We are posting the link to various top selling ERP Project Management books. These will be updated occasionally for your review to see the latest information on key project management methods.
We hope you find this useful. It is always useful to refresh yourself on Project Management techniques.
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Why try to implement your ERP implementation with a phased approach? Why not just install the system and then educate the end-users in how to use it? The reason is that an ERP implementation is a huge undertaking. If done correctly, your company will benefit greatly. If done incorrectly, your company can throw away millions of dollars. Why do we say this?
via » Meet Your ERP Implementation Goals and Objectives Free Articles Directory About Business.
With the drive to being more environmentally responsible, corporate management is (or will be) setting initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. While moving towards Green and reducing the carbon footprint, the question becomes, how do we manage this? Should ERP be modified to include the tracking of carbon emissions?
ERP systems are essentially large accounting systems that capture oodles of data and summarize it in a report to management. Traditionally, they are focused on financial, operational, human resources, and other resource data reporting. It would seem that the next logical step would be to begin tracking and reporting on carbon footprint data. It is surprising though that major ERP vendors have not yet announced this sort of system module or functionality.
[ReviewAZON asin=”0470393742″ display=”inlinepost”]With efforts in reducing the carbon footprint focused on the data center, such as reducing power consumption of the server farms, management may be missing the point. FedEx, for example, has reduced fuel bills by up to 30 per cent through better route planning for its trucks. That justifies a lot of server power.
Without the tracking of this sort of key data, management may be focused in the wrong direction. With proper information and analysis, companies can make better decisions and reduce emissions where it gives the most added value. It seems that an ERP system would be perfect in tracking, analyzing and notifying management on the results of their green strategic initiatives.
What do you think?
All implementation project managers must focus on people, processes and technology. It is the people aspect that is often the most complicated. Any enterprise software endeavor creates a wave of resistance. The difference between success and failure is determined by how you manage the change process.
There are many methods, but one useful method is the Kotter Change Management Methodology. This method was developed and documented by John Kotter, a noteable professor at the Harvard Business School. According to Mr. Kotter, the Eight Steps to a successful change are:
1. Create a Sense of Urgency
2. Pull Together the Guiding Team
3. Decide What you will do
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy-in
5. Empower others to act
6. Produce Short-term wins
7. Don’t let up
8. Create a New Culture
His latest book, shown here uses a fable to illustrate how to manage change is a wonderful book that gives the high-level understanding of change management. Using a penguin colony in Antarctica as the setting, the author uses this analogy to any change occurring with groups of people. It is worth a read, but more importantly it is worth your project team reading and discussing together. Using the eight steps outlined above, with a cohesive understanding of how change affects teams, together you can undertake any enterprise software rollout.
Be sure to read John Kotter’s other books on Leading Change
ERP Manufacturing Software is a specific category of ERP Software and one that can be confusing. There a multitude of ERP Manufacturing Software vendors in the market, but which one is the best one for you? The simple answer is that there may be several. There are at least four key factors that need to be examined when selecting ERP manufacturing software.
The first is the industry you are working in. Are you a process manufacturer, such as paint or chemicals? Or, are you a discrete manufacturer making specific parts? More specifically, do you make repetitive parts, or are the parts make to order? Are you a job shop environment, estimating and making parts to order? Or are you a project based manufacturer, that similar to a job shop estimates and makes parts to order, but because of a complex process or a lengthy time for manufacturing makes parts as part of an overall project? There are specific software types for each of these manufacturing industries. The key to honing in on the specific manufacturing ERP solution is to know your industry type and then examine software that serves that industry.
Which leads us to the second point, the ERP manufacturing software’s legacy. Where did this software evolve from? What industry did it originally serve and what industries were added. A software that was built around a particular industry usually has that industries best practices built into the software functionality. When the software expands to other industries, it doesn’t always fit the best practices of that secondary industry as well. And many softwares become “jack of all trades, but master of none.” Look into where the ERP software evolved from.
