When you’re finally ready to implement an ERP system at your organization, follow these best practices and tips to ensure your success:
- Understand business processes and key requirements. Gain a complete understanding of all the areas, processes, and tools that make up your business. Spend time documenting problem areas, processes that work, questions you have, and any other observations you want to record in preparation for implementing a new system at your business.
- Ensure proper project management and resource commitment. Assign a member of your team with the task of managing the implementation process from start to finish. Make sure that person has the resources they need to be successful.
- Gain executive and organizational commitment. Get the full support and commitment of everyone at your organization, from to bottom. Make sure everyone understands what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how it affects them and their work.
- Recognize the value of early planning. Reduce the amount of time it takes to fully implement an ERP system at your organization by planning ahead. Think about the resources you’ll need along each step of the way to make the deployment phase go as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
- Focus on data migration early in the implementation process. Decide how much historical data you want to migrate into your system, then make plans to start the migration process as early as possible.
- Know why you’re implementing ERP. Remember why you’re implementing a new system in the first place. Define requirements, establish metrics, and build a business plan that clearly articulates what benefits the company expects from an implementation.
Following these recommendations and best practices will make the entire implementation process go a lot more smoothly.
