What to Avoid When Investing in a New ERP System
Albert Einstein may or may not have said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” But whoever did make that observation, it also applies to investing during a new ERP system.
If the present system is not serving your company’s needs and replacement is a serious consideration, it doesn’t make sense to spend untold amounts of money, time, and resources to exchange it with the exact same thing. But many companies have done just that – bought a replacement system, then proceeded to tailor and/or modify the system to look, feel and operate a bit like the prior system.
Why would companies do that? The reasons/excuses usually fall under one of these categories:
· this is often what the users are used to and they won’t be willing or able to change the way they do things.
· this is often the way we’ve been running the company for years and we don’t want to change that.
· Best practices are what everyone else is doing (albeit successfully) and we’re not the identical as everyone else – we’re better. (If everything goes so swimmingly then why are you changing systems?)
Unless the replacement project was triggered by an old system rising in smoke (literally or figuratively), and whether or not that’s the case, a corporation will want to see some operational performance improvements resulting from this large investment – lower costs, higher productivity, quality improvements resulting in more sales, better customer service (leading to more sales or higher margins), etc.
Even if this is a simple, direct replacement for a system that has failed, a number of the cost lies in the new features Since the current system was installed, however many years ago, it has been updated and merged into the new software. Why prefer to not take advantage of everything the new purchase has to offer?
Harnessing Best Practices during a New ERP System
Tailoring or modifying the new system to be a bit like the old one, won’t deliver improvements in operational performance or different results. it might be difficult to see much ROI in that kind of project.
Don’t be so quick to dismiss “best practices” as too pedestrian to warrant consideration. they’re called best practices because they work. And if your competitors are using them to effectively compete against your business, adopting those practices might just bring business back to parity, which may be a great starting point for further improvements that will catapult business success ahead.
The Importance of Not Modifying New ERP Software Codes
It’s perfectly okay to tailor screen layouts, reports, procedural flow, and therefore the like to fit the way things are currently working, but take care not to change the functions. remember of what the function, as built, is meant to do and how it relates to the overall system, and the way it will affect business before making any of these cosmetic changes. As you learn more about the new system, you would possibly decide that the news reports and flows are actually better than the old ones.
So, don’t modify the packaged software code. Find another software package that better matches your needs if the new system can’t be used as-is or with the customizing features available.
