ERP Success This Summer

ERP Success This Summer   

By Kassi Burke

Summer is right around the corner! The kids are out of school and the days are warm and sunny – perfect time to put on auto pilot at work and relax for a few weeks, right?! Well, if your company is considering an ERP project or you have an ERP system in place that needs some TLC, summer is an ideal time to dive into your to do list head-first.  

Starting an ERP Project  

As you know, ERP implementations require a lot of time and focus from everyone involved with the project. The slower pace of summer gives your team the opportunity to dedicate more time to researching ERP vendors, analyzing business processes, or implementing a new ERP system.   

Summer is also a great time to consider starting an ERP project since it falls halfway through the year. This gives you 6 months of data from the first half of the year as well as enough time to implement before the year end.  

Brushing Up on Best Practices  

If your organization already has an ERP solution in place, but it could use some attention, summer is a great time to put in that time. Take advantage of the extra downtime summer offers and consider the following: 

• Start “Phase 2” of Your Implementation. Many ERP customers begin with implementing the most critical functionality during a “Phase 1” implementation leaving the functionality that would be nice to have for Phase 2. Summer might be the perfect time to take up this “Phase 2” implementation process.  
• Invest in a Business Assessment. Perhaps you are hitting a roadblock with your ERP solution or business processes, but don’t know how to get things back on track. Invest in a Business Assessment – a consultant will come onsite to observe business process and then get back to you with a detailed report on what was observed and where to go from here to take full advantage of best practices.  
• Bring in Additional Consulting. This could mean hiring an implementation consultant for a few hours to brush up on best practices or to implement a new feature. This could also mean take the extra time available in the summer to brush up on documentation from your implementation or documentation from new releases to make sure your organization is making the best use of the system and maximizing the ROI.  

Conclusion 

Don’t let the slower, more relaxed days of summer be wasted. If you have an ERP project on the horizon then summer is a great time to reflect on business processes, research vendors, or get the ERP implementation itself started. For established ERP users, summer offers the extra time to devote to making sure you are making the best use of your system.