ERP: A MARRIAGE BROKER
• GST and mid market are the main targets for top ERP players • Piracy is not a big issue; but vendors won’t provide support system either • User acceptance, trainings and initiating adoption are major challenges
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is a multibillion-dollar industry that produces components supporting a variety of business functions. IT investments have become the largest category of capital expenditure in businesses across the globe over the past decade. Though ERP systems have changed drastically and had adopted according to various new advancements in technology since its inception.
Top ERP Solution providers are innovating and introducing new features, functionality and technology that can serve a workforce in a better way and can automate the entire process with more visibility and competitive edge.
Today ERP system is more being adopted by small and mid market companies, as they have understood clearly the importance of ERP software in managing business processes. Another reason for more adoption is reduced costs of implementation and cloud deployment options have also added value to its viabilities.
It is also developing a security circle to protect the data usable for companies. ERP providers are designing tools within the software that can analyze data and have features responsible for security audits risk management processes and thus enhancing purchase of ERP systems. Mobile accessibility has also increased through time. Now your workforce can simply access the system from any where and any time. This is resulting in fast decisions delivery.
According to Ramajeyam Sekar, Project Director in CMS Computers, Chennai besides having many ERP brands in the market ERP solutions are still battling with some of the challenges:
ERP Product Fitment:
Lot of ERP products in the market
both branded; unbranded, open source & cloud based ERP are not the right fit everywhere. The small and medium segment has many failure stories and causes of dissatisfaction over unsuccessful implementation across these business segments. Moreover, as the competition is building up, more and more customization requirements are increasing and hence need to build flexible systems and processes is a big challenge. Before deciding to customize some features or to develop a new module, makes sure with your ERP consultants that these features will really bring some value in your business, in order to not develop an expensive module that your employee will never use.
User Acceptance:
The success of an ERP implementation is influenced by a great many factors. User involvement is one of the most cited, critical success factors in ERP implementation projects. Generally, when users are involved in the implementation, the end result will deliver a better fit in relation to business processes and acceptance between the end users and the ERP System. In technical terms, the preparation comes in the form of user acceptance testing (UAT). User acceptance testing is often used as a project milestone for contractual reasons; completing UAT signifies that the solution has reached an acceptable level of stability and this in turn can be linked with the issue of who is going to pay for fixing defects. UAT is actually far more important than that — it is your key to project success. It’s important to iron out the issues in a safe environment first, and for an ERP implementation the safe environment is UAT. Every issue that is found during UAT is one less issue that will need to be solved after going live, and the thing about go live issues is they can be really dangerous. When an issue occurs in a production system in a go live environment, it needs to be fixed quickly, and there is typically a great deal of stress associated with the issue. Being hurried in a stressful environment does not make for good programming and it certainly doesn’t allow for well thought out design.
Communication:
Effective implementation of ERP solutions requires good communication, which is es-