Are you ready for an ERP?

Nobody buys an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system because they want to. They buy it because they have to, or because they understand the value of an ERP system.  The trick in both cases is to get the timing right.  If you buy because you have to, chances are your business is not performing as well as it should.  This could be because your business process becomes to complex for a manual or outdated system. It could also be attributed to the fact that your manual or outdated system requires that your business uses more resources than it needs to produce saleable goods. Either way, by the time you realise this you have lost money. Timing the purchase of your system when you do understand the value of an ERP is just as difficult.  You need to balance affordability with future capacity.

The key to getting the timing right is to have the right advisor.  Your ERP vendor must be a company that understands your needs and timing. Your vendor should be willing to scale implementation size and timing to match your requirements, not their sales targets. In the case of a business that has to play catch-up, the speed at which the vendor can implement to ERP and minimise the effect of the implementation process is critical.

“We often come across instances where companies have decided to halt an implementation and start over,” says Gustav Piater, Marketing and Sales Director for QBCon, a business solution consultancy.
“Decisions like these are painful and expensive.  These failures can usually be attributed to incompatibility between the client’s business model and the ERP.”

A good business solution provider will adapt an ERP (as much as good governance principles will allow) to suit your business rather than forcing you to change business processes to suit the ERP. This is especially important for industries with unique needs such as agriculture and growing companies looking to exploit unfamiliar opportunities.

According to Piater you need the following to ensure a successful implementation of an ERP:

• An understanding of your own business
• An understanding of the areas in which your business is likely to expand
• An ERP vendor that understands your business
• A clear idea of which of the ERP modules have to be customised to suit your business methodology
• An understanding of the adaptability of the ERP to a changing business model

Woermann & Brock, Namibia’s largest retailer, is a good example.  The company briefed QBCon about their desire to expand up and down the supply chain. QBCon responded by customising an ERP that is scalable and now services the retail and wholesale business division at one of the lowest cost to implement and own in the southern African retail industry.