Planning For Implementing Or Choosing ERP For Our Company

There are some common mistakes which most of the first time buyers make while planning for implementing or choosing ERP for their company. While choosing an ERP the money and time involved can be quite depressing and therefore companies search for such ERP applications which are cheap and easy to deploy. This criteria or decision makers pre-occupied with these thoughts mostly fail, the reason behind this is simple, ERP is chosen and implemented to enhance working of the company and increase its efficiency not to save money in buying or implementing it. But management in pursuit of cheaper and easier solution ignores some important factors and in the end expected results are not achieved even after successful implementation. While planning for implementing or choosing ERP for the company decision shall be based on following points and analysis.

Identification of critical success factors - Critical success factors are those problems which are stopping the company from increasing its business and earning higher profits and management and senior staff expects ERP to help in resolving these issues. Prioritize these problems as urgent, high, medium and low, this will also help in deciding the feasibility of purchasing an ERP. Also, identifying the strong processes of the company is very necessary, as these processes shall be improved but certainly not compromised or given up during implementation.

After this analysis, priority shall be given to software vendor's track record, level of support it can provide and software's ability to fit in the business while planning for implementing or choosing ERP for the company. Professional vendor and customizable software increase chances of success by many times.

Scalability of the software and its functionality shall be checked after vendor and software analysis while planning for implementing or choosing ERP for the company. Requirements and market trends will keep on changing, even company can grow in size, scalable software will prove to be a profitable investment in the long run compared to cheap but rigid software. Compatibility with software or bunch of small software company has been using so far is also important as this data is crucial for the company and shall be incorporated with database of the ERP.

Price, ease of use and ease of implementation shall be considered after above said points. The most economical software which is easy to use and requires lesser time in implementation will reduce load over company's finances and also staff. Ease of use will help in getting the existing staff trained on the software and transformation from manual working to software will be smooth.

Ease of implementation and compatibility with present hardware shall come last on the priority list while planning for implementing or choosing ERP for the company. There is no harm in spending more money and time for proper and error free implementation as it is one time effort and crucial for ERP's success. Also, cost of replacing hardware in comparison of buying and implementing ERP is not much hence these points shall be considered in the end after analyzing above said points. Staff shall be included in the discussions as and when possible to build their trust over new system and inspire them to make it a success.