Tag: erpc

8 Steps to successful ERP Change Management

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

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.

What is your ERP’s Legacy?

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.

An Introduction to ERP

Here is a basic introduction to ERP. There are some good points to this article, but if you really want to know more, you should invest in some good ERP books.

An Introduction to ERP
Premal Vala

Information technology has transformed the way we live live in and the way we do business. Since last decade, I.T. has made a drastic change in our life. As compared to earlier stage, when computer was used just as a typewriter, nowadays users have become more intelligent and IT literate. Now the user knows that a PC can do many more things rather then just typing a letter in a word processing software or making balance sheets in excel. They expect more things out of their PC. During this phase of industry, every one of us must have heard the word ERP in one or the other form. It may be in title of any IT magazine or may be a point of discussion in any IT Seminar or may be in an advertisement of big IT Company. Thus in any form, we all have been through this word. In this short article, Ill try to concisely explain the basic yet important concepts relevant to ERP.

What is ERP ?

ERP is one of the most widely implemented business software systems in a wide variety of industries and organizations. ERP is the acronym of Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP is just not only a software. ERP definition refers to both; ERP software and business strategies that implement ERP systems.

ERP implementation utilizes various ERP software applications to improve the performance of organizations for

1) resource planning,

2) management control and

3) operational control.

ERP software consists of multiple software modules that integrate activities across functional departments – from production planning, parts purchasing, inventory control and product distribution to order tracking. Most ERP software systems include application modules to support common business activities like finance, accounting and human resources.

ERP Systems

ERP is much more than just a computer software. An ERP System includes ERP Software, Business Processes, Users and Hardware that run the ERP software. An ERP system is more than the sum of its parts or components. Those components interact together to achieve a common goal – streamline and improve organizations business processes. Most important factor for ERP system is the users. Successful implementation of any ERP System more depends on intelligent users who are going to use them, because any standard ERP Software would consist hundreds of input information for any particular business activity. Thus good knowledge of each entity of system to the users is most important factor in ERP Software.

History of ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the evolution of Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) II in 1980s, which was mainly related to Manufacturing Industry and was designed to control manufacturing process and planning the required production with efficient output. Where as MRP is the evolution of Inventory Management & Control conceived in 1960s, which was mainly designed for management of Stocks in any particular industry. ERP has expanded from coordination of manufacturing processes to the integration of enterprise-wide backend processes like production planning and scheduling of delivery. In terms of technology, ERP has evolved from legacy implementation to more flexible tiered client-server architecture.

Benefits of ERP

ERP software attempts to integrate business processes across departments ionto a single enterprise-wide information system. The major benefits of ERP are improved coordination across functional departments and increased efficiencies of doing business. The implementations of ERP systems help to facilitate day-to-day management as well. ERP software systems are originally and ambitiously designed to support resource planning portion of strategic planning. In reality, resource planning has been the weakest link in ERP practice due to the complexity of strategic planning and lack of adequate integration of ERP with Decision Support Systems (DSS).

Famous ERP Software

No one from IT industry will be unknown from the word SAP. SAP is the most successful ERP Software. To name more here are some examples:

PeopleSoft www.peoplesoft.com

SysPro www.syspro.com

ORION Enterprise www.3i-infotech.com

Matrix www.matrixinfosystems.com

(In the past, we have implemented Matrix ERP solution for one of our clients)

ERP Failures

I couldnt conclude my brief guide to ERP without mentioning ERP failures. The failures of Crore rupees ERP projects are reported once in a while even after many years of ERP implementation.

There are four components of an ERP System –

1) ERP software,

2) Business Processes that ERP software supports,

3) Users of ERP systems, and

4) Hardware and Operating Systems that run ERP applications.

The failures in one or more of those four components can cause the failure of an ERP project. Discussions on each of the four topics will require new article, so I may come up with same in my next article.

Author:

By Premal Vala

Premal Vala is working as a Project Leader for Semaphore Infotech Pvt. Ltd, a renowned IT company based at Ahmedabad, India. You can contact on email:</span> pr****@se****************.com.

