Is dynamic or rapid implementation a myth in ERP projects?

9-Mar-2010

By Colin Beaney and Poorna Bandara

With the demand for information within an organisation growing on daily basis, business solution providers are constantly looking at new approaches of shorter implementation cycles, better known as "dynamic or rapid implementation".

Although rapid implementation approaches appear to be theoretically promising, in practice, it may not help all customers equally. On the contrary, the forced rapidity against the best fit approach could lead to failure in the implementation.

The expert opinion on implementation methodology seems to be that the choice of methodology largely depends on market maturity, user readiness, customer maturity, data readiness, the type of customer's business and many other contextual parameters. One-model-fit-for- all seems to be a far cry from the reality.

Criteria
Dynamic or rapid implementation methodologies have been in discussion from inception of ERP technology enabling faster ROI for customers. It is however, important to observe that duration of implementation is not the only criteria of a successful implementation.

The factors such as how strongly the system is able to represent the business and how much of business intelligence it can present to the management and most importantly how much you can rely on the ERP vendor as a long term business partner are also considered.

The fundamental need for dynamic or rapid implementation is either the customer has best practices already in place or is willing to adopt best practices readily packaged in the ERP through Business Process Re-engineering (BPR).

On theoretical grounds this is achievable. However, the biggest challenge in implementing ERP technology is convincing customers to give up their age-old practices and adopt global best practices that sometimes may not be possible due to various practical business requirements.

Business processes of customers in matured markets are increasingly becoming closer to ideal business best practices, however in Asian markets this has always been a challenge.

As seen many times practically, rapid implementations are not so "rapid" in Asian conditions as pre-conditions for such implementations do not exist in most businesses in Asia due to existence of large number of legacy business processes coupled with lack of user-readiness.

Challenges
Hence implementation models adopted in matured markets themselves needs to be tailor made to Asian conditions to ensure business objectives of the implementation are achieved. Dynamic or rapid implementation is a challenge. Dynamic or rapid implementation while achieving business objectives is a bigger challenge which is only possible by applying rapid implementation methodologies coupled with contextual realities with a right amount of BPR.

It is feasible to implement elements of a new ERP in a rapid and dynamic way, this is possible only with the right team with the right attitude. The customer retains responsibility for supporting the ERP project with business information and validating the solution. The largest risk is the ability to make decisions in the necessary timeframe concerning the solution.

It is essential that the project core team has authority, knowledge and competence to understand the proposed ERP solution to support the business processes. The solution must be defined quickly and verified immediately before proceeding to the next stage. There is no scope for extended discussions on theory and functionality.

Decisions must be easily made through transparency - no excuses. This is normally only probable in mature markets where processes and procedures are well defined, well followed and mature. High supplementary risks include the availability of accurate bulk data which must be clean prior to import into the ERP solution.

It is possible to import old and incorrect information but it will never be cleaned up later, it has to be corrected before it goes live. If existing data is poor, then it will impact the system use. As a result the information for critical organisational decisions would not be available when it's require.

Combination
ERP implementation is a combination between the customer and vendor. The management and the core team of the customer play a major role in supporting the ERP project team with business decisions, process details and solution validation.

For dynamic or rapid implementation to be possible, it is essential that the customer's core team has the authority, knowledge and competence to understand and implement the proposed solution supporting the business processes. Availability of cleansed data on digital format, having defined business processes and having a matured IT eco-system are contributing factors as well.

It appears that most methodologies of dynamic or rapid implementations work well only in mature markets where procedures are well defined, streamlined and ERP best practices are strictly adopted.

Leading ERP vendors are cautious in employing dynamic or rapid implementation methodologies in emerging markets where elements are less certain and ERP itself is learning curve for the customer.