How to ensure your ERP implementation delivers real gains

Implementing a new ERP is a significant investment for any business but success is not guaranteed. That’s why C&J ERP Consulting take a strategic approach to ensure every ERP project meets key business objectives and drives real efficiency gains, as our co-founder John Bell explains.

We think it is best to view your ERP implementation as part of a digital transformation journey, rather than simply focusing on it going live. That journey has three broad stages: preparation, implementation, and ongoing support and optimisation. We break these down into nine strategically important steps that all rely on open communication and effective collaboration to ensure success.

1. Invest time to understand your current state

Before any ERP implementation, take the time to understand your existing workflows, processes, pain points and objectives. Too many businesses embark on an ERP project without a clear picture of their “as-is” state. Yet this foundational knowledge is essential for identifying where your ERP can add the most value, ensuring a smooth transition and tracking improvements in future.

2. Dedicate resources to the project

A common reason ERP projects fail is because employees are trying to balance the project with their usual work. We strongly recommend creating a dedicated implementation team, even if that means temporarily backfilling roles, and giving them time to work on the project. Enabling them to focus solely on your ERP implementation will help your business avoid divided attentions and potentially costly mistakes.

3. Put in place robust governance

Finally, before starting the implementation phase of the project, make sure you have defined your change control process: think RAID – Risks, Actions, Issues, Decisions. This is critical to successful project management because it sets out how you will manage and document all stages of the implementation. It’s not only for knowing who is going to do what next, but also for reviewing your previous decisions on issues and risks if you hit a problem later on.

4. Choose the right ERP system and the right implementation partner

It’s of course critical to select the right ERP software, so you should have someone on your team with experience of doing that. They should know the systems on the market, how to arrange demos and evaluate them using score cards, and how different solutions might work with your business. If you don’t have that experience in-house, it can really pay to bring it in.

It’s also important not to assume that the software vendor will be your best choice of implementation partner. Not all of them will have specialist knowledge of your sector or a business structured like yours. We advise businesses to keep an open mind and assess all options to find an experienced partner with a record of successful ERP projects.

5. Use clear communications and redesign processes for the future

ERP implementation is not just a technical issue; it’s also a cultural shift for many organisations. That’s why we stress the value of involving employees early with active communications and in-person engagement across your company. Communicating the benefits of an ERP can reduce the stress some might feel when learning new ways of working and encourage faster adoption.

At the same time, you’ll want to work closely with your implementation partner on designing – often redesigning – your processes and workflows to maximise the value of the new ERP. This is where you start reaping the rewards of earlier preparation, not least understanding your current state (particularly pain points you need to resolve) and your desired future state – the value you want to realise.

Some businesses resist changing established processes, but you are investing a lot of time and money in this project. Use the opportunity to evolve your business by upgrading functionalities and enhancing operational efficiencies. But remember, what you go live with is not what you have to live with, as we explain in point 9 below.

6. Focus on data quality

Another essential bit of preparation is to ensure the quality of the data you will be migrating to the new system is clean and accurate. Without good data, even the best ERP won’t function correctly. In fact, data issues are one of the most frequent causes of delay in ERP projects. We strongly recommend starting the data cleaning process early and being meticulous in checking it to ensure your new ERP provides accurate insights from day one.

So, we’ve done all our preparation; we know what we are trying to achieve, our team is ready, we’ve selected our software and implementation partner, we’ve planned our communications and established our governance structure. Our next steps are to get on with implementation.

7. Testing and training in the sandbox

This is where your ERP implementation partner moves from working with you on planning and designing to actually building your system. That process starts in a testing environment – the sandbox – where you can play with the new software and even try to break it. We’ll migrate some of your data here so you can conduct user acceptance testing (UAT). This is normally a less intense phase for the customer and gives your team a great opportunity to get a really good feel for the new system and processes.

If you don’t have training capacity in-house, C&J can provide a comprehensive service. We’ll guide you through a full run of your typical month – to identify processes that need improvement and bugs in the system. This is where the control process established in point 6 helps us track changes and assess their impact on your go-live date and budgets (we try to avoid too much drift).

8. Deployment day

It’s been a long time coming but, having finally signed off on the configuration, we get to the go-live stage. And that starts before the go-live date with a series of parallel runs. Not all implementers insist on this, but we think it’s an essential part of the cutover plan for a safe and successful launch. Effectively we run both systems, old and new, side by side – using exactly the same data – so you can compare the outputs and check they match precisely.

This is particularly important for things like payroll and purchasing to ensure your employees and suppliers get paid correctly. Some clients will run in parallel two or three times for added comfort before the go-live date. Alongside this, we’ll implement full data migration, bringing across all that clean and accurate data that you prepared in step 5. We recommend closing off one period before bringing the data across – so you go-live with a clean period point.

9. Ongoing support and optimisation

This is often where software vendors leave customers to sink or swim: not us. This is where we provide ‘hyper-care’ – because we know how daunting it can be to leave behind the comfort of a system that you’ve perhaps used for the last 10 years. We are on hand (on-line or in person) to guide your through the new processes, particularly for your first full month-end. This is a continuation of the UAT started in step 7 and is critical to maximising your return on investment in the new system.

After that, we provide access to our dedicated team of ERP consultants who can support you as your business grows. That includes being available to help you implement periodic upgrades to the software or further process optimisation as your business needs evolve. As we always say,

"what you go live with is not what you have to live with. It's all about delivering lasting improvements to efficiency and agility – and that has its roots in good, solid preparation."

Ask us for more details

Please contact us to discuss your ERP needs, whether you’re considering a new system or are looking to optimise an existing one.