You are a junior staff member where you work. You are assigned to help with the implementation. You understand what great opportunity this is, but at the same time you are nervous. Having taken this course, you understand the scale of work that is involved. You are not sure how much your bosses understand this whole process.
What are some of the challenges you will face?
What are some of the initiatives you take to make sure you succeed?
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7 comments:
Here's another thought byte guys. Let me know what you think...
Yeliz.
I think this is very good opportunity to learn and live the implementation in addition to my other tasks in the organization. I've never been in competition with the others but I strongly believe that this experience would help me to broad my perspective. Also this new task is exciting to me since I also have a background that is available to handle the implementation in a good way. I could face with some challenges during the implementation in the organization. Of course it is great to have a boss that he understands his staff well and trusts them, not to just put them under pressure. But I don't think that it is always possible to work with that kind of imaginary boss.. So if I love my job, firstly I would be ready on the theoritical aspect of implementation: take this course, read articles. Then I would try to learn from the experienced people. Those are the things that I could do on my own. After all preparation, I would talk to my boss :'Yes, I took course, read articles and learned the overview process but I will learn the implementation by getting involved.' I would communicate with the process owners and map the business processes, would try to understand the whole picture. Maybe I would study on the risks of the project and prepare a risk assessment sheet too. I would not talk too much before I do the necessary things (preparations), I would do my best and then if I still feel the same pressure I would talk and remind him that I am trying to do my best and show him my studies (documents) for the implementation that I've done.
I am assigned to help an ERP implementation to the company and I have important knowledge about ERP system. I am active on the subject. But, I am doubtful that bosses are fully conscious about the case. So, two alternative exist: one is that applying the directives nicely without questioning and taking no risk in time. On the other hand, I can handle the situation self confidently and voluntarily. If I choose the second alternative, there will be challenges and initiatives that should be considered. I intended "challenges" in two ways: One is serious responsibilities on the results and its emotional pressure. Second is about resistance to change of people and remote reactions to my ideas as a new staff. It means risk, it means that I must be persuasive and also it means that I must be a perfect negotiator. Relevantly, If someone want to possess those kinds of skills, firstly, he/she negotiate and persuade with his/herself. Moreover, he/she must be sure of his/her ideas to achieve an excellent implementation. Therefore, I should be well informed, I should be prepared, I should be patient and I should be explanatory to the right people with the right strategies. Consequently, it is possible that while referancing my course, taking the views of my teacher Y. Eseryel and other experienced and respectable people in addition to powerful articles and investigations, I demand a meeting with my bosses to transfer my thoughts and strategies seriously and masterly. Then, I propose them about giving me more initiatives to handle the situation with the right people who have great potential in change management and communication subjects(in time I plan to allocate the people who can improve and process the training and knowledge management issues). Then, I try to communicate continously in the long-term with the relevant people outside of the company also who understand those topics professionally and take their ideas in a systematic manner. Before deciding something I want to be sure that I take the sufficient, qualified and trustable views and be sure that they generally support me. That is, I try to be open minded, inquisitive, wise and a good listener. I believe that it would be a good opportunity to take initiatives in that kind of an implementation and it would be worthy to take risks and work on it hardly in various aspects..
Since I have taken this course I know that, there will be lots of faults during the implementation and before going live. Firstly I know that Organizational change management is one of the most important critical success factors for any enterprise software initiative. Generally employees resists to change since they do not believe that the ERP implementation improve their systems and doing an ERP implementation will burden them overly. It is more than probable that employees will not be ambitious about change; even they have a good knowledge. So firstly I should convince them. Thus, an organizational change management initiative can help alleviate some of the risks. Besides, I don’t know how much my bosses understand this whole process, so I should also know the whole processes as much as to be a good guider to my bosses. For that reason I should have a command on that, so that requires that I should have taken some responsibility. Needless to say that this makes me nervous, since that implementation is a hard job and I know that till now %80 of the total ERP implementation projects has end up with failure. As part of an OCM, Business processes must be documented properly, a good communication plan must be done to achieve the success. And one of the most important part of the OCM which is training, must be concerned much. Since the employees will be the users of this system they should have been well educated about how to use the system to get an efficient result. On the other hand the super users are also must be authorized to access the data and if there is a problem they should have authorized to intervene to the problem. And also the security / role development must be determined.
Before going live, our company should have done some analysis about risks. And according to the result of the risk assessment our company should have taken some precautions. All in all if I am a junior staff member of my company who is assigned to help to the ERP implementation, I would have share my knowledge with my bosses and I would ask them to involve me much more on that project.
I think there are two main challenges in such a situation. The first one is making sure that my bosses understand why they need to show commitment and support for a change management program, and the second is whether they recognize the upcoming difficulties such as the necessity of changing business processes and changing the way employees do work everyday. Also, they need to know that the resourcing needs will increase as the progress is made in the project.
In order to be influential in such a situation, first off all, I’d try to understand the big picture of why my company is implementing ERP. I’d learn which modules are involved, who will be the end users, what will be the benefit and so on. Later, I’d get into touch with the IT department and tell them that I am very much interested in this project and want to learn more about it. After I obtain necessary details about the project, I’d go and talk to my boss (maybe catch him/her in elevator) about why this project is important and why it needs their support to succeed. I’d try to explain how the project should be aligned with the strategy of the company, and the expected difficulties if they customize too much. I’d try to convince them that they need to start a change management program and tell them that if they don’t support this project, the project would fail and the money spent would become a sunk cost. I’d also tell my supervisor that I volunteer to be a superuser to show my commitment and start grabbing their attention towards the project.
First of all, it is necessary to inform my bosses about the extent and significance of managing this ERP implementation process. If the top people underestimate the risks and difficulties in managing ERP implementation and organizational change process, then most probably the project would fail. First, I would recommend, documenting all of our company’s processes as in the Enterprise Architecture to clearly see what our company needs in terms of ERP. After this blueprinting process I would decide if using ERP really fits to our organization strategy and would compare benefits and costs of using ERP in general. Then I would go on choosing the best ERP software and modules that best fits our company’s needs.
Once the decision is made after careful analysis, I would recommend using the standard original module system of the chosen brand and customizing the modules only if it is definitely necessary. That is because, customization of modules would be costly and risky creating some patches and integration points would need further maintenance and adaptation costs.
In managing the organizational change, I would involve top people to show their support and I would also make other people in the organization a part of change process taking their opinions and giving them responsibility. I would carefully choose core change management team, super-users, process owners and role profile owners. Business Involvement in OCM would be a top priority and 25%of the total ERP budget would be spent in OCM.
I would also make deal with the consultants for them to stay with the company at least for a month after go-live process, to take care of possible implementation problems.
Thanks a lot, i would like request you to provide more informations. I am working in ERP Software Developers Chennai
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