Day 3 - Articles key points - Seçil Akdemir

Configuring on ERP System: Introducing Best Practices or Hampering Flexibility
The key personnel from the key departments related to the ERP module should be placed in the ERP implementation project team in order to assess the suitability of the ERP system to the process.

Employees, departments and end users of ERP systems should be convinced related to the benefits of ERP implementation before the implementation starts.

ERP projects could be beneficial in terms o f assessing and determining the main business strategy of the related departments since before the implementation every department should analyze and re-examine their processes in detail in order to match the process and the system.

Highly customization of ERP systems could be risky in terms of obtaining future help and upgrades. Moreover, excessive customization could be very costly for the company.

Systems used for core activities of the firms should be examined in more detail before the implementation since they are the strategic ones.

In order to integrate the activities, business process rules must be carefully specified and data must be defined in ways that make sense for different department users.

Key department should certainly be involved in order to sustain the future health of the ERP system because if they were not involved then, they would not know the essentials of the system. Therefore, they will create new stuff that does not fit with the system.

To conclude, implementing an ERP system in an environment with no control, no discipline and no desire to change would not work.

A Framework for Evaluating ERP Implementation Choices
The most important issue in ERP implementation is catching the match between the ERP system and the business processes of the firm.

In order to match these two things, companies should assess their technical and process change capabilities and the overall capabilities.

Traditionally, systems were developed and designed in order to fit with the current business processes of the firms but now many experts suggest that it is less costly and easier to change the business processes for the ERP systems.

ERP implementation is a very challenging task since it results in large-scale organizational changes.

Every ERP system has a generic best practice in mind but as discussed in the paper these best practices are not universal and there exist some cultural differences between companies.