13 signs of problem ERP projects are defined

According to Eric Kimberliga (Eric Kimberling), the president of Panorama Consulting Group, the following signs say that with the ERP project there can be problems.

1. The project is not discussed with the management at least two times a month. It can lead to troubles as interest of the management in the project, compliance of the project to expectations of the management, adoption in time of key solutions, effective resource allocation is necessary. This problem area can become the reason of many other signs which are listed below.

2. There is no project team. It is very difficult for staff of the company to perform daily the functions and also to take active part in the project. Many companies attract the consulting companies to decrease in load of the employees, but there has to be also internal command which participates in the project.

3. Special preparation is not conducted before remains less, than 90 days before start of a new system. Training should begin long before a system is completely ready to use by end users. The main group should be trained at the beginning of the project, users should be trained by different methods long before start of a new system.

4. The change management plan consists only of training of end users. Training is important, but it is only a small part of management of organizational changes. Organizational engineering, interaction of employees, processing and the analysis of organizational problems – only some of key questions which often are overlooked during implementation of the ERP project.

5. In the company there is no reserve budget. Can happen so that a part of the software does not correspond to business of the company and changes are necessary, and some business process leads to delays. Depending on risk and complexity of 15-20% of the project budget it will be selected for a covering of contingencies.

6. An inspection of interaction and functioning of components of a system in general is not carried out. The majority of ERP systems rather flexible therefore determination of business processes of the organization can be difficult. As you should not enter a new product or a production process without careful testing, it is also not necessary to enter new business applications into the organizations without check and amendments.

7. In the project budget the cost of software licenses is the most part of costs for implementation. The software is rather simple and inexpensive part of the budget. Even at the accelerated implementation, hardware, internal and external resources, integration and some other budget positions which can surprise later sushchetsvut.

8. In the company there is no strong group of support of the software product which executed several tens of similar projects. In each organization there are several people who or were engaged in implementation of the software once earlier, or have acquaintances who were engaged in it. However nothing can replace teams of experts which made it one million times.

9. Technical specialists start the project. If business is not the driving force of the project, then the project is in danger. It will lead to system implementation which does not correspond to business, an overexpenditure of funds for the project, resistance of employees in relation to a new system.

10. There is no economic case, project performance indicators. The ERP project is not implemented just for pleasure therefore it is necessary to have indicators for determination of efficiency of the project and also the plan of measurement of the actual project deliverables.

11. Define success so: "Only to start". It is easy to get to a trap after the project lasts within several months or years. As soon as the company begins to cut off corners, to reduce costs and time only to complete the project, it is worth expecting long-term costs and risks.

12. The company has very few opportunities for error correction. According to the research Panorama Consulting Group, more than 50% of implementations of the software lead to failures. If the company has no stocks of time for system implementation, it can increase project risks.

13. The company will not configure the software under any circumstances. About one of four ERP projects is executed without setup. Besides, use of the business processes put in the ERP system can result in mismatch to business needs and/or increase organizational problems of change management.

The lack of these signs at implementation of the ERP system demonstrates success of the project.