Top business drivers impacting ERP strategies:
- need to be easier to do business with (improve overall customer experience)
- need to manage growth expectations
- must reduce costs
- must improve customer response time
- pressures to innovate (products or services) to deliver more value to the customer
Top strategies that impact ERP:
- streamline and accelerate processes to improve efficiency and productivity
- standardise business processes
- provide visibility to business processes across functions and departments
- optimise the use of current capacity
- link global operations to improve interoperability and collaboration
Process capabilities:
- standardised enterprise-wide procedures for procurement, cash collection, and financial reconciliation
- sales and engineering collaborate to set proper expectations with customers
- ability to do demand planning and forecasting
Organisational capabilities:
- cross-functional continuous improvement teams are responsible for improving operational performance
- new employees are properly trained in using ERP after initial stages of implementation
- ERP strategy is tied to talent plan and strategy
Knowledge management capabilities:
- real time visibility into status of all processes from quote to cash
- ability to automatically and immediately notify decision makers when certain conditions occur
- a fully integrated view of all customer information available to any sales and marketing person
Performance management capabilities:
- measurement of accuracy of demand planning and forecasting
- ability to measure marketing influence on closed sales and pipeline
To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:
- establish standardised business processes for the entire organisation
- provide a standard multi-tiered ERP strategy to support the varying needs of different parts of the organisation
- provide visibility and access to business processes through the ERP system, regardless of user role or location
