5 Tips to Assure a Successful

ERP Implementation
A Planning Guide

WHITE PAPER
Cincom In-depth Analysis and Review
 Table of Contents
5 Tips to Assure a
Successful ERP Executive Summary ........................................................3
Implementation
Introduction ......................................................................3
A Planning Guide
Implementation Team .......................................................3

Developing the Plan .........................................................5

WHITE PAPER
Publishing the Plan and Schedule ....................................7
Cincom In-depth Analysis and Review

Progress Reporting ..........................................................8

Mid-Course Corrections ....................................................8

Conclusion .......................................................................9

About Cincom ................................................................11


Executive Summary
This paper is aimed at individuals preparing to
oversee an ERP implementation project.
These projects are frequently perceived to be less
than successful. While there are many reasons
why a given implementation project may be less
than perfect, there are a few steps individuals,
teams and companies can take to raise the
likelihood of a successful project.
The paper will go into detail discussing five specific
steps that must be completed to assure a positive
outcome.
Implementation team formation will be discussed.
We will look at team composition, specific goals,
cautions and strategies necessary to bring an
implementation project to a successful conclusion.
Development of the project plan is also an essential
element of the project. Here we will look at what
the plan should include, development of task lists,
how success will be measured, determining
accountability and monitoring progress. Project
ownership, roadblock strategies and scheduling will
also be covered here.
Advance publication of the plan is also a common
characteristic of successful implementations. We
will look at how a little internal PR will smooth the
way for the many changes resulting from the new
system. The importance of scheduling all major
tasks and events in advance is examined in this
section as well.
Progress reports are most useful as a way to keep
everyone apprised of project progress. The
reporting structure will differ for various groups
within the organization. Dashboards for C-level
employees are discussed. Recognition strategies
are reviewed from the standpoint of gaining
enthusiasm and buy in from the ultimate users and
consumers of the system.
Finally the importance of flexibility is stressed.
Once the project is underway, many things will
surface that were either unplanned or unknown by
the planners. These can be challenging. The
paper talks about the importance of being able to
modify on the fly as the project unfolds.
3
Introduction
Raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens . . . .
Thus starts the Rogers and Hammerstein song,
“My Favorite Things” from the musical The Sound
of Music. One thing you will not likely find on any
body’s list of “My Favorite Things” is ERP
Implementation projects.
And is it any wonder? These are high risk, long
duration, often thankless projects. They too
frequently end in failure with high visibility career
casualties. History shows that championing and
running an ERP implementation is not the best way
to fast track it up the corporate ladder. That is,
unless you happen to bring in the project on-time,
under-budget and exceeding all expectations.
However, for most of us getting an ERP
implementation successfully completed takes
complete commitment and an abundance of time.
The intent of these five tips are to help you make
the most of your commitment in the least possible
time.
What can be done to help assure a positive
outcome with delighted users? How can you avoid
the career ending disasters that seem to appear in
the headlines almost every week?
Let’s take a look at what you can do to help assure
a successful implementation.
Pre Implementation Tips
It is essential that your management has bought
into the system selection decision, that they support
the project and that you have a named, active,
participating executive sponsor. Having a senior
management sponsor who can champion the
change needed in your organization is a critical,
must have step in the journey to having a
successful ERP implementation.
Establish the Implementation Team
The first requirement is creating an implementation
team that will be able to maximize the value
delivered by the ERP system. The team should
reflect the make up of the ERP user community
meaning all functional divisions and management
levels with in the organization will need to be
represented on the team. This facilitates active
ownership of the project by all involved.
Be prepared to overcome adversity. The
team will also need to be adept at
overcoming resistance to change in the
development of the system as it is deployed
and brought online. Senior management
inclusion on the team will help facilitate this.
It is an enterprise wide project. This may
be a surprise to some, but thinking of an
ERP implementation as “an IT project” or a
“Finance project” is a mistake. Ultimately,
this will be a complete re-engineering of
your company from the core business
processes up to how the many tasks
essential to attracting, selling and serving
customers, including all supporting
functions, are coordinated and synchronized
for greater performance.
Forget about vendor provided “turnkey”
implementations. There is no such thing
as a “one and done” ERP implementation.
Your vendor will need to be actively
involved, but, it must be your
implementation. Even the world’s greatest
obstetrician can’t have your baby for you,
and a vendor can’t implement your system.
Include a C-level Champion on your team.
No vendor can help you get over resistance
to change. It is very important to have a
senior manager or C-level executive (CFO,
CIO, CEO) champion your ERP
implementation. Your chances of success
go up significantly when this person takes
the leadership role of the project and
defines the implementation team.
The system will ultimately involve many people and
