ERP ASSIGNMENT-3

Name: Rachit Singh

Reg No.: 179402106

What is ERP?
ERP software is a large suite of integrated applications that manage everyday business
processes and automate back office functions. It’s designed to centralize and optimize
operations with its connectivity, while reducing manual labor. For example, in the supply
chain industry, an ERP system could automatically run a financial analysis and predict future
stock needs to keep inventory at a healthy level. This process control ensures that the
manufacturing department is performing at optimal capacity and in-demand products are in
stock.

Factors for successful ERP implementation:

• Executive support
It’s vital that your executive team is on board with your ERP project. We know from
experience that projects succeed when everyone is working from a single set of facts, which
is why Quick Start data resides in a single database, giving both Sunrise and customers an
identical view of a project’s status. Power BI dashboards with almost real-time updates gives
everyone a bird’s-eye view of the implementation and keeps people on the same page.
Embedding Power BI into Quick Start has been the biggest game-changer since we
launched the tool in 2013. Users have a quantitative view of how a project is progressing,
and project managers can spot bottlenecks quickly.

• Employee involvement
Your ERP implementation team should be composed of the best employees from across
your organization – these are your rock stars, the people who know your current processes
inside and out. These internal resources should exhibit the ability to understand the overall
needs of the company and be entrusted with critical decision-making responsibility and
authority. Quick Start comes with a library of top-notch workflow processes for your industry
which helps take care of the repetitive work so consultants can get down to business. Our
methodology combines agile and waterfall methodologies, and sprint-based work so our
consultants shadow, interview, design, and leave behind a beautiful set of processes and
documents.

• Clearly defined project scope

Having a well-defined and written scope of work can mean the difference between a failed
project with disastrous results, and a highly successful project with huge benefits. Your
project scope is the basis for the requirements of the project and the resources that need to
be deployed. Don’t skimp on scoping. It pays to spend the time upfront making sure
EVERYTHING is documented and define clear expectations upfront and establish overall
goals. Quick Start is more than a task manager – our dashboards provide a fact-based,
quantitative view of
your project’s status. Track progress, see how far you’ve come, compare against budget,
and see what’s left to do. Implementations, at their heart, are just thousands of tasks (okay,
maybe tens of thousands of tasks. To some of you, it probably feels like hundreds of
thousands of tasks.) The idea is simple: have a single location where ALL the project tasks
are tracked and make it visible to both the client and project teams.

• Plan to optimize business processes

One of the most expensive aspects of an implementation are customizations. We’ve heard
horror stories of thousands of hours sunken into customizing an ERP system that, in the
end, still didn’t work for the customer.

• Proactive change management

ERP implementations change the way people do their jobs, and no one likes change. It’s
important to build in enough time to train people on new systems and processes. After all,
you bought a new ERP system to make work easier! Don’t let end users feel like they just
swapped an old, clunky headache for a newer, shinier headache. To make end user training
successful, training should start early, preferably before the implementation begins,
especially for skills that will help users better implement and utilize the solution. Executives
often underestimate the level of education and training necessary to implement an ERP
system as well as the associated costs. Top management must be fully committed to
incorporate the training cost as part of the ERP budget. For a successful implementation,
you need structured project management, full transparency, and buy-in from users at every
level of the organization. We created Sunrise 365® Quick Start to streamline Dynamics 365
projects, by combining methodology, best practices, and quantifiable progress metrics into a
single solution. You can get to go-live faster and experience your company's digital
transformation sooner.

• Project management tools

Why would we build a specific tool for ERP project management, when we could pull one off
the shelf? Because ERP implementations fail for so many reasons – miscommunications,
mismatched expectations, and an inability to spot problems before they snowball. We set out
to create a system that minimizes risk and gives everyone a task-oriented, fact-based view
of the implementation, in real time. Quick Start is tailored to Sunrise’s sprint-driven
methodology. We cover this in much more detail in our methodology blog post, but the
bottom line is – it works. By leveraging the knowledge we’ve gained from over 25 years of
experience and over 170 go-lives, Quick Start provides a structured path to success.

