Success and Failure of ERP Implementations In Brief

Success and Failure of ERP Implementations

ERP Implementation projects success and failure depends on several factors. The top five factors are as described below.

Clear understanding of Scope and Ownership :

Its essential that the project scope is clearly understood and the project is owned and driven by business than by IT. All members of the project team must know the scope clearly and plan execution based on must have scope items. Business Management normally the CEO or COO or CFO of the organization should own the business requirement and help define clear scope and business priorities with in the specified scope.

Clear Benefits identification and management:

All projects are done for a business reason with benefits clearly defined and agreed. Business case must detail out the benefits with clear ownership for each factor and who will be driving it to realize the benefits. Some benefits can be reported during the project execution phase itself while others would be realized post implementation. So its important that benefits are owned by the business and reported to management on timely and standardize manner.

Right Resources:

For ERP implementation success its essential to have best people in the organization with through knowledge in respective areas are chosen to be represent the business requirements and to drive the project from business side. The project should have the best and experience ERP consultants to be able to drive the technical execution correctly. Resources allocation to the project should be normally 50% or more as anything lower could lead to priority conflicts and affect the implementation

Managing Change Management:

Change management is highly important and requires high attention and management. The change management for the project scope changes needs to be managed in a structured manner using project boards as improper change management would lead to implementation delay and can affect the business objectives very highly. The other side of the change management is related to people in the Organization as moving to a new system requires buy in and involvement of various people of the organization. The people related change management in the organization should be managed through HR and company’s top management to ensure all businesses and their people support the change and be part of it to make it a success.

Integration needs:

Normally IT systems and specially ERP systems implementations lead to organizational structure and roles change. On one side along with the system automation certain roles in the organization get redundant while on the other side some people’s role increases while some other new roles have to be created to manage the new system related functions/activities. Its essential that the integration needs owned by business with well-defined planning and clear ownership for execution.

Post Implementation needs:

The real work for ERP Implementation is to ensure there is clearly defined ownership of post implementation support (e.g. change, incidents, issue handling, access request etc.) is establish during the project itself and required teams are involved in the ERP implementation at various stages of the project. It’s also essential to define how user trainings and ongoing organizational changes would be handled with respect to ERP system.