functions beyond IT and Finance – in fact it will
touch every significant process and functional area
of the company over time. Those people must be
involved in the project to overcome resistance to
change and give them a chance to “own” how their
jobs will change when the system launches.
In a recent study published by Panorama
Consulting Group, fully 38% of companies
surveyed cited “lack of employee buy-in” as the
primary problem facing the implementation team.
Overcoming resistance is such a major issue that
AMR Research has also shown that 70% of CRM
projects fail due to lack of ownership and resistance
to change.
Jill Dyche, best-selling author of CRM books and
industry expert says that fears of how IT systems
will change a person’s job and potentially take
valuable information away from them, robbing them
of their status and job security, is the single biggest
roadblock every company faces in rolling out new
systems.
Establish a Change Management
Program. These fears can most effectively
be addressed with a thorough change
management program. Change
management is the study of how to
overcome resistance to change. Having a
C-level executive is a great first step in your
change management strategy and plan.
Obtain constant feedback. Creating
opportunities for users to provide feedback
on everything from the system design to the
GUI definition. This is how users will
develop a sense of ownership in the system
and see it as an improvement rather than a
threat to their jobs.
Include all functional areas. Acceptance is
much easier to facilitate if participation in
the implementation is both cross-
functionally wide and vertically deep in
terms of the organization hierarchy.
Consider creating a User Advisory
Council, which is a cross-functional team of
the departments most affected by the ERP
implementation. The User Advisory Council
will remain in place well beyond the
implementation to facilitate ongoing system
and process tuning by interfacing the user
community with IT.
From our experiences at Cincom this is a win/win:
the developers get useful information on how
existing processes work and how to improve them
while users get an opportunity to influence design
at multiple levels, leading to greater ownership of
the system in the process.
Include ERP knowledgeable personnel. The
team should also have some people with expertise
in ERP, from system analysts to database
designers to human factors engineering to make
sure the system is in precise alignment to unmet
needs while increasing process efficiency
throughout your company. The Panorama study
found “lack of ERP expertise” to be the second
most commonly cited problem (33%) facing
implementation teams. If this expertise is
unavailable internally, go to a 3rd party.
Planning – the most important phase of
implementation
During the initial phase of the project the
implementation team will be primarily concerned
with planning activities. The project will be complex
in nature so tools such as project management
software will be essential to establishing specific
task lists, task ownership, task dependencies and
scheduling.
Accountability is critical. There must be
accountability at the task level for the ERP
Implementation Project to make progress over
time. Again, a C-level champion for your project is
the best way to resolve conflicts as to which tasks
get done. A clear line of authority makes it much
easier to get this work done.
The planning phase will also determine what
resources are required to facilitate the
implementation. These will include funding
requirements, physical space, human resources,
systems, supplies and time.
Finally, the planning team needs to establish how
performance will be measured. How will you
know if you are succeeding or failing? Specific
metrics should be agreed upon in advance to
facilitate the definition of success and also to
measure the performance of the project itself and
those participating in it. These metrics could
include such things as
Actual spend vs. budget per module
installed or department brought online.
Task completions percentages over time
Personnel educated prior to
implementation.
This is an opportunity to inject ownership into the
system on the part of users. Have the User
Advisory Council work in conjunction with system
developers and architects to define the Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be used to
measure system performance – again the critical
aspect of this is getting users to own the
performance of the system and increase adoption
rates of its use.
Do not ever define KPIs or dashboards without the
feedback of users; it is critical to have them
involved to nurture ownership of the system and its
performance.
It is also important to establish what
accommodations must be made between the
systems capabilities and your organizational needs.
This gap analysis is necessary because no
solution will fully address the unique requirements,
organizational structure and needs that you
present. This may best be accomplished by looking
at these functional requirements through the lens of
business process management (BPM). This is
another skill set to include in the team membership.
Once the basic plan is established and accepted by
the project champions (upper management) the
real work will begin. Your system vendor will likely
have valuable tools available to help you determine
the specifics related to getting your system
implemented.
The more complete and detailed your up-front plan
is, the higher your likelihood of success. This plan
has got to have the critical components of change
management included too.
Make a very focused and deliberate strategy of
getting users to own the system to ensure it is a
success.
At this point, you will be utilizing basic project
management processes. The foundation of your
ERP implementation needs to be built on sound
project management planning – but the execution
will require the muscle of your senior management
champion to make change happen constantly
during the project.
Define the task list. Using all the information
sources you have available, internal and from your
vendor, lay out a task list. Start with the high level
tasks and then expand each of those by identifying
sub-tasks and individual required actions.
 Typical MS Project ERP Implementation Task List

