Do you find that your current business applications and
manual processes are barely able to support your current operation and continually
hinder you from execute on your growth strategy effectively?
For many rapidly growing small and medium enterprises, the current
organization, business operation and transaction volume have out grown the support
of their existing legacy business applications which are often obsolete in
functionality and no longer support by the product owner.Many functions areas are working through
daily routines by navigating through a web of tangling workarounds and manual
processes using tools like Excel spreadsheets, hard copy forms and physical log
books.
With the rapid emergence of new application development platforms
and great perforations of ways to deliver and deploy business applications, the
total cost of ownership for core business applications such as the Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system has become more feasible and justifiable for
small and medium enterprises.Even in
smaller ERP packages specifically targeted at SME’s, a wide range of feature
rich modules are provided from Inventory & Product Management, Sales,
CRM/Call Center, Warehouse & Logistics, Assembly and even Service &
Delivery Management and Point of Sales.
These products are also highly configurable, bundling in
powerful tools for customization and reporting that will allow even the end
users to manipulate data and information at the field and screen levels, as
well as create and modify menu items and work flows according to security
access rights granted.Some even provide
multi-company, multi-site, multi-currency support which can now be found in
even the smaller software packages while providing a variety of licensing and
deployment options including leased licensing agreement and service level based
deployment approach such as Software as a Service (SaaS) or ASP model.Making the right choice can be difficult and
management should to be aware of what are the main categories of software and
select the one that best suit your needs and investment. The following are the
different categories and examples of ERP packages available today.
Commercial License – Software packages available to
general public under commercial licensing from product owners or licensed
partners.There are 3 sub-categories, Tier
1, Mid-Market, and Entry Level.Tier-1
software packages such as Baan, JD Edwards, Lawson, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP and
are normally used by large multi-nationals and global companies with large
multi-million baht budgets.Mid-Market are
packages targeted at medium to large size companies that require much less
investment.Some vendors in this
category are Sage, Epicor, Microsoft and Exact Software.Lastly, there are entry level packages that
are more appropriate for small enterprises that has very little budget for this
type of investments. Some examples are Quickbooks and Peachtree.
Open Source License – Software packages developed and
supported by non-profit organizations and communities of developers in
cooperatively and are made available to the general public at no charge.Some leading ERP open source ERP packages are
Openbravo, Compiere, Apache OFBiz, xTuple and OperERP and are generally
available for download over the Internet.
But with so many choices of platforms, licensing and
deployment options, available functions and features, making the right choices
and ensuring that the implementation properly supports the business today and
in the future can be a complex and perplexing process.Therefore, when planning to undertake an ERP
implementation project, management and the project sponsors should try to keep
the initial implementation scope to the necessary modules by focusing on the
function areas where ERP will have the highest benefits on the operation.
The following are some key success factors to consider when
management of SME’s decides to undertake the investment to implement an ERP
system:
1.Full
management support and user participation
Management must be willing to allow users
in each function area sufficient time away from day to day work to fully
participate in requirements discussion sessions as well as testing and training
sessions.
2.Identify
Key Functional Gaps & Show Stoppers
Gaps in key functional requirements and
show stoppers must be identified as quickly as possible to ensure enough time
for solution development and customization if required.
3.Interface
to Accounting System
If an interface to a legacy accounting
system is required, the in interface specifications and T-Account mappings
should be developed, validated and tested as soon as possible to allow
sufficient time for necessary testing of transaction posting, reporting and
necessary customization.Often times
show stoppers will be found in this area as this is an area that relates
closely to government agencies like the Revenue Department involving compliance
to laws and regulations.
4.Data
Conversion & Mapping
Get well qualified resource to start data
extraction, consolidation, conversion and mapping from other systems or
document as soon as possible.Ensure
that the test conversion and mappings are loaded and tested in the development
system as soon as possible.This can
take up to 6 or 8 weeks to get initial loading and testing completed in the
development system.
5.Minimize
Customization & Source Local Talents
As much as possible, simplify and consolidate
complex business processes through Business Process Reengineering and/or
leverage the ERP application internal process flows by changing your current
process to match the flow within the application.The processes built into the application are
usually the result of process optimization by the product owner to
incorporatingindustry standards and
best practices in order to ensure relevance and effectiveness of their product
in serving the clients’ requirements and operational needs as best as possible.
With careful planning and allocating the right resources, an
ERP system can be implemented and deployed in as quickly as 8 weeks and can
take up to 24 weeks depending mainly on the number of modules and level
customization required.But even at 24
weeks, this time frame is still orders of magnitudes quicker than the
traditional 12-18 months that would be required to put such a full feature ERP
system in place a few years ago.
Furthermore, management and the implementation team should
also take into consideration other factors which can have significant impacts
on the success of the project. Factors such
as organizational and operational readiness, technological maturity as well as availability
of the human resources and skills can have detrimental impact on the implementation
efforts, timeline and costs, hence, risking the overall success of the project.
Finally, if necessary, seek qualified help from external
experts to assist with your planning and implementation. If budget is a
limiting factor, there are provisions made available by the Thai government through
various non-profit organizations that can provide budgetary assistance to
qualified SME’s.For example, a qualified
SME can receive as much as one million Thai baht subsidy for using external
consulting services to help with projects relating to manufacturing including
business process improvement and business system implementation such as ERP.