Who holds the key to success in ERP led business transformation programs
Many analysis has been done and many artifacts written about the success of the ERP projects but the question which primarily remains unanswered and less explored is who holds the key to success of the program.
ERP led Business transformation is a kind of IT oriented Business Process Re-Engineering exercise. This re-engineering process facilitates information sharing across business echelons, reduce manual effort, save cost with multiple benefits namely Single source of truth, Easier consolidation, Smoother interactions across companies.
There are generally 3 key stakeholder in any ERP led business transformation projects namely the PMO/Management, product/ consulting partner company and End/Core/business user teams. Each of the stakeholders has its own role to play and none of them can be regarded as less important or secondary. In last few years a lot of case based analysis has surfaced in various journals, conferences, online forums, blogs regarding the importance of management focus on the programs. The benefits of the ERP transformation projects are now well known and due to which management puts in a lot of thrust on its need, direction, performance and success. But is the management focus enough?
Is it not that the group of people who actually give the requirements, vouch for the customizations/RICE, agree/disagree to changes, are critical part of the piece and need to be focused? Off-late a lot of cases have come up in the ERP projects where users miss out capturing critical parts of business or misses certain scenarios or fails to test important interfaces or more so resists adopting best practices.
Similarly the ERP product company's ability to provide required support, fitment of the product to the business scenarios, highlighting product capability and willingness to investment if required sometimes becomes an interesting and important attribute to success? The consulting or SI partner is and has always has been a key link between the success or failure of the program. This may be due to providing right fit of experienced people, program management skills, deeper understanding of setups and practices , bring in more discipline in delivery and many other plethora of others reason.
With these short overviews it becomes all the more difficult to identify the key stakeholder for success. Is there any direct answers?
Comments
Many analysis has been done and many artifacts written about the success of the ERP projects but the question which primarily remains unanswered and less explored is who holds the key to success of the program.
Posted by: Arnab Banerjee | February 10, 2011 1:35 PM