of course. The scalability, flexibility, and cost savings offered by a cloud-based ERP makes such a move reasonable for companies.
The first and foremost brainstorming session that company executives have to carry out after finalizing a cloud-based ERP solution vendor is to identify critical business processes and envision how they will be mapped in the cloud ERP. Over the course of an ERP lifetime, the costs of switching core business processes become inhibitory.
The cloud move is your opportunity to dissolve those switching costs into the larger project. Thankfully, you have the option of taking cloud vendors and transition partners’ support in designing core business processes such that your business key performance indicators are improved. By aligning your business processes with the best practices for your industry, you also make possible easier and quicker implementation of cloud ERP.
The longer an ERP stays in operation, the number of third-party tools and bolt-ons it integrates with grows. While managing the move of your organization’s ERP from on-premises to cloud, you get great opportunities to take stock of all integration points. A cloud-based ERP could very well offer you in-house capabilities that can well replace some of these third-party applications, which in turn makes significant positive contributions to your ledger. For all other integration points, you’d do well to quickly initiate dedicated dialog with vendors to work out the best action plans to imitate the integrations in the cloud.
Data is a core pillar for your ERP. When transitioning your ERP to the cloud, you necessitate making some difficult decisions related to your data.
Some of these are around considerations like:
This is the difficult part, rife with uncertainty and laden with expensive risks. However, it’s crucial. Search through your vaults to find test plans and scripts from the time the on-premises ERP was implemented. Functional testing, user acceptance trying, integration testing, stress testing as stressful as it sounds, you need to be prepared to manage the testing phase. Keep a buffer period to be able to manage the defects highlighted during testing. Also, make sure you explain the testing scope clearly. In case a few third-party apps have been decommissioned, exchange a few words the same so that no false alerts lags are raised.
Unless your company’s move to the cloud is a massive changeover from a traditional on-premises ERP to an advanced ERP, you won’t have to worry a lot about this aspect. When the core product is misused, of course, you will need to plan for comprehensive user training. Otherwise, it’s more of an orientation practice, where you help super users become comfortable with the look and feel of the ERP. A good practice, at this stage, is to seek the vendor’s support in orienting the user base to the new screens and additional features.