This process should have a strong focus on what the core of the business is (eg – construction, mining, mortgage management etc) and ensure the these areas are covered thoroughly as key drivers. Different ERP’s are strong in different industries, and drilling down even more, different ERP’s are strong in different business types (eg – civil construction v commercial construction). Once found, an appropriate ERP system can support the full gamut of business activities, from core business processing such as projects and asset management, to support services such as HR, Finance and Safety.
Specialist Systems or “Best-of-Breed” systems usually do a very good job on performing part of a businesses processes. They often then need to be interfaced with other systems at various interaction points (eg – Transactions to a GL system) or consolidated at a reporting level to give a whole of business view of the data. It is therefore important to weigh up the advantages of a specialist system in terms of how much benefit it gives an organisation in a specific area, as opposed to the benefits of having a fully integrated system. Sometimes you will be happy to lose some functionality to get the benefits of integration.
Businesses sometimes opt for a mixture of an ERP and specialist systems if there is a key area of the business that the ERP does not perform well, but the specialist system does. In this case, it is just worthwhile analysing the interaction points to identify the interfacing requirements. This could be none, minimal or major so it is worthwhile identifying these areas before implementation. It is also worthwhile considering if business process can be changed so people do not have to work in multiple systems and there is a clear line as to which system is the owner of which data.
In Summary, as any major system implementation is a big investment for organisations, in terms of dollars, time and resources, it is important to ensure appropriate analysis is done before implementation so that the correct system is implemented
For more information please don’t hesitate to contact us and feel free to share this article on your social media pages using the share icons at the top of this page.
Enquire Now