Enterprise Resource Planning - Coursework Example

In the meantime the very best ERP vendors show and provide a map on how to transition their clients from their current business practice to the industry best practice and regulatory compliant processes. It should be noted that it would be in the best interest of most ERP vendors to extend the time of an implementation because it simply means a longer engagement which would assure a steady cash-flow for the ERP vendor. It should also be noted that most client companies consider their process one of the best if not the best process in the industry and that most employees or even managers and leaders of the organization’s comfort zone lies in their own legacy processes.

The last two sentences are inversely proportional to the length of engagement of the ERP vendors depending on the group to which they belong (good, very good, better or the best). It is therefore noteworthy to consider that it would be in the best interest of the ERP vendor to extend their engagement with a particular client. There are several considerations in implementing ERP in a company, this would include acculturation and assimilation of ERP supported processes and the integration and use of the ERP in the everyday activities of the company.

Thus, ERP is not simply implementing applications after application it also include change management from the corporate cultural level. The acculturation and immersion of the ERP into the culture of the company is considered the most potent critical success factor for any ERP implementation and leaving this responsibility to vendors may not be a good business decision.. An ERP implementation should not be considered as an IT project but rather a project involving the entire organization to ensure its success.

All Business Process Owners and Subject Matter Experts in the organization should not only be tapped as a resource but rather they should be the lead architect in defining the scope or blue print of the entire organization’s processes and their inter-relation with each other. The ERP vendor for its part should be able to define and provide a detailed map on how to provide solutions to the gaps discovered between what is provided by the ERP solution and the blue printed business processes. During the realization stage of the ERP project or the stage where most of the development of the solutions to the gaps are resolved, extensive testing of actual data should be done by the subject matter experts and the users themselves.

During data migration actual retrofitting of the data should not only be exact but their subsequent application to the system and the output that should be derived from them should be perfectly streamlined. Training should not be confined on how to use the system but the training should also cover how to resolve conflicts. The training should cover areas and subject that would enable the client to be self-sustaining and self-reliant. Go live and support should include stress testing and process exception handling to ensure that even during the most arduous conflict the entire competence team of the client would be able to resolve and provide solution to the conflict if not a temporary work around.

Given the above, ERP clients or potential clients should not let ERP vendors define their requirements for them, while the ERP vendor can be consulted on what is the industry standard as implemented in the ERP solution their