The changing role of the technology team in ERP implementations (part 1)

Companies change their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems infrequently, only every ten to twenty years. If your ERP no longer meets your business needs and you are thinking of its replacement, here is a summary of how your technology team will be involved in ways that may not have applied the last time around.

The technology team has always had a role in the selection of the ERP, evaluating the vendor’s technology solution and direction. The technology team also set up the on-premise system, extracted and transformed data for loading to the new ERP, and trained a support team.  Depending on how long ago the ERP was implemented, and the company’s industry, they may have built some interfaces.  

It’s tempting to think that the world of cloud solutions is easier for the technology team during the ERP implementation project. It isn’t so. Here are some of the changes to think about when you are scoping and planning your new ERP implementation project.

Mobile technology

ERPs now have mobile features, such as approvals on mobile phones, and reporting on tablets. In the implementation project, you’ll have to test operability with all of the device types and operating systems that you support. You also may need to support multiple browsers to handle your new ERP at the same time as any remaining legacy systems. You may also have concerns about security if mobile devices are lost, or need to figure out how to implement dual factor authentication for these.

Integration

Integration between systems used to be a nice-to-have. Now integration is a must-have. The business relies on automated interfaces to communicate with customers, vendors, banks, and business partners.

Interfaces to/from the existing ERP may have been built over time with a variety of tools and approaches. When implementing a new ERP, you will need to re-develop all of those that connect with the ERP. If you plan to select a new integration tool or define a new approach, this is the time to do it. As a result, you need to factor in time, money, and expertise for selection, purchase, and training your team on the new toolset.

With some of your applications, and possibly also your integration tool, in the cloud, the development, testing, and promotion to production of the integrations requires access to multiple environments in a variety of public and private cloud environments. The external parties with whom you exchange data may also have cloud applications. Engaging the internal and external parties and their cloud providers and working with all of them to achieve a common go-live date is a significant coordination effort.

Reporting

ERP is an important source of data for company reporting. With implementation of a new ERP, the data model of that source data is changing, which will require you to re-build data feeds to your reporting platform. The standard reports in the new ERP will also be different from the existing one. As a result, this is a good time to re-evaluate reporting requirements and perhaps replace that application or the mechanism by which it receives its data. As with integration tool replacement, this requires selection, purchasing, and training staff.

Business-managed systems

Cloud has made it easy for the business to implement solutions that IT is not aware of. Many of these applications will be affected by the ERP implementation (integration, data changes, process impact). Although it is the responsibility of the business to identify these situations, they will need support from the technology team to assess impacts and identify how to integrate these solutions into their new processes.

Stay tuned

There is more to cover on the changing role of the technology team in ERP implementation. Watch for part 2 

Project risk case study: Scarce resource management

Technology projects are heavily dependent on expert resources from the IT team and the business. Managing people whose work is critical to the success of the project is essential and managing their time can be challenging.

This case study is a situation where a business expert was proving to be unable to deliver to the timeline.

Case study

The project was development of custom reports. When engaging resources for the work, the project manager did the usual things to ensure availability of the resource: for example, arranged for dedicated team members, and obtained commitments from their managers that they would be free to concentrate on the project. For those who were not vendors, the project manager arranged for the individuals’ jobs to be filled by other workers so the project team could concentrate on the project work.

The situation

The development work proceeded but there were challenges and issues along the way (perhaps a case study for another time).  Due to the development issues, there were quite a large number of problems found in the testing phase. 

However, just as problematic, it was taking a very long time for the business expert doing the testing to identify the issues on the reports, and to re-test as defects were corrected.  As time went on, it became clear that the tester was a significant bottleneck in the process.

The project manager discussed the pace with the tester, who confirmed that he was concentrating on the testing tasks, and had not been pulled away to work on other non-project work. The tester claimed that it was just a temporary delay due to learning curve on what needed to be done, and that he would have no problem catching up.

Unfortunately, the tester’s prediction of increasing speed did not come true. The testing continued to take much longer than planned.  In addition, the tester claimed, and his manager agreed, that no one but himself was qualified to examine the reports and determine whether they were right or wrong.

Evaluation of the problem

The project manager decided to see for herself what was causing the delay, so she arranged to sit in the tester’s office while he worked. She did some other work, but by sitting close by was able to observe the tester’s process.

What she observed was that there were many time-consuming steps to complete the tester’s work.  He printed the legacy report; then printed the new report. Then, he went through every line and checked every heading, description, and number for accuracy.  Then, when he found a difference between the legacy and new report, he had to determine whether the difference was acceptable. If it was not acceptable, he had to log the defect in the tracking software.

The project manager realized that much of the work could actually be done by others. The only part of the work that the business expert tester really had to do for himself was to evaluate whether a difference was acceptable or not.

New approach

The project manager arranged to add two junior staff to the project. They were assigned to print the legacy and new reports, compare every heading, description, and number, and mark differences with highlighters and tape flags for review. 

The business expert was now able to focus on the one thing that no one but himself could do. He focused on evaluation of the differences between the legacy and new reports, and decided whether the difference was acceptable or a defect.

The project manager also arranged for someone else to log the defects for the tester, so he could concentrate on just the evaluation.

Conclusion

The project manager’s observation was essential to resolving the work bottleneck. Each report was taking two to four hours to test, but the portion that only the business expert could do was really only fifteen to thirty minutes.

By re-allocating much of the work to other resources, the business expert was freed up to complete the evaluation for many more reports.

Although their participation is critical to a project’s success, business experts can become a bottleneck on a project. In order to ensure the proper participation of the expert while also eliminating the bottleneck, it was necessary for the project manager to evaluate the work and break it down into its component parts. Then many of the steps could be completed by others, freeing up the expert to focus on the task for which he had the expertise.