Murphy’s Law is alive and well thanks to ERP implementations. The problems that often arise can be avoided and/or the impact reduced by good planning in advance and strong project management. Here are a few ways to fight Murphy:
- Ensure you have the right people (your A team) on the project and enough of their time is allocated to the project. Some key operational team members will need to be backfilled on their day jobs. Talk to people who have gone through an implementation to get a sense of the time needed.
- Ensure the implementation plan proposed by the vendor is adequate. Get each vendor to break out their implementation project into the major tasks and compare them for variances. You may find that one vendor may have low balled one of the tasks such as training.
- During contract negotiations, clearly define the scope and the link the contract to the RFP requirements. Ensure that all requirements are thoroughly discussed and understood.
- If you are taking on the responsibility of creating custom reports, ensure you have someone on the team that has the experience to develop and deliver these reports.