Identify resources required to

complete each task. Measure, Monitor and Modify. Be
sure to continually measure the
progress towards the project
Assign Accountability For Each milestones and seek to understand
Phase. Once this is completed, start how the dynamics of the group may
matching team member experience be impacting exceptional
or expertise to each task. This will performance in certain areas and
help you determine who should shortcomings in others. Be sure to
own each phase of the have your C-level champion
implementation project. Don’t forget celebrate the wins and understand
to include management in this area. what can be learned from the losses
The more upper management is of getting tasks done on time.
visibly involved, the more credibility
the project will have. Ultimately,
management should sign off on Always seek to impart ownership
each major milestone when they are of the system to users. What
completed. needs to always be kept in mind by
project management teams and the
C-level champion is that the ERP will encounter something that is
implementation must seek to have a outside of everyone’s area of
very high level of adoption if it is to experience. Do not rule out third
be successful in bringing greater party involvement in these
levels of efficiency and performance situations. This is particularly true if
into the company. ERP there are political ramifications or
implementations often lead to similar sensitivities involved.
companies completely re-defining
their business models over time. So,
Next is scheduling. Assign
realize this system may change how
reasonable and realistic time
you complete manufacturing,
requirements to each task and
service, support, pricing or
subtask. As these assignments are
accounting processes. Making
completed think about sequencing
these changes effective for the long-
the tasks by identifying the
term all hinges on ownership of the
dependencies for each task in terms
system by users.
of what must be done before starting
a task and what can be started after
Removing roadblocks is the job finishing a given task. This will
for the C-level champion, and this serve as the basis for your schedule.
includes getting the team help
when needed. Sooner or later, you

