ERP: Recipe for Success

It goes without saying that project management is complex. One way to master it is to learn these lessons in the course of a project to get a sound understanding of the best practices of project management and ensure you implement them.

A few years ago, I was in-charge of an ERP implementation, which confronted one crisis after another. We managed to rise to the occasion every time, and were able to deliver on time despite routine delays. But later we undertook a root-cause analysis and tried to understand why the project was thwarted more than once. We boiled it down to four reasons. Understanding these four factors that lead to successful project management can help you avoid project management failure.

Bring in a governance structure: We realized that many users were dissatisfied because what we delivered did not meet what was promised to them. This was largely because we did not have a proper governance structure in place. So, we decided to make a few changes. We set up a governance structure, which clearly defined the responsibilities of every individual and entity involved. Second, we made sure that users were directly involved in defining the objective of the project. In hindsight, we realized that the technology team, that was setting project objectives, was not the end-user of the ERP system. That piece of change was inevitable.

Control change: We observed that the project and its course would change many times during the implementation. That was because users changed their requirements as the business needs fluctuated. Every time we re-looked at the project, we found that the baseline requirements changed. At the same time, project managers were not monitoring the impact these changes had on the overall cost of the project, and how it affected the delivery time line. Our entire focus was displaced because most of the time we were busy fixing changes in requirements. We rectified this by having a change control process in place, which analyzes the impact of changes in requirements in terms of costs and resources. We followed a strong program management methodology, named ‘Enable’, which trains project managers to deliver efficiently. Since then, only certified professionals are allowed to manage projects.

Beware of a lack of communication: This is perhaps one of the most under-rated reasons why projects stray off the straight and narrow. We found that our stakeholders, the users and the governance body, all became restless because they were not constantly updated on the progress of the ERP project. We realized that reporting the status of the project was extremely relevant to successful project management.

Ensure strong risk management: Creating a proper risk management and risk mitigation process is one of the prime tasks of a project manager. Primarily, this involves identifying the potential risks of a project and creating a contingency plan to deal with them. When thinking about possible threats remember that they can arise from the users or stakeholders. And when this happens an ‘issue escalation management’ plan must be in place.

After the root-cause analysis, we put the ERP roll-out back in track, and none of the implementations that followed faced similar challenges. The technology team and clients clearly know the deliverables of a project. And if there are any changes in the scope of the project, both the groups will know its impact on the project.