Are You Asking These Six Tough Questions To Your ERP Partner?
Ask: What Are the Parameters For Assessing the Success Of Your ERP Implementation?
Your Implementation partner should relate to the unique needs and goals of your company to accelerate the existing operations and increase profit margins.
Make sure that your ERP partner is capable of transparently defining and recording your requirements and expected results from the implementation process. Your partner should take you through the basic stages of collecting and analyzing historical data, developing implementation and deployment strategies and rendering post-production support. Other than this, your partner should be able to identify the potential challenges before embarking on the journey.
Ask: How Proficient Are You With Change Management And Training?
For an ERP implementation to be effective, your partner must have a flexible plan meant for executing change management.
The process of ERP implementation can be made easier only when your partner establishes clear lines of communication and informs your employees about the expected changes from time-to-time. Acquaint your workers about the changes beforehand so that they feel included and do not hesitate while accepting them. Ask your ERP partner if the project could be divided into smaller phases to prevent untimely disruptions from seeping in. Allot some time to chalk the immediate priorities with your partner and attend the significant issues first. If your workforce is required to through some training, ensure that the pace of the program suits all and nobody is left behind.
Ask: How Does Your Company Define Implementation Success?
In order to make your ERP implementation successful, you should outline the desired outcomes beforehand and ensure that your partner is entirely focused on fulfilling them.
The chief objective of implementing a new ERP system is to bring about an effective and efficient transformation. Regardless of the nature and seriousness of the outcomes, they should be definite and measurable. To monitor progress, your ERP partner should have rely on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that can keep track of the ongoing process and provide crucial feedbacks. More or less, your goals should revolve around improvement of customer support and engagement, sales performance, and profits and productivity.
Ask: What Is the Scope Of Customization?
If your company has a set of business operations that cannot be categorized under the standard amenities of the ERP system, your partner should be able to smoothly integrate the customizations.
The experience and expertise of your partner in this field could give your ERP implementation project a whole new turn. As a result of their thorough familiarity with the ERP systems, your partner will be able to suggest solutions that could instantly fill in the existing deficiencies and introduce the necessary customizations. Proposing customizations alone would not be enough. Demarcating changes in your prevalent business processes, automating workflows, generating reports that are not included in systems and training the workforce to comfortably work with the software’s updated version will essentially fit in like the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Ask: Do You Ever Overstep the Delegated Budget?
Besides being able to predict unknown issues during implementation and slotting in necessary customizations, your ERP partner should try their best not to exceed the budget.
Chances are, your ERP implementation partner will not be able to estimate the budget of the project until the requirements are methodically assessed. Once you have a budget, chalking out a project plan and expected time of completion would no longer be a daunting task. Your partner should be in the position to tell you how much time each stage of the project would take and furnish you with regular updates about its progress and probable challenges. If there are at all any last minute changes in the project plan, your partner should explain how the processes will work and the additional resources it would require.
Ask: What Makes You More Competent Than Your Competitors?
Even if you have innumerable options while choosing an ERP implementation partner, the one you are working with should be able to elucidate how they could add value to your business.
An experienced ERP partner will have detailed knowledge about the best practices of the industry and those that are relevant to your company. As they are aware of the challenges that could block the implementation process and their solutions, your organization would experience a sudden boost in its profits and productivity. Vendor certification too can pose as vital indicator of your partner’s technical, industrial and functional expertise. Considering how swiftly the industry-vertical norms and trends are changing, your partner should take continuous training and development seriously. If you are planning for the longer term, your partner should help you capitalize on technology both now and in future.