First Steps to an ERP ‘Health Check’

Understanding your existing business processes is paramount to the first steps of any ERP Implementation.? A process to determine your key business challenges, future objectives and goals.? By documenting all these areas, it highlights what procedures are and are not up to date, determine what processes could potentially be automated, reveals where efficiencies can be made, and determines whether all employees business-wide, currently have access to real-time company data.?

So, how do you get this process started?? By reviewing all touch points of a business that will be part of the ERP transformation.? The key 6 steps to reviewing existing process and operations are:

Documentation & review of existing processes

This can be anything from the task of raising invoices in the accounts department to stock control in the warehouse.? All areas of the business which need to be improved by the ERP system must be highlighted ready to be reviewed.?

Review ‘pain’ points

Where in the business do ‘headaches’ occur?? What areas of the business do you want to streamline? Listen to all business stakeholders for their suggestions, concerns and ideas, they know the business better than you may realise.?

Requirements capture for any potential upgrade or implementation

From the above 2 areas, a business should then be at a point to gather their requirements to determine their key needs and ultimately the specification for their potential upgrade or implementation.

Ideal timeline

Without a realistic timeline to plan out the implementation, there is a risk that the implementation may be pulled off tangent and run rapidly over timeframe (and budget - setting a contingency is also necessary to account for potential overspend, see below).

Budget

ERP implementations are reknown for going over budget.? Unless a realistic budget is set from initial business case preparation (plus a contingency), there is risk that the project may fall down and/or be significantly compromised.

To summarise

Once all the above have been completed, a business is then able to create their business case presentation and project documentation ready to start the project of their ERP implementation.?