🧮ERP Implementations - Part I: The Right ERP Software
In ERP implementations, there are still many organizations that ignore their important needs and go with big names following the trends or first impressions, much like buying a car and going with big brands, ignoring the fact that ERP systems come in different sizes and one size usually doesn’t fit all! Poor choices add to the fact that an ERP implementation is much like a Pandora’s Box — no matter how much we like to be confident and connoisseur about it, the end result will probably surprise us!
Ideally, an organization should start with a process of self-discovery, if that’s not already achieved! It should address the business strategy which considers the business needs in terms of processes, procedures, roles, etc. Once such aspects are understood, an organization must decide which is the right infrastructure to support all this, and this might resume to more than choosing an ERP software! Focusing only on the ERP software and building around it can work as well. Independently of the approach, one should expect surprises as strategy’s execution proceeds!
Organizations might choose to talk with sales representatives or partners, have maybe several presentations with Q&A and awareness content. Sales representatives’ skills, convincing tone or business relations of the sales representative can be a decisive factor in choosing the solution, such meetings barely scratching the surface! Many vendors provide similar functionality, though, as usual, the devil lies in details and the gaps are discovered usually after the fact!
The initial meetings usually involve a mix of experienced and inexperienced people and there are lot of questions worth answering! What’s an ERP system about? How much can the participants articulate organization’s needs, respectively identify which are the details that make the most important impact on the business? How much has the sales representative understood customers’ business and the overall context? In definitive, the representative tries to sell a product! How much is the representative willing to dive into the requirements, analyze them and identify feasible solutions? How deep do such meetings need to be held? A few sales pitches are usually not enough! It might take weeks, a whole team of resources, multiple iterations until an accurate perspective is achieved and even then, surprises will appear later!
Sometime after Go-Live, most probably the organization will understand what an ERP system is about, which were the challenges, what is missing from the bigger picture, what should have been done, how much the expectations were met, etc. Unfortunately, for some organizations the contact with reality will be harsh, harsher probably than expected. Some organizations will learn from the whole process, and use the knowledge further, though there will be also many exceptions!
An organization must have a certain maturity when implementing an ERP solution, and the lack of maturity must be addressed by vendors or/and organizations themselves in order to increase the chances of success! Learning by doing syntagma can be applied to ERP implementations too, though the costs for experimentation and discovery are quite high in such projects!
The bottom line — the vendors want to sell a product and profit on customers’ expenses, often not being interested in whether the product fits the purpose as long as more issues lead to more revenue. On the other hand, the customer wants an affordable flexible solution that allows the business to higher level of performance. The optimal solution lies somewhere in between, however many of the solutions the customers get are suboptimal. Probably, something must be changed in how the various parties work together, and this is one of the most important challenges that must be addressed!
Originally published at sql-troubles.blogspot.com. Written Dec-2009, reviewed Apr-2025