• A partner that knows your industry

ERP deployments, especially for consumer brand companies, have many moving parts
which impact every aspect of an organization. To help monitor and guide your project’s
success, we recommend working with a partner who knows your industry as well as they
know the software. Since the original release, we’ve reconfigured the solution to optimize it
for Dynamics 365 implementations. Every feature of Quick Start has been included because
we encountered it in real ERP projects. We built this tool from the ground up, and we
continue to refine and update Quick Start as our industries change, Microsoft’s software
roadmap changes, and new customers continue to go live.
Example of successful ERP Implementation:
• Cadbury’s
The company was on an accelerated growth-track while facing problems meeting its
production and distribution requirements. Subsequently, SAP was engaged to resolve these
concerns. Along with other significant changes triggered by the ERP implementation; multi-
node resources-management was extended throughout its supply-chain, along with a
complete revamping of existing warehouse, and distribution processes. The consequent
impacts afforded Cadbury an opportunity to reduce overall operating costs, while its newly
engaged supply-chain, produced significantly better production efficiencies throughout its
manufacturing chain. Key takeaways:
i. ERP implementations don’t have to drag on—Fulton & Roark’s team was up
andworking in about 20 days.
ii. The company’s story also emphasizes a major success factor: Getting management
committed to an ERP project. In this case, the co-founders initiated the project, which
consultants say often spurs employee adoption.

Factors for failure of ERP implementation

• Poor software fit /inaccurate requirements
Have a highly detailed and accurate inventory of system requirements in hand before you
begin shopping for an ERP system. Be relentless with questions; ERP vendors will be overly
optimistic about their product’s fit to your problems. Never choose bells and whistles over
nuts and bolts.

• Business leadership is not committed to the implementation

Without this commitment, no one else in the organization will be committed either.
Recommend postponement of the ERP project rather than gamble leadership attitudes will
somehow “come around”.

• Insufficient team resources

This can be the number of resources, but it is even more important to get the right resources
in to your ERP team in terms of talent and experience.

• Lack of accountability to make timely, high quality decisions

Establish early on who is responsible for what level of decision making. Late, ambiguous, or
poor quality decisions can doom your project to ERP failure.

• Lack of investment in change management

No matter what the business case says, the rank and file will not be looking forward to ERP.
The only intelligent course is to over communicate and over prepare.

• Insufficient training /support

An ERP implementation requires trained users. Any users not trained in advance will be
siphoning off resources from the implementation support team. As the available support
resources diminish, the ability to resolve go-live problems decreases, and the
implementation implodes.

• Insufficient funding
ERP implementations are expensive, and you should always be conscientious about not
wasting money. However, the cost of an ERP failure makes the implementation cost seems
like pocket change. Make your best estimate of cost and increase that estimate by 25%
when you ask for a budget.

• Insufficient data cleansing

Data cleansing and preparation is an enormous Catch-22, and requires patience and
persistence. The Catch-22 is that the correct format and choices for data cannot occur
without understanding how the system works, but the system won’t work without correctly
formatted data. The system build and data cleansing must occur in tandem.

• Insistence on making ERP look like legacy

Over-customization increases every other cost and risk, it makes upgrading and testing
more difficult, and it reduces ERP functionality

• Lack of testing
Without serious and repeated testing, building from a single test of every business critical
process and progressing though volume tests and a mock go-live requiring practice at
synching up the old systems to the new, the shock and surprise of problem volume at ERP
go-live will collapse the implementation effort.

Example of unsuccessful ERP Implementation:

• Nike’s Supply Chain Issues
Back in 2000 and 2001, Nike spent $400 million dollars updating their supply chain system
and ERP. They were surprised to find that what it got them was a ghastly 20% dip in their
stock, $100 million dollars in lost revenues, and a myriad of class-action lawsuits. The
reason for this is that they implemented and launched a new demand-planning solution
without appropriate testing, and everything went awry. Rather than helping Nike match their
supply with demand and shortening their manufacturing cycle, they ended up ordering low-
selling sneakers in place of high demand ones, collapsing the supply chain.