It is not business as usual, and they will have two jobs to do!
I enjoy performing ERP implementations. It is even more enjoyable when the management team is properly prepared before my arrival. One such project was with a manufacturer that made water purification equipment for municipalities. The client site was on the east coast; they met me at the hotel on Sunday afternoon for dinner, drinks, and an overview of what the project entailed. There were five of them and me. The team was the President / CEO, the VP of Operations, the VP of Finance, the VP of Sales and the Director of Human Resources. At that time, an ERP Vendor employed me and I was going to be the only ‘consultant’ on the project. That meant that I was to do all the training, manage the project, write the status reports to both my company and to theirs, manage the data conversion, create the data for the conference room pilot (CRP), work with the departments on their individual mini-implementations before the CRP and manage the CRP itself. That is if the implementation made it past the training.
I was impressed with the President, he was a listener and asked his team for their input when I raised questions. It was a refreshing approach, one I had seen very little of during my three years of doing ERP Implementations for this ERP vendor.
The client had bought the full suite, from HR through manufacturing including the planning pieces of Rough Cut and Master Scheduling and the customer interface pieces of Sales Force Automation and the Activity Help Desk. I was looking forward to working with this company.
During our discussions, I learned that they had already attended ERP education and that this Senior Management group was the Steering committee and the people I was to train on the use of the software. This group would manage the implementation project and they would train users in the new departmental procedures as well as how to use the new ERP Software. (This would shorten the implementation cycle by at least 1/3). For me, this was a first; usually the senior managers distanced themselves from the real work because they did not want to be associated with a failure. I learned that that attitude general was the reason that a number of ERP Projects failed.
They told me their timeline was 9 weeks; I told them it was an aggressive schedule. The Operations VP told me that this project was getting in the way of other projects and needed to be complete before other projects started. I asked if this was the only company project and the Ops VP said, “Absolutely, we already have our regular jobs and this one”. He added, “It is difficult enough doing one job, and the thought of doing an ERP Project for more than 3 months is too much of a disruption to the normal business to languish beyond that timeline. We just want to get back to our regular jobs and we want our people to do the same.” The company president reinforced the statement, “It is not business as usual, and they will have two jobs to do. We cannot overwork them for too long. Too long is 10 weeks”. Another first! This company president and his management team were truly concerned about the work force.
We did the software training off-site for several reasons.
- It allowed a free flowing discussion
- Sometimes heated debates ensued, which was to be expected and concerns that someone (outside of this group) would misinterpret the discussions did not exist
- We could focus on the activities at hand, without interruptions about other business matters
- We could discuss the pros and cons of options and the implications to the overall effectiveness to the business without others misinterpreting the intent of the discussions
Using this group to focus the ERP project performed economies of scale. To reinforce the training, users input data from the legacy system. We did not convert data. Instead, at the same time as the training occurred, legacy data was scrubbed and input. This removed a good part of the implementation activities and created a momentum for the implementation. Users could actually see the light at the end of the tunnel and know it was not an oncoming freight train. The other unique part of this client’s project was that the management team wrote the user guides. The rational was that if the management team was to ask for data, they needed to understand the method for data production, the reliability of those data, and the validity of the data. Being intimately associated with the details, gave them a unique perspective and effective method to manage the company with the actual data the ERP Software produced!
The implementation progressed as planned. It also survived the replacement of the Operations VP. Five weeks into the implementation, he had a sudden heart attack and died. Here, their planning paid for itself. Instead of looking for an outside replacement, the Purchasing Manager, became the VP of Operations, a position he was educated and trained to perform. The company president and I worked with him after hours to bring him up to speed. He lived up to the demands of the new position.
One of the things that the company had learned at their ERP seminars was succession planning. If that plan had not already been in place, the ERP Implementation would have suffered. Because of their foresight, we minimized the possibility of a delay by the simple plan of preparing for it. The delay was minimal; the project did not suffer a loss of momentum. Instead, the company president took delight that the project stayed on track and on budget; the Purchasing Manager was excited about the promotion to VP of Operations; and my company loved the fact that we had another successful user. It was a win-win-win. The ERP System was operational in 9 weeks!
This company was remarkable for a number of reasons:
- Education occurred before the software was in place
- The education occurred at all levels of the company
- New processes were in place before the software
- The management team worked harder than the users. Thought this is rare in the companies with which I work, sad to say that many companies are not comprised of real leaders. This team was comprised of real leaders and lead by the best one I have ever met
- Managers were teaching the users. This removed a number of ‘garbage filters’ and allowed the managers to show users how the job was ‘to be performed’
- Users understood that the boss knew what was possible with the new software and bought into the project because of the leadership shown by the management team