Time to Replace Your ERP System: Are the Bosses On Board?

 
The initiative to replace your ERP system can start anywhere. Shop floor, operations, finance… But if you don’t have the bosses and owners committed to your implementation, it will struggle and probably fail.
Without the backing and focus of management there is a very real probability that you will not be able to get the benefit out of a new ERP system.
Management needs to be committed on several fronts:

• Are they willing to write the check? The financial commitment to a new ERP system has several components. There’s the software and probably hardware, of course. There’s also the cost of installation and consulting. But the real cost is the time commitment of the organization in learning the new system, redesigning processes and creating new ones. Management will need to free up the necessary people to spend time to make the new system a success.
• Are they willing to put the hammer down? Face it, people hate change. If your company has a along tenured workforce they have been doing things the same way for years. ‘This is how we’ve always done it” is a new implementation killer. In my experience, the largest single cause of failure to an ERP implementation is the bosses simply don’t have the intestinal fortitude to blast through the barriers put up by employees that won’t, can’t or don’t want to embrace change.
• Is management willing to change? Push back to change is not limited to the rank and file. Your new ERP system will bring many tools into the hands of leadership. The days of Manufacture ERP systems as simply a scheduling and accounting tool are past. Your new ERP will bring real time business intelligence to the desktops, tablets and smart phones of the managers. Are they willing to use those tool and perhaps see the business in a different light.

As long as management has the focus, budget and commitment to make a new ERP a success you’ve covered one of the most important areas of a new ERP implementation.

Also See:

Time to Replace Your ERP System: To Replace or Not to Replace?
Part II – Make Sure What You Want is What You Get

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