7 helpful tips on what your implementation process should look like

Following on from our recent webinar our CBO Epicor Experts Richard Hipgrave and Richard Townend have compiled 7 helpful tips on what your implementation process should look like.

1) Set clear objectives

Before embarking on a project, it’s important to establish a baseline of where you are now and where you want to be in order to determine clear objectives for the project.

2) Establish where the pain points lie and how to tackle them

To get the most out of an implementation it is important to analyse your current processes as well as establish the immediate pain points of the business.

It might be worth considering a phased approach when tackling your immediate pain points, as this method proves to be less disruptive. Fewer variables will be in the mix and most importantly, you are achieving quick wins by phasing in functionality.

3) Appoint a strong leader and project team

Appoint a strong project leader and a team who can dedicate their time and support to this project. Ideally you would want representative from each relevant department to be part of the team, however you should also ask yourself who are the businesses future successors? Ensure that your future successors are part of this project team, as they will have a better understanding of the direction of the business as well as potentially help you to achieve your goals.

It’s also good practice to keep the project team together after ‘Go Live’ to act as an ERP committee. The ERP system should be continuously under review to ensure it is being used at its optimum and continues to support changing business processes and requirements.

4) Be mindful of how long an implementation may take

An implementation of a project can take typically 9 months to a year, however not every business operates the same.

Before an implementation commences, we recommend customers to consider factors such as; number of business processes, number of departmental functions, licenses users etc that are to be included in the new system. This can all affect the timescales as well as the number of customisations and modification.

5) Look at the potential factors that may hinder progress

The usual offenders that are mainly responsible for hindering progress in your project are;

• In order to aid successful implementation, they need to have internal resources available and their implementation partner is there to support them. If an organisation isn’t able to commit the appropriate time and resource, it will hinder/delay the project.
• Having anomalies or duplication in your organisations data. Companies need access to data to get the relevant KPI’s and to make the right decision.
• Also the businesses internal change control procedures can have an effect on the overall timescales of the project. A customer should consider how long it could take to produce company specific training guides and roll out the training plan.

6) Establish KPIs to monitor and measure success

It is useful to create KPI’s prior to commencing the project and then ensure the data is available to analyse the KPI’s.
Click here to download our paper on 10 key manufacturing KPIs to monitor and improve ROI on your new ERP implementation.

7) Look for a partner who has a proven implementation methodology

Look for an ERP partner who has a signature methodology as well as their best practices are based upon the years of combined experience across a variety of industry sectors.

The great thing about a signature methodology is that it has some fundamental principles to ensure project governance but is flexible enough to be adaptable to individual customers requirements allowing for agile implementations.

If you would like help and advice on building out the right ERP implementation project for your business  then please Get in touch to discuss your next project.