What are the Steps to ERP Implementation Success?
Determining ERP requirement
Once it is figured out that your business needs an ERP system, your search begins. There are lots of choices available in the market, making it hard for businesses to decide. So, defining your ERP goals must be the first step towards successful implementation.
Is it better inventory tracking or managing work orders or optimization of other processes, you want an ERP system to simplify? The moment this is decided, you can move on to determine the budget and time frame you are ideally looking to invest.
Collect and document all this information to improve the practicality of your ERP requirement.
Research, discovery, and selection
Conducting research is the immediate next step towards successful ERP implementation. Identifying the ERP software with industry-specific features is an ideal pick for any company. It would prove to be the right solution that matches your business requisites while reducing deployment time and cost.
Integrating capability is also an absolute must seek. This feature eradicates the distress of managing multiple systems and also enables to combine the existing systems you are using with the new ERP software.
Selecting internal team
ERP implementation has an impact on the entire organization. But it needs a dedicated internal management team to keep the project on track and move it in the right direction.
These team members play a vital role in ERP system implementation success. They must be able to take ownership in removing resistance and propagate positive attitude towards the ERP change among the employees. Without this commitment, ERP implementation may witness higher chance of failure.
Configuration and preparing implementation
ERP implementation is a multiple step process. The system stores data and helps you better use and understand them. So the data scheduled to be introduced into the new ERP must be accurate and up-to-date.
Keeping your employees well-informed about ERP implementation phases helps to develop positive acceptance towards business procedures and responsibilities change brought by the new system. This speeds up the process of identifying possible issues or concerns with the software, its impact, and the necessary adjustments needed.
Go live with deployment
In this stage, your entire business is migrated from the old systems to a new ERP system. Usually, it is advised to implement the system in one location first and thereafter in other locations. This helps resolve teething troubles in just one location and ensures minimum disruptions in the roll-out for other locations.
Employee training
Designate enough time to train your employees to use the new ERP system. This would help them get familiar with processes, thus maximize the utilization of the tool.
Staffs can be trained through regular basic meetings or provided department specific training. The latter is a more defined way and is performed individually or in small groups to teach employees to operate specific features related to a particular department.
Post implementation support
The final stage of ERP implementation includes keeping track of the software’s performance. This is because even the most successful ERP implementation may experience issues with time. Document all issues experienced to get help from the support team to resolve them faster.
Also, regular maintenance would smoothen the functioning of the system. You would even get notification from your vendor about new releases, which includes feature enhancements and fixes done on the previous versions.
Here, we have aimed to explain the different phases of successful ERP implementation. However, the actual process is complicated and requires guidance from industry experts.
Focus Softnet has 27+ years of experience in designing and implementing cloud-based ERP solutions with advanced features. Fill the form to learn about our lean and agile products and get ERP experts’ help in the process of picking and implementing the best ERP software for your business.
