10 stupid things of implementaion failures 2

[Practicalwisdom]

Hi,

Who are the real culprits of poor ERP implemetation?

Is it the implementator who promises more and delivers less?
or the poor insight/home work of the companies which purchase them?

The company which purchases the ERP, has to change it's mindset some of which I have mentioned below;

1 Choose your implementation consultant and your user team well.

2. Wrong Expectations. Dont expect the new ERP will do magic. It may not even meet the minimum requirements of your business needs. If your ERP vendor flatters about his ERP, check it with references

3. Accept the limitations. Accept the limitaions of new ERP.Trying to customise it to your needs may be lead to enormous expenditure/Time wastage

4.Time and Patience- make a realistic time estimation.Any consultant who promises to implement ERP in 3 -6 months time period will cause a real headache for the project. Because ERP implementaion is not mere data migration, but a lot more,viz, from change in mindset of users...

5. Clarity of project- Have a clear project schedule and a team leader who can envisage/understand the practical problems of implementations

6. Do's and don'ts- Release the key resources/users from day to day work and provide a daily schedule to your users to co-oridnate with implementaion consultants.Don't encourage arguements which may lead to personal bias over a period of time.

7.Train and retrain your people well on the new software.

8. Understand the implementation team/Technical consultant's point of ERP's limitatation.As a matter of fact if you put more pressure on the implemnetation team to deliver more customisation, it may fail to give desired results

9. Show Respect to implemetation team who are in your site though you have difference of opinion. Otherwise the team may run away at critical time (say going live) leading to total project failure.Finally, it's your money at stake!!!

10. Metrics. Maintain and Collect an effective metrics/feedback system at different intervals of implementaion project.These may give you an idea like changing the resources.

Any counters?

 

[jimbopalmer]

My notes from the trenches:

Learn how your ERP works, before you change it, a working bad system is better than a perfect non-working system.

When we converted payroll to Oracle, HR wanted 27 flavors of Time Off to be at Court, it highlighted where we spent too much time tracking items that the company did not need to know. If it cannot be decided with any rules you can express in English, perhaps it will not be describable to the computer either.

No deadline is more important than going live with payroll AFTER it is ready, you can experiment with inventory, but if payroll in not right you lose a vast amout of trust.

Please thank the surviving implemntation team members no matter how well the implementation goes, they have the experience to enhance your system once the time crunch is off, if they can be motivated.

Beta software is death on time tables. Friends don't let Friends try to meet deadlines with software that does not work yet.

Fewer great consultants is better than many hired bodies. Having a pulse is does not meet any qualifications you need. (Sometimes a great consultant is the one who knows what he is not the best at, and can point you to the person who is best)


At the same time, the Hired guns need to mesh with the salaried employees, good rapport is sometimes more productive than technical experience.
I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.