Top 5 Mistakes in Implementing ERP
Rushing the Process ERP software is a major investment in one’s business success. It deserves as much care and attention as any other critical business process. You may spend months evaluating software requirements, researching vendors and eventually choosing appropriate software, only to end up having the ERP software implemented improperly. A good implementation team should always be able to make the ERP software work for your business but just how perfectly it fits your needs depends on how much time you spend on the process. Ensure full buy-in and make the implementation a top priority so that you can benefit fully from your new software system. Avoiding Necessary Expenditure An honest ERP software vendor will be upfront about implementation costs and should overestimate rather than underestimate costs. However, overages can occur despite all efforts to avoid it. It is important that the implementation is thorough and done properly, however. The costs of not completing a thorough implementation are much greater than the costs of a proper implementation. Skimming Over Important Historical Data When migrating data from your old system, be sure you have all the data you need. Data that was useless in your old system could very useful when pulled into a new system with proper reporting functionality, for example. Some data is safely left behind while most may be useful for reporting on historical data (example: looking at sales trends over the past 5 years by month). Choosing the Wrong Team It is as important to select a vendor for the team behind the software as much as the software itself. Ask yourself these questions of the team you will be dealing with:
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Do they genuinely care about your success? Do they offer personalized service? Did they get to know you and your business well? Have they helped you identify business process changes? Will you be receiving canned or personalized support?
Not Being Thorough with Training Ensure the appropriate amount of time is spent on training – not just to get to know the way around the system but also learning to use the specialized and highly functional components that the system was selected for. It may be best to spend time training on the more complex stuff once employees have gotten used to the basic functionality for ease of learning. However, time should be set aside for this in advance or else it may never be done.