The Right and Wrong Way to Implement an ERP
When you decide it’s time to implement an ERP business platform, your goal is for the transition to be efficient and smooth for your employees as well as cost-effective for your company.
But sometimes companies end up losing millions of dollars and huge amounts of time when they try to implement an ERP. Occasionally that’s due to unrealistic expectations, but more often than not it’s due to delays in the ERP implementation process. Here are some examples of ERP transitions that just didn’t pan out.
Wayne County Recently in Detroit, Michigan, Wayne County officials acknowledged,
With their current payroll system out-of-date with not much life left, Wayne County wanted an efficient ERP to keep track of their $1.7 billion budget. Instead, they’ve wasted millions of dollars since 2018 trying to get an ERP up and running with no success. When talking about the project, Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch said, “Oh, it’s quite more than a bump in the road . . . It’s more like a sinkhole.
Games Workshop In the UK, Games Workshop is known as a fantasy model maker and table-top war games retailer. They haven’t been able to update their online shopping system because of significant implementation delays to their new ERP.
Not only is the project delayed, but it’s already cost Games Workshop £1.1m in the year, on top of £2.3m on a new warehousing facility.
Hewlett-Packard Most people know HP as a technological leader selling printers and PCs nationwide, but even with all their tech experience HP’s ERP implementation back in 2004 did not go as planned.
When they tried to centralize all their North American ERP systems onto one SAP system, so many things went wrong that the project ended up costing HP $160 million in order backlogs and lost revenue—more than five times the project’s estimated cost.
Gilles Bouchard, then-CIO of HP’s global operations said, “We had a series of small problems, none of which individually would have been too much to handle. But together they created the perfect storm.”
How Do You Avoid Expensive and Delayed ERP Implementation? When you decide to unite your company under an ERP, you should spend ample time researching your options and investigating what system would work best. Once you’ve picked an ERP platform that’s the right fit for your company, you should schedule a project kick-off to determine their ERP implementation approach, strategy, timeline, and schedule. At Cetec ERP, we think implementation should follow these steps for a successful transition.
First: Data Conversion We think it’s crucial that data is converted first. This sets a foundation for better training and faster adoption of the new system, as users tend to understand better when they are viewing data they are familiar with.
Second: Process Modeling & Documentation Once data is converted, experts should work with your company to transition your current critical business processes onto the new system.
Third: Training Employees should undergo enough training so that they become familiar with the new ERP system. In a free trial environment, employees can practice the skills covered in the respective training sessions.
Fourth: Configuration The ERP you choose should be able to adapt to your business processes and provide your company with the flexibility to adapt quickly as you procure new business and growth. You should be able to receive upgrades on the platform while still allowing you to set your own behaviors, so you don’t have to develop your own internal custom system.
Fifth: Final Cutover Your ERP team should work with you to coordinate your final data exports, final data imports, and the sequence of events needed to execute to smoothly transition from your legacy system to the new ERP environment.
Finally: Go-Live Once you are live on the new ERP platform, you should be able to have quick access to consulting services for support, training, and process consulting. Your support team should be able to make custom programming changes if needed.
Cetec ERP Makes Implementation EASY
Switching all your data onto a new ERP business platform doesn’t have to be a headache. The process should be quick but also practical, and not cost your company huge amounts of unbudgeted money.
With Cetec ERP, you can expect a typical range of $15k - $20k for: discovery / gap analysis / process consulting, data migration, user training, one week on site implementation consulting, and custom configuration and/or development.
ERP implementation should be straightforward. With a complete web-based ERP business platform, Cetec ERP has all the tools you need to successfully unite your business processes without losing money and time.