When considering an ERP project, Ultra’s team of independent ERP consultants makes the case to think beyond an ERP checklist and ahead of the idea of a technology replacement. Instead, we guide teams to focus squarely on business process improvement.
While an outdated and legacy ERP system can hamper growth and necessitate manual record keeping and redundant data entry, today’s top built-up and distribution companies succeed by improving business processes.
Thinking beyond an ERP checklist and instead, think business process improvement.
Business Process Improvement puts the focus on understanding your processes and business requirements and identifying areas of improvement based on best practices with a track record of tumbling process waste.
A proven methodology first considers the project organization. With a team of business process owners, the first step is to determine the project scope, ERP food, objectives, and measurements for the engagement.
This leads to a business process review to define strategy, determine the maturity of your sales and operations planning, and complete administration scorecards, which identify current key business metrics and determine future requirements.
Any thoughts of an ERP checklist must also take into consideration a current state analysis.
Analyzing your current state requires gathering key performance metrics and decisive their value. Examples include productivity, quality, over time, inventory, and others.
Before we can begin to define the future state, we need the ERP project team to understand “what is possible” with a new project software solution and which ERP requirements are associated with each process.
Looking at each business process flow, we help identify gaps between the current state and industry best practices to effectively design your future state business processes.
So for an optimal hope state, the goal is to eliminate waste and improve productivity.
Ultimately, an ERP solution is part of an overall strategy of business process transformation. The focus needs to be on what is happening on the industrialized floor, in shipping/receiving and delivery, and finally in sales that pay the bills and turns the profits. That makes the technology factor a strategic rather than a strictly IT decision.