Best Practices in ERP

With a well-designed strategy and a realistic plan, your concerns of a failed ERP implementation are typically unfounded. Here are some critical best practices to follow so that your ERP deployment runs smoothly and that you benefit the most from your new system. 

Establishing a Strong Project Team

Having a strong project team is crucial in the first steps of implementing ERP in your business. It typically consists of an executive sponsor, a project manager and representatives of key business groups involved in the project. Having an executive sponsor responsible for adjusting business priorities and arranging additional resources when needed is critical to success. Setting top-level goals, needs, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), managing daily project operations, ensuring project completion within the deadline and budget, and measuring results. Less-resourced organizations may need the assistance of an outside consultant to overcome these difficulties due to the level of skill required by the project management functions.

Picking the Key Requirements

In any ERP project, it’s important to establish clear requirements linked to your business goals. Consider your business’s actual needs – What do you want to achieve from implementation? Any problems you want to solve? 
For example: automating processes to save time and money; improving your capacity to respond to clients; or facilitating better analysis across the business. 

Analyzing current workflows, systems, and key business processes is all part of the requirements gathering stage. Implementing an ERP system, gives you the opportunity to introduce a better process rather than just automate an ineffective one. Therefore, it's important to consider what you want to achieve and how each process could be enhanced. 

Generating a list of key requirements should assist you in your ERP implementation. An example of such criteria includes reducing financial close time by half, delivering real-time reporting, or automating the connection between payroll and the core accounting system. As key requirements should not only be limited to generating at the start, project teams must also be prepared to adapt and make tweaks to the ERP system to make it align with the ever-changing needs of the business. 

Selecting the Right ERP Partner

Choosing the right ERP partner is also a key differentiator to a successful ERP implementation. The success of implementation greatly depends on the reliability of the ERP vendor and the quality of their support. Research and choose an ERP partner who not only possesses the necessary know-how and expertise in your sector, but also aligns with your vision and core principles of your business so that the transition process would be easier.  Lastly, find out if they provide support and training once your software goes live. 

Spending Time in Providing Training

The adoption of ERP helps manage your business systems and processes efficiently. However, employees would require time to adapt and learn how to use the software given the sudden change in business processes and job responsibilities. Hence, companies should give employees time to adapt to these new roles and processes by providing ample training before, during and after the implementation process. Giving your staff the right training on how to utilize the software will help them to satisfy users and get a significant return on investment with the tool.

Migrating Data

Data migration to an ERP system is difficult during the implementation phase as it requires thorough planning and preparation. With any migration, there is a risk of losing or corrupting data, especially if it involves consolidating and standardizing data from various applications.

The decision of whether to transfer data manually or automatically using specialized tools is a key factor in an ERP installation, with both offering its own benefits. Manually importing data into a new system offers the chance to purge obsolete information, such as suppliers who have gone out of business and clients who have not placed an order in years. On the other hand, automation can make the procedure considerably quicker and less tiresome. Regardless of the method you use, it's crucial to validate the data after migration to make sure it was accurately moved to the new system.

Need an ERP software but unsure of how to start?

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For decades, we at delaware have been combining our experience with deep technological expertise. We are confident in our ability to provide valuable advice and implement the platform that best suits your needs. 

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