The top 20 ERP implementation tips

We ran across an interesting article on the things you should do during an ERP implementation. Worth a read:

The top 20 ERP implementation tips
By Jan Stafford, Site Editor
22 Jun 2005 | SearchOpenSource.com

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) software project can be daunting for first-timers or veterans handling a migration. Get started on the right foot with the top 20 ERP implementation tips from Linux users, consultants and vendors.

Planning

1. Know your goals for your ERP implementation. Choose the product that promises to meet those goals and put measurement tools and processes in place to gauge your success, advises Lance Williamson, engineer, Engenio Information Technologies, Inc., Wichita, Kan. In particular, he said, set goals for performance, response time and downtime.

2. Don’t do any project without a plan, particularly an ERP project which touches almost every part of your organization, said Bernard Golden, CEO, Navica Inc., a consulting firm in San Carlos, Calif. Create process with regular milestones and participation from affected organizations. And be sure to test, test, test, all the way through. “All of these things seem like ‘nice-to-haves’ rather than critical elements in a project, but can make the overall project much more successful,” Golden explained.

3. Involve users in your ERP project planning phase, said Andy Klee, president of Klee Associates, Inc., a consulting firm in Cedaredge, Colo. “The software is not going to do you much good if you don’t have employee buy-in,” he added.

4. Don’t do the planning and implementation alone if you don’t have the in-house skills to make it happen, said Jorg Janke, president of open source ERP vendor Compiere Inc. in Portland, Ore. “Determining which options and features to use requires experience,” he said. If the in-house team doesn’t have that experience, Janke advises, find a local ERP expert who is trustworthy and who collaborates well with your team.

Read the rest of the article here…

What the ERP Salesperson doesn’t tell you

An interesting article from ITToolbox on ERP:

What the ERP Salesperson doesn’t tell you

“Let me show you how easy our software is to use”
Salespeople or professional demonstrators are trained to present their software to look as easy as possible. The truth is it is impossible to know how easy the software is until you have been using it for over 12 mos.
Ask the Customer references you speak to if the system is as easy to use and implement as they originally anticipated.

“I will give you three references for you to call …”
Software Vendors commonly offer three, carefully selected customer references for you to speak to. What do you learn from speaking to three ecstatic customers? Absolutely nothing!
A Suggestion: Ask for a list of customers in your area that have been using the system for 12 mos, preferably with similar requirements and a similar size. Then from that list you can choose which to speak to, and maybe visit one (you might even know one). If they do not have customers in your area that meet all the criteria, ask to visit a local customer that is a similar size, and to speak over the phone to a customer in a similar industry (confirming the system has had success in your industry).

Read more on: What the ERP Salesperson doesn’t tell you

ERP Books

ERPandMore is pleased to announce the opening of our new ERP Bookstore. Containing the latest books on Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Product Lifecycle Management, and Process Improvement topics, this new bookstore is your resource to finding the information you need to successfully navigate a project.

You can find this new bookstore off of our home page by clicking “Books” or by going directly to:

http://www.erpandmore.com/books/

We hope you find this a valuable information resource!

The Future of ERP

The Future of ERP
November 15, 2006
By James Maguire

The dream of enterprise resource planning systems is that a single application can track and monitor all of a business’s functions. In a perfect world, a manager opens a single ERP app to find data about any aspect of the business, from financials to HR to distribution schedules.

Alas, we’re not there yet – or at least most companies aren’t.

Looking at the ERP landscape, “there still tends to be a lot of disparate components, that are either homegrown or older packages,” says Forrester analyst Paul Hamerman.

Moreover, there are still a lot of gaps in ERP systems, particularly in industries where ERP functionality has grown up from its historic origins in manufacturing. There are even gaps in core ERP areas, Hamerman tells Datamation, “where they just haven’t done a particularly good job, in areas like budgeting, and recruitment…where the vast majority of customer use something other than their ERP vendor.”

But despite the challenges, the movement toward a global ERP system is a key factor shaping the future of enterprise resource planning.

“It’s a trend that’s going on, and most companies are going in this direction: Read more about The Future of ERP