Part 3: Having the right approach and attitude to an ERP implementation
“Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.” Samuel Johnson
Because Word and Excel look so easy, people under-estimate how complex other standard systems, like an ERP, can be. If business users knew how complex those two Microsoft applications really are, they would be more thoughtful and careful when embarking on a complex software project.
Years ago I worked as a junior procurement officer at a medium sized Canadian manufacturing company. Within my first year, our production scheduler resigned and to my surprise, I was promoted to her position. I was terrified because I didn’t have a background in operations management and I didn’t understand its mysterious jargon. Acronyms like MPS, MRP, BOM, and the like were foreign to me. I also did not have a good grasp of our ERP system (SYSPRO).
Despite the fact that ERP solutions are intended to improve business performance quickly and efficiently, through the provision of critical information, they generally do not have a good track record. In his research paper “Causes influencing the effectiveness of the post-implementation ERP system” (subscription required), CS Yu came to the conclusion that 40% of all ERP implementations or extensions perform below expectations and 20% are eventually scrapped as complete failures. The latter figure could even be as high as 50%, depending on how ‘failure’ is defined.
I was fortunate enough to attend the Microsoft BUILD conference in Los Angeles recently, along with one of my colleagues. Now, I don’t make a habit of regularly attending such conferences as I have a number of talented developers who would get great value out of these sorts of events. But I have to say that I am really pleased (no, read ‘delighted’) that I made the effort to attend this particular event, especially considering that it took me about 28 hours to get to LA (it’s a long way from Johannesburg).
The title that comes to mind and feels very personal is a term coined by SYSPRO’s Cape Town office: “Meryling”. I think this comes about as I can be pretty elusive and abstract but completely on the mark when I need to be. Meryling revolves around mulling, meddling, musing, and finally finding the mark, which makes SYSPRO so successful in Africa.
Part 2: Changing the system as business realities change
Hands up all those who have started implementing an ERP system and not had to deal with changes as the project progresses. No one? I am not surprised. Has anyone gone live with an ERP project and never had any changes afterwards? The reality of any ERP project is that scope changes occur during the project, and after going live it is guaranteed that there will be more requirement changes.
Recently I was watching one of those “how things are made” TV shows which featured a saw mill. I was amazed at the vast range of waste factors eating away at the profits of the hardworking lumber millers. From the felling of the tree to the final delivery of sawn timber products to their customers, their raw material is whittled down to a fraction of the original volume.
In 2010 there was a debate between some of the major enterprise software influencers and bloggers on whether single or multi-tenancy was an issue for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. On the one side was Josh Greenbaum who argued that the type of tenancy should not matter to SaaS users; on the other was Phil Wainewright (here and here) and Dennis Howlett whose views were that multi-tenancy is the only way for SaaS software. This debate is still going on.
Single-tenancy refers to a software configuration (application and database) in which each client has its own underlying application resources. Multi-tenancy is where all clients share the same underlying resources. Multi-tenancy also means that all customers get the same application upgrades and enhancements at the same time, whether they want them or not.
Napoli, August 23 AD 79
Dear mum,
I am so excited. I have just signed the tablet with the local estate agent to purchase that villa I told you about in Pompeii. My estate agent says it’s a fantastic property with great views of the mountain and you can also see the sea. He says that I cannot go wrong with the location because the villa is right in the heart of the town, not far from the market. I thought we could move in today but my estate agent says he cannot give me the keys because he’s been told that there’s a big barbecue going on today on the mountain and he doesn’t want to miss out. There’s certainly a lot of smoke coming from Vesuvius – they’ve clearly started cooking the meat – so perhaps it would have been fun to be there as well. But me and Fulvia have rather decided to spend the weekend relaxing on the Amalfi coast and we’ll move in on Monday.
Yours, Marcus.
