How do you go about enterprise resource planning and how do you ensure proper ERP implementation? This article outlines the 5 major steps involved.
Large companies frequently turn to enterprise resource planning to create a central location for all aspects of a company, from accounting to marketing. The ERP market is expected to double to more than $100 billion over the next 5 years.
Implementing ERP is a long and complicated process because there are many stakeholders who will be impacted. IT departments fully expect to experience downtime or other implementation issues.
Read on to learn the 5 steps you need to follow for a seamless ERP implementation.
- Understand Your Business Needs
You have to take a look at the business needs for ERP. This will become your list of requirements as you search for ERP vendors. For instance, you may have a mobile sales team or a lot of remote workers. That makes a cloud-based and mobile solution a priority.
Once you understand your needs, you’ll need to get the attention of the upper management team. They’ll need to sign off on this project. You can get them on board by providing a detailed analysis of the benefits and cost savings of ERP.
- Find the Right ERP Provider
You want to make ERP implementation seamless. You’re also investing a lot of money into an ERP system that you will rely on for years to come. You don’t want to be in a situation where you need to switch providers a year or two after this project.
You can take ERP solutions for a test drive to see if they could work with your organization. For example, you can sign up for a NetSuite free trial to test its cloud-based systems.
- Map the Implementation Process
There should be a committee of stakeholders involved in the process. The committee has to create a plan and a timeline for implementation. The various steps will include the deployment strategy, installation, migration, and QA testing.
The committee can evaluate current systems and develop processes to make operations more efficient across departments once the new ERP system is installed.
- ERP Deployment
ERP deployment can be broken down into different systems. You can have a type of transition where everything happens at once. You could opt to make the transition in smaller steps. This will allow you to test and
The type of deployment that has the least amount of risk is to continue to run your existing systems and your new system at the same time. This will give you time to test the stability of the new system. It allows you to have an option in case something goes wrong.
- Provide Employee Training and Supp
Employees aren’t going to be happy with the new ERP system. They need to learn a completely new way of doing things while keeping the same level of productivity.
The IT and HR departments need to come together to provide in-depth training to all employees. Many vendors will provide some sort of training, but these departments can fill in any gaps.
A Successful ERP Implementation
ERP is a must for any organization with many employees spread over several departments. You can use ERP to streamline communications between departments and manage everything from accounting to your supply chain.
ERP implementation takes careful planning and the steps outlined here will help you with a successful implementation. Remember that communication is vital throughout the process. You need to communicate each step to all stakeholders in the organization.
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