By leveraging ERP systems, organisations can streamline operations, boost efficiency, and drive cost savings. This strategic investment in ERP often leads to a significant return on investment (ROI), making them a valuable asset for businesses looking to enhance their processes.

When embarking on an ERP journey, it is important to understand the key stages of delivery, to ensure a successful implementation. Understand more about how this works by reading our blog: What Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is and How it Works.

In this blog, understand what to expect when adopting a new system...

1. Discovery and planning: During the initial stage of an ERP implementation, it is crucial to assemble a cross-functional team to assess your organisation's requirements for the new system and document them in a comprehensive statement of needs.

2. Evaluation and selection: In the next phase, evaluate a set of ERP systems and select the one that meets the needs of your organisation, as determined during the discovery and planning phase. There are various types of ERP systems available, such as cloud-based, on-premise, and hybrid options. You need to consider each one carefully to determine which one suits your organisation the most. 

3. Optimised design and implementation: When the right ERP system has been procured, the project or implementation team will work out the correct configuration of the system to support your business processes and workflows.  

4. Development: Once the ERP software is set up, the team will create supplementary reports, inquiries, automations, and dashboards to supply necessary business information and streamline processes. They will also establish interfaces to connect with other business systems, enabling them to function cohesively and produce consistent reports. 

5. Testing: Testing is a very important step in an ERP implementation. Its purpose is to ensure that the system works as planned and address any unexpected problems. No matter how standard the software is, it is possible to get a setting the wrong way round, so testing provides the opportunity to right the wrongs.

6. Training: For a successful implementation, it is important to ensure users are adequately trained in the use and configuration of the new system. This starts with building a strategy around who needs to be trained, when they require the training, and what media should be used. It may be beneficial to deliver training during the implementation at certain milestones, to provide a more practical learning experience. 

7. Change management: This is a crucial step in your organisation’s ERP Implementation journey. When it comes to people, managing change can be a challenging process. Technology enables change, but people drive it. Make sure you employ the right strategies to ensure your people embrace the change and are committed to achieving the desired business outcomes. 

8. Deployment: It’s show time! The project team start the data migration process to the new solution. The thinking starts with how you wish to cutover and then works backwards to determine what data needs to be brought in from the old system. When the new system goes live -either in stages or all at once - a phased approach can help you manage risks and issues, while spreading the workload. 

9. Support: Early stages of support, sometimes referred to as hypercare, will involve extra assistance to ensure that the transition to the new systems and processes is as smooth as possible. This is where the project and/or consultancy team ensure that the system is working as it should and that staff are able to maximise its use. 

10. Continuous Improvement: Adopting a continuous improvement plan is a great way to keep your systems optimised as your business changes, and as new features become available in the ERP market. 

Looking to launch your next ERP project? Contact us.