ERP Key Success Factors Series 2 presentation includes the following: 6) Effective Project Management 7) High Communication Standards 8) Scope Creep Management 9) Data & Approvals on Time 10) Education & Training

1. ERP KEY SUCCESS FACTORS: SERIES 2 (FACTOR 6 – 10) VELCOM ERP IT SOURCING PVT LTD An Independent ERP Consulting & Talent Sourcing Company 1

3. High Communication Standards

4. Scope Creep Management

5. Data & Approvals on Time

6. Education & Training2

8. Unrealistic expectations on project timelines

9. Not accounting all the project implementation activities during the planning phase

10. ERP vendors fail to manage client expectations on project scope & duration

11. Try to develop an estimate before a proper plan is in place

12. Project plan misses the non-vendor related items - process & workflow definition, data migration & customization effort to meet unique business requirements.

13. Effective ERP project management can resolve the following issues among others:

14. Enable the required level of transparency / visibility to all on the project progress

15. Manage expectations across the organization especially with the project stakeholders

16. Manage the time, effort & cost of all involved while meeting the project objectives

17. Escalate the critical risks early with relevant mitigations to stakeholders

18. Establish clear project structures to be maintained through stakeholders support

19. Expectation management is of defining, managing & integrating the below processes:

20. Overall implementation schedule, effort & cost

21. Communicate key milestones / deliverable & their target dates to all the stakeholders

22. Process to keep track of the project schedule & measures to gauge the performance3

24. Define key business objectives

25. Frame project schedule specific to the implementation project & cover all the project implementation details

26. Aggregate all the business transformation activities & corresponding resources required covering all the project phases

27. Track the dependencies between the project & business areas involved in the plan

28. Gather input for resource forecasting & collaboration, track milestone achievement status and align it with the organization’s environment & constraints

29. An effective ERP program management should take care of mitigating the risks involved in the following phases of the project:

30. Planning; Business process re-engineering (AS-IS, GAP FIT & TO-BE)

31. Implementation of Standard functionality / modules of ERP; Training

32. Planned Customization to take care of the critical requirements (business & technical), which are identified through the Gap-fit analysis

33. Key Integration requirements for legacy systems; Resource requirements to execute the change management process

34. Understanding the scale of data conversions & related data cleansing

35. Coordination of business resources for testing & validation of functionality4

37. Few examples of stakeholders communication for the ERP project are

38. Internal (employees)

39. Frequent project status reporting

40. Role Clarity for all the project team members

41. When to impart their current process & business requirements to the vendor & their impact

42. Executive stakeholder (top management)

43. Major risks identification & their mitigation plan

44. Key Decision to be made

45. External stakeholder (customer, vendor etc.,)

46. Precautions taken to ensure customer deliveries aren't delayed

47. Requirements / data they need to provide for the project

48. Changes to the ways orders will be processed5

50. Project Objectives, Milestones & Deliverable – Plan vs Actual

51. Project Risks / Constraints & Mitigation Plan

52. Time, Effort & Cost – Budget vs Actual

53. Impact of new ERP system across all the functions of the organization

54. Communication management system, include the following:

55. Objectives identification - Identify the information needs of all the stakeholders

56. Plan development - Communication targets, required information & time intervals

57. Plan execution

58. Project team members should know what their tasks are and how & when to accomplish them

59. Good Communication help lessen the curiosity & uncertainty of an ERP Project Implementation6

61. Critical to prioritize the business requirements / goals & implement ERP accordingly

62. Processes defined to avoid the scope creep - Planning, Definition, Authentication, Control

63. Reasons for scope creep to occur include:

64. In-complete project scope definition

65. Not having the right project team to determine the actual business requirements

66. No expectation management set between the customer & vendor

67. Lack of change request system

68. Bad communication among project stakeholders

69. Less project control by the project manager

70. Customer used for "freebies" and doesn’t value the project scope / effort / timeline

71. Project Stakeholders having conflicting interest on the project7

73. Cordial relationship & manage expectation among the stakeholders

74. Good initial scoping & planning

75. Get the right project team from the start to determine the actual business requirements (present & future)

76. Firm agreement with the project management structure & change request system

77. Proper requirement documentation with customer acceptance including prioritization

78. Scope control through proper change control system & not accepting changes without executive acceptance are crucial

79. Every attempt to make seemingly "small" scope changes, should be avoided except business critical ones

80. Even the best projects would have at least 5-10% scope creep, so to buffer accordingly

81. Project manager should have the necessary skills to work with all, to successfully manage the scope creep at the desired levels.8

83. Enough time need to be allocated to recognize, explain, authorize & replicate all the required information

84. An ERP system implementation gives the opportunity to correct the legacy data i.e. Revision & updation of the data

85. Master - customers, suppliers, general ledger, inventory, technology etc.,

86. Transaction - quote, order, invoice, receipt, voucher etc.,

87. Significant effort for data preparation, entry, migration & validation would be required to collate information from various sources of dispersed data

88. Information related constraints include

89. Finding the right data to load into the system

90. Converting disparate data structures into a single, consistent format before the system usage.

91. Documentation of current & future (required) business processes & data flows is key to design the ERP system

92. This would ensure that the automated ERP system would bring in the complete business process & the desired operational management controls.9

94. Key decisions / approvals to be taken on the following during the ERP project implementation:

95. Project Plan

96. Team structure & Resource allocation

97. Project goals / deliverable & Scope

98. Key requirements (process & data flow) – business & technical

99. Business Process Re-engineering

100. Gaps & Issues

101. Change Management Plan

102. Total Cost of Ownership

103. Data (master & transaction) Conversion & Migration

104. Training – Core team / Business user / IT user

105. Documentation

106. Organization team along with the vendor team has to take the decisions on the above on time to ensure that the ERP Project is implemented successfully to realize the complete ROI.10

108. Organizations would realize better ROI, only when the users understand how to properly use ERP

109. The more the exposure & hands-on training, the more users be confident on their abilities to take ownership & contribute to the ERP project success.

110. Normally 5% of the project effort is dedicated for the ERP Project. ERP Project would deliver great results, if the ERP training effort is increased to 10% of the overall ERP Project effort.

111. Training should be timed properly - neither very early nor very late

112. The team should enter the real transaction data & execute real life scenarios in the new ERP to confirm the required data accuracy & result.

113. Training Calendar

114. Set recurring training budget; Plan refresher training program

115. Periodic review of training requirements

116. Set & execute the action plan, to fix the users skills level gaps, for the proper usage of the ERP system11

118. Assess the skills-gap user-level wise & plan for upgrade (if any) before the ERP training

120. Basic training on the ERP system & process at the project start, to create proper ERP Blueprint

121. Education & training on Business process, Modules, transaction workflow, MIS

122. Training on the conference room pilot

123. Training to manage the end user training & support

124. ERP End business user training

125. Basic training on the ERP system & process for understanding of the ERP usage & benefits

126. Role based education & training on Business process, Modules, transaction workflow, MIS

127. ERP Maintenance team training

128. To manage the ERP master setup & administration, user rights, data/server backup & restore

129. Problem resolution (adding hardware capacity, process & procedure changes, user acceptance, retraining, additional training)

130. Training to manage SLAs with the ERP Implementation Support Vendor12

131. THANK YOU! 13