5 Sure-fire Signs You’re Ready for an ERP Overhaul
by Paul Sita on June 3rd, 2010
It’s all too easy to over-complicate things. When it comes to ERP, I plead guilty. Every company’s needs are really unique, and the subtle differences among the many solutions out there are really important. Still, there are times when you have to simplify things — and that’s at the beginning. The question that clients ask us more than any other is: “Is it time for an ERP overhaul?”
Signs that the time has come to make a change
In a short conversation there are 5 things we look for which are sure-fire signs that say “Yes, Dorothy, the time has come…you can’t go home any more.”
- Highly customized legacy environment. Your current ERP or legacy system was either totally written from scratch, or started as a package and the developers who know it are either retired or missing in action, or otherwise not available to you.
- You’re several versions back in at least one of your critical legacy systems. Worse yet, no one can provide you with assurance that applying patches or doing an upgrade will not involve significant down-time and/or cost.
- Working “around” the system instead of working with it. When new business requirements arise, you frequently end up working around the application, instead of working with it because of limitations to the application or rules about how you can interact with it. (see #2 above!)
- Your key management reports are spreadsheets or Access Database reports created from information taken from several legacy systems. It’s not uncommon for manual manipulation of the data to be required, even on a monthly basis. If the data isn’t correct (how would you know?) it usually requires changing the source system and then re-creating the Excel reports.
- Difficulty meeting mandates in a timely fashion. Customers, suppliers, or governmental mandates are requiring you to provide information or “integrate with them” and you either can’t do this easily, or worse yet, don’t even capture the information they are looking for.
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