Implementing a system

 One of the fundamental requirement of Implementing a system ( be it a process or a ERP system) is understanding how the operation works. Many of the consultants read some books and implement systems which are not aligned in with the operations, but are considered to be best practices.

Any system implementation requires a person (preferably from the company) to be in charge and who has a the full knowledge of the operations as well as the accounting behind it. Most experts are of a single domain (operations or finance) and merging the two requires a lot of skills in implementing.

Implementing a system requires, a) Process to be clearly identified b) understanding of what reports are needed to analyse the business c) discussing with the working staff to see what issues are there that are faced in practical terms d) leaving many blank cells in the Input format which can be later utilized to add data and finally e) Critical in those inputs formats or elsewhere are an edit or comment portion that has text field where comments are added and cannot be deleted. Only further comments with dates can be added to see a trail/history of why that was done. This is a preferable option in all the input formats to understand some unique situation that come up later and a solution is found.(Gives the support reasons why the process was changed at a later date. 

Lets take one by one - Processes.

These are to be defined clearly sitting with the operatives and their managers and seeing what is the best way to achieve the processes. Experts or  best practices can be studied and drawn up.

One pitfall that is to be avoided is that many managers and operatives come from places/companies, having worked elsewhere, and require the same set up to ease their work. This is the most trickiest and expensive portion of implementation as one has to study the out of box software (costs a standard fare) and making changes to the out of box software (very expensive for modification). The implementer has to understand and see that there is minimal disruption to the out of box software and see only whether key inputs that are not available in Out of box software is to be modified. Randomly acceding to the different category of people's requirement  will make it a very expensive and non ending situation of software implementation.

Reports

 At the end of the implementation of the system if the reports required for analysis are not available, then the system is a waste. If it is noted that required inputs were not captured for reports and no such provision exists, the implementation of system is a waster. Thus the reporting requirement is to be also tackled along with processes. This will give an indication of what inputs are to be captured which can then be incorporated in the report.

 

DISCUSSING WITH WORKING STAFF/OPERATION MANAGERS

 As mentioned earlier, working staff and operation managers come from varied background and having worked in different systems are not easy to adapt to new system easily. They are used to seeing a particular SETUP in their old company or in the current company itself and would not like to see a change in process or input. If you agree to everything what they say, then the project will be a multi year long drawn process with the company providing software and the implementer both getting tired. The Project manager has to take into account the views which impacts the processes and not fancy changes to looks on inputs forms.

 The implementer has to be stern but at the same time understanding. Just because a manager or operative has been used to seeing the date on right side and this system puts it on left is not a valid reason for modifying the system. KEY IS TO LOOK IF REQUIRED INPUT  IS CAPTURED.

Leaving Blanks in input form

One of the factors I found in the implementation is that sometimes the fields in input are set and later after say 6 months, you want to add a field, it becomes difficult as the tables in the database are set and linked and it will cost a lot of time and money and possible NO from the software provider.

It is always better at the time of implementation to add some fields that can have alpha numeric inputs, fields that can take in text comments and other boolean or any other character. This will greatly ease at a latter date if you want to capture some additional data for your input. Eg, if a customer data is captured in the data field and if a driver comes later to service the equipment, if a free field exists, his name can be added to later retrieve who come to deliver and pick up the equipment.

While implementing a large system with different business units and that has trading, construction, process industry, etc is a huge task, the above basic needs that can be kept in mind will ease the implementation process.