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VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE:
Public Sector Perspectives
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January 2005 (revised) |
A series of white papers
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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP):
Ten Guiding Principles for Those Managing ERP Projects
During my tenure as State
CIO, Pennsylvania planned
and implemented one of the
largest public sector ERP
projects in the world. That
experience taught me many
valuable lessons, which
universally apply to all
major ERP projects. I have
defined these lessons
through the following Ten
Guiding Principles.
-
Ensure you have your senior
executive’s strident
sponsorship and support
before proceeding with an
ERP initiative. No one
should doubt the level of
executive commitment to the
project.
-
Make any ERP initiative a
business transformation
project; not an “IT”
project.
-
Find the most talented
business-oriented manager
within your organization and
appoint them as project
manager. The project can
not succeed without a
strong, talented project
manager that garners respect
in the organization.
-
Decide issues quickly and
decisively. Unresolved
issues are the quicksand of
ERP projects.
- Communicate,
communicate, communicate, and then communicate even
more. The importance of sharing quality and timely
information with those impacted by ERP cannot be
overstated.
- Ensure the
organization’s infrastructure (PCs,
telecommunications networks, printers, etc.) is
sufficiently robust before implementing ERP.
Upgrading infrastructure on the fly isn’t an option.
- Never change ERP
program source code. Change the business process
instead. Even a minor change can have enormous
ramifications downstream when upgrading to new
versions of ERP software.
- Test the
configured ERP software until exhaustion. The effort
to correct problems post implementation grows
exponentially.
- Plan user
training, multiply by 10, and then hope it is
sufficient. Quality training delivered just-in-time
helps mitigate the challenge of change.
-
Set reasonable user and
executive expectations
before implementation. To
get from here to there
necessarily requires a
period of consternation.
Accept is as fact.
©2007, Gerhards Consulting Group. All rights reserved.