Task dependencies and time line as depicted in MS Project Gantt Chart

Publish the Plan
Now that you have a plan, a schedule and tentative
staffing/ownership established, publish these so
everyone involved can review and comment as
needed. You will most likely need to make some
adjustments to your plan based on the feed back
received.
Create buzz. You also want to create some
buzz around the plan to make sure people
see their contributions to the project as
having value and giving them high visibility
in the company.
Identify Milestones. Finally identify the
major milestones in your plan and
determine who will accept or reject work
completed toward fulfilling each milestone.
Identify Ownership. Who will “sign off” and
how will that be documented? It is
important to publish this along with the plan
itself since you will want to be able to
confirm that all stake holders are identified
and represented.
Report on progress early & often: Internal
PR to Bring Lasting Change
Remember that change management and fear of
what this system will do to day-to-day life in your
company is the greatest risk the project has.
Aggressively pursue PR and celebrate the small
victories. Acknowledge individual performances
contributing to the projects success. An internal
newsletter is an excellent way to accomplish this.
Establish creditability. Report project
progress to all involved or affected by the
project. Don’t hesitate to report problems or
difficulties encountered along the way as
well as the more successful aspects of the
implementation. Think credibility!
Report frequently. Frequency of the
reporting will vary throughout the project.
Initially, the implementation team should
publish minutes or at least meeting reports
following each meeting. As the project
gains momentum, a regular update
schedule should be followed. In some
cases these reports may be monthly, but
keeping the project on center stage via
weekly reports will have greater benefits. A
combination of newsletters on a monthly
basis, and short weekly updates may be the
most desirable for larger projects.
Aggressively control rumors. Most
organizations have active rumor mills or
gossip networks. If there are problems (and
there will likely be problems) along the way,
establish your team as the source for
accurate information.
Gather Feedback. Progress reports should
contain links or instructions for your user
community to provide feed back to you
regarding the system. Act quickly on
problems revealed and report on the
resolutions in the next report.
Recognize Excellence. These reports also
offer an opportunity to single out people or
groups for recognition of particularly
meaningful contributions to the project. It is
a team effort and everyone who contributes
should feel appreciated for their hard work.
Think about using plaques, medals,
certificates and team golf shirts. These are
all great ways to build the team and
recognize individual performance. Bonuses
and additional vacation days are also fine,
but “visible” recognitions are better. They
have the affect of advertising the value
delivered by the employee and the effort
recognized by management.
This is a big deal, it is important to everyone in the
company. It does require the support and
confidence of everyone in the company, so a “thank
you” to those putting forth commendable effort is
most appropriate.
Monitor, Measure and Modify
As the project moves forward, there will be
unforeseen situations and phases of the operation
that just don’t go as planned. To the degree
possible, tweak your own processes to
accommodate these deviations. Don’t suspend the
entire project while a minor issue is resolved.
Executive level champions and stake holders will
require constant updating. This is best
accomplished through the use of project
dashboards. These will give the C-level champion
the kind of data that interests them without
burdening them with minutia related to subtasks
C-Level ERP implementation status dashboard
In Closing
Keep focused on what the purpose of the project is,
what ERP can (and can not) do, what the defined
goals are as originally set forth. Don’t let “scope
creep” kill your project. There is always a
tendency for people to push other, unrelated
projects into the middle of a large scale project like
this.
Beware the naysayers and gloom merchants; kill
this negativity by having a C-level champion that
openly celebrates each small victory and elevates
the project to the highest profile in the company.
Do not under estimate the importance of morale in
and minor issues.
In some cases, C-level participation in mid-course
corrections may be necessary, keeping them up on
your progress will make these corrections much
easier to implement.
this type of project and do not underestimate the
potential negative impact those with poor attitudes
can have on the overall project.
Let’s summarize what we have covered.
1) Form your implementation team – involve
management, IT, Finance and other
functional areas affected by the system.
Bring in end users from all levels of the
organization. Consider third party
involvement where needed.
 2) Plan the implementation – tasks, sequence,
time requirements and staffing. Form
3) Publish the plan and implementation Implementation
schedule – collect feedback and make Team
necessary adjustments
4) Report on progress – regular status reports
covering the successful and problematic.
Solicit feedback. Recognize excellence. Develop Plan
5) Tweak as you go. Nothing ever runs
completely according to script, be prepared
to ad lib and accommodate changes as
required
Publish Plan and
Schedule

Report on
Progress

ERP implementation can be effective and

rewarding for those directly involved and for the
organization as a whole. Careful planning, realistic Tweak as
expectations and effective communication are the Required
basis for an implementation that will delight all
concerned.