Navigating the Optimal Path with BACS Consulting Group – ERP
The Digital Transformation Revolution (DTR) has gone mainstream worldwide, responding to and driving epic demographic changes in the workplace. To paraphrase a noted MIT Sloan Management Review report: DTR compels all businesses and organizations to adopt and adapt to a “customer-driven, digital-first approach to all aspects of a business, from its business models to customer experiences to processes and operations.”
But what does that mean for the small-to-midsize business, those enterprises earning between twenty to three hundred million dollars annually?
For small-to-midsize enterprises, digital transformation often begins with investing in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). This is the implementation of software and platforms to achieve data-driven management of crucial day-to-day business activities to win a competitive advantage by:
- Delivering more projects on time
- Reducing inventory costs
- Ending purchasing errors
- Improving production efficiencies
- Optimizing job costings
- Lowering operational costs
The Map for ERP Success: Planning…Flexibility…Partnership
There is no single ERP that fits every company or organization. But many small-to-midsize companies implement ERP in that flawed “one-size-fits-all” or “once-and-done” approach. A recent McKinsey study has shown that this has led to an astonishingly high rate of attaining expected ERP goals and incurred additional costs for revising or replacing flawed systems.
To avoid choosing the road least desired, here are five key map points to reach ERP success:
- Plan Strategically: Think in five to ten-year frameworks of where your company should be, what challenges it will likely face, and what combination of material and human resources –- your proactive, qualified team –- will best achieve your goals.
- Embrace Flexibility: You can implement ERP gradually, monitoring, adjusting, and evolving it to ensure it becomes the indispensable tool for cutting costs, raising efficiencies and effectiveness, and streamlining your workforce as planned.
- Adopt …Adapt…Transform: Whatever your organization’s focus, you will want to choose your ERP both to orchestrate and streamline data application, integration, and process toward a common set of goals.
- Invest to Evolve: Invest in the platforms and technologies that enable continuous software, platform, and process updates, especially in cloud ERP apps. Know that technology is ever-changing. Find a system that will not limit future solutions.
- Partner with an experienced Consulting Service Provider: As an industry, government, and academic study have all shown, longer-term partnerships with the MSP grounded in technical expertise and close, collaborative approaches consistently produce the highest rates of successful ERP implementation.
Choosing the right Consulting Service Provider partner cannot be overstated.
The close MSP-client collaborative partnership is an ERP investment, given that some ERP projects can take up to three years to come to fruition. But as the noted industry analysts Faith, Leiter, et al. state, “Application leaders who are willing to view ERP as a collection of processes automated and enhanced by technology — rather than a monolithic “chunk” of software — [ are the ones who achieve their] golden transformation opportunity.
BACS: Your ERP Partner
BACS embodies this “golden transformation opportunity.” Our skill set reflects our broad client base. Whatever area of ERP your organization has considered or needs to consider –– including data analytics, process automation, or even AI –– BACS has the expertise…DTR/ERP portfolios…industry accolades…and the corporate/organizational fluencies to deliver the solutions to your organization’s needs.
In upcoming weeks we will continue to present impactful, doable strategies for your organization to learn…adapt… evolve, and above all, achieve that golden transformation opportunity Enterprise Resource Planning promises.
