Leading the ERP implementation journey

For most organisations, especially joint stock companies, the question is not whether to use an ERP, but rather how to implement and maintain it, says Khaled EL-Faramawy.

The new era of internet, e-commerce, high advancement of telecommunications, networking and globalisation forces business executives to be under continuous pressures to increase the revenues, reduce operating costs, gather and analyse data more frequently and rapidly explore new market initiatives and increase the business opportunities thus resulting in more profits and market share.

To be able to operate within new global challenges, especially under major financial crises or global recessions, companies are in great need of a real time system that can stream line the transaction processing, provide operations-level reporting and to ensure the consistency and reliability of data across the enterprise, which simply implies that the organisations must implement an Enterprise Resource Planning system. which provides a robust foundation for the business by providing common data repository, and to standardise the business processes across the different departments. Knowing that possessing a reliable system is becoming a business necessity which leads to the fact that implementing an ERP is a must to survive, and bearing in mind that the ERP implementation is not an easy task, the stakeholders are entrapped and seek the answer to the key question, how to implement an ERP successfully?. The key success factors are:

Scope Definition: Organisations should precisely determine their requirements in details for the entire organisation, and then finalise the scope by having a helicopter view of the entire requirements from different departments and determine the flow of information between various business functions to identify the integration points.
 
Vendor Selection: According to the size of organisation, its vision, and allocated budget, the suitable software vendors should be invited to demonstrate their capabilities for fulfilling the crystal clear requirements.

Implementation partner selection: The fact that the investment in an ERP system once started will never stop imposes that organisation must seek for a business partner rather than an implementation vendor. Organisations will require a long-term relationship partner who is capable to provide all services related to the ERP. Organisations will need a partner who is capable to identify the pain areas and precisely suggest, design and implement a value adding practical and best value for money solution satisfying the requirements. Further more, the partner should be capable to make the necessary integration efforts with existing applications and build industry specific features and functionality that are not accommodated within the ERP and streamline the processes towards a total business solution.

As the training is considered as one of the critical success factors, the partner must provide the required training to the different user within the organization to ensure a smooth transition from the old legacy systems and the newly introduced ERP. Prior to going live, the partner must assess the site readiness and provide change management activities to ensure the implementation success and avoid any show-stoppers. Obviously, the initial going live stage is extremely critical and accordingly the partner should provide the post implementation support and maintenance activities to quickly resolve any issues and ensure customer satisfaction. Finally, the partner should ensure that the business users are fully utilising the implemented features and suggest future footprint to adding more value for business.

Top management guidance

With top management commitment towards the successful implementation of the ERP, all the employees’ efforts will be focused to the company target. Lack of this major success factor will result in wasting time and great deal of money. Strong project management functionality is necessary to ensure successful implementation of an ERP project. At all times, project constraints, including scope, time, cost, quality and customer satisfaction, should be taken care of and strong change control procedure should be in place to ensure the smooth implementation of the projects on time and on budget.

Khaled EL-Faramawy is Business Solutions Sales Consulting Manager for AL-Nokhba for Business Transformation (NBT). He is a senior business professional with diversified credentials in business development, account management, solution development, sales, marketing, key alliance relationships, project management and customer satisfaction. He has more than 15 years’ experience working with various industries, challenging markets and different cultures.