Once you understand the legacy of the ERP manufacturing software, you need to look at its process functionality. This means that you should have some specific case examples of your process and have the vendor demonstrate that there ERP software can handle your process flow. You do not need to do some extensive flowcharting and spend months on the design. Simply understand the flow of orders in your plant and have the system replicate that flow for you, using your data. The vendor should be able to show you this in a “scripted demonstration”. Have them prove to you that it can handle the task at hand.
Lastly, make sure that your ERP manufacturing software vendor has a good fit to your requirements. There are a lot of requirements that a manufacturing software must address, but drill down on the specific requirements that make your organization unique. Is it the way that you account for your inventory? Is it the uniqueness of the bill-of-material structures? Is it a certain process that you employee to produce parts? Give the vendor a listing of your key requirements and using the process demonstration approach have them show you that they can handle these requirements.
There are a lot of factors that you need to consider when selecting an ERP Manufacturing software system. Keep in mind that every software is unique in its approach. They say that they conform to APICS standards, but exactly how they get there is often different. Ensure that you apply enough planning and due diligence to your selection process to extract the deep and sometimes difficult answers to your questions from the ERP vendors. Most of all, keep in mind that there is a lot of smoke and mirrors around the demonstration of ERP software and you need to watch the details for the truth.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is key to integrating all areas of a business. It controls the financials, the inventory, the purchasing and the ordering. There are a lot of ERP software vendors. The market though has consolidated in the past few years since the Y2K upgrade fever and the downturn of the software market.
Now ERP is undergoing a resurgence and many companies are looking to either purchase new systems to replace a collection of disintegrated systems or to upgrade an older ERP system that just doesn’t cut it anymore. With the market consolidation, there have been a lot of mergers and acquisitions of software companies. These acquisitions often result in the name of the company being revised and the software being renamed to something “more modern†or catchier to the ear.
One such software is Infor’s Syteline. At one point it was Symix Software’s Syteline. Then it became Frontstep. Then it was acquired by Mapics. Then Mapics was purchased by Infor. Thus Syteline the product has had a lot of masters. The core functionailty has remained relatively unchanged through the transitions. It has gone through some serious upgrades though along the path, including a switch to the .NET programming platform.
Baan is another software solution that has been through the wringers. But where Syteline continued to upgrade, Baan laid dormant for a couple of years. Baan had some financial difficulties and then it was purchased by a British company Invensys. Invensys held on to it for a while and then Baan the software was ultimately purchased by Infor. Under the hood, it is still relatively the same code base, although a lot of new functionality has been added.
On other fronts, older legacy software is becoming upgraded. Take JD Edwards World Software. It has a lot of clients who were running on the old green screen software for a long time with minimal upgrades. A few patches. Then in the past few months, Oracle, the new parent to JD Edwards finally released a comprehensive upgrade.
A key point to understand is that while many systems seem to be modern, you need to look at the history behind the software, especially if you are about to purchase a new ERP system. Key answers to find out are the history of the package, the customer base of the software, and the industries it typically serves. Often people will buy software and find out it was meant for a different market. Find out too if the software has remained on a consistent upgrade path. Some software systems have been completely rewritten in modern languages while other systems have had a window dressing interface applied, while the underlying engine is still antique code. Dig deep and hopefully you will be sure that you are not buying the proverbial pig with lipstick.
There is an excellent article on ERP from IBM that discusses the issues of the value of ERP. Getting everyone communicating together is one of the largest benefits of implementing an ERP system.
Using ERP to get everyone on the same page
By Julie Fraser
How many different applications are in use across your organization? Most small and medium businesses have dozens if not hundreds of different systems. The result: critical information is not being shared among departments, and employees struggle to get visibility to what is correct or what has happened. The cost of manually tracking down information is considerable. When you consider that it also leads to missed opportunities, poor decisions, poor execution, and disjointed customer service, the cost is far higher than many companies realize.
