How to find the right ERP solutions for your business?

Every organization will have its own unique structure and culture. Both the formal and informal parts of your company will need to be considered as part of the process of choosing an effective and successful ERP solution.

It’s important to recognize the tension the process and decision might cause between your finance and IT departments, for example. Establishing ownership of the process and identifying the key stakeholders is the first important step.

✓ Understand your processes – many business systems and processes evolve over time, so it is risky to assume that you know exactly how they all operate and affect your business. Investing time to review and record your processes will be worthwhile. This can be a stepping-stone to defining how you want things to work in the future and will provide useful background information for potential ERP partners. It’s your opportunity to find new and creative ways of doing things that could give you a competitive advantage.

✓ Review your technology – you are looking for an ERP solution for your whole business, so your existing use of technology will be relevant to your choice. For example, if you use Microsoft office systems you will want to prioritize a compatible ERP.

✓ Assess your data – your data is a valuable business asset but will probably be widely distributed across your organization, used for different purposes, and held in varying formats. One of the ways you can transform your business is by consolidating all of your critical information into a single source of truth.

This is especially important if your business needs real-time insights from your wholesale ecommerce platform including sales and billing along with manufacturing, inventory management, delivery, support, or customer service data.

✓ Evaluate cost of ownership – you will need to understand the pricing structure, development roadmap and potential ongoing costs to have a complete picture of your investment. This will include initial implementation costs but could also involve hardware upgrades, training, additional in-house resources, and software maintenance.

✓ Plan implementation – as well as the cost of implementation you will also need to consider the time it will take and its impact on your business performance. A detailed project plan involves much more than software installation. It must also include design, migration, testing, user training and final end-user acceptance. By completing your plan before you make your final decision you will have confidence that you understand all the implications.

✓ Define business benefits – you will be taking a long and complicated journey so you will want to know that the results will be worth it. It’s understandable that you will meet resistance to change along the way, so being able to describe clear benefits will help you to achieve overall acceptance. These might include reducing costs and increasing revenue for future security or the ability to scale for growth, for example.

Aim to keep your benefits list simple and high level; your implementation plan can deal with the details. Use it to evaluate your potential suppliers and how they would deliver it in terms of cost, time, complexity, and training.

✓ Consider alternatives – while market leaders like NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics or SAP could seem like safe choices they might have more functionality than you need. Alternatively, the way they work might not suit your operational requirements. There are many ERP software solutions available with varying functionality and strengths. Your business is unique, so it’s worth looking carefully at the choices available to you.

✓ Take independent advice – the decision will ultimately be yours but it will be worth asking for advice from people who have already been through the process and independent experts. They can give you a helpful and practical perspective on the whole implementation process.

✓ Choose a compatible implementation partner – like most organizations you will probably need outside resources and expertise to implement your chosen ERP solution. You will need to assess how well your provider understands your goals and will fit with your organization’s culture. Look for a partner that has deep industry expertise, who understands your business processes and has a track record of success.

You will also want to be confident that your end users can learn and use your new ERP solution, so find out about templates, online guides, training materials, communities, and forums. Make sure your partner takes user engagement seriously.