If you follow this blog or our Facebook page, you know that Intelligent Access Systems has been working on the rollout of a new ERP system to run the company since last November.  We’re not a company geared for rolling out very large and complex ERP software packages, so we had allot of interesting days along the way.  Recently while sitting in the Chicago O’Hara airport, I got a chance to visit with a friend who runs a very large security cooperative.  To protect my friend, I won’t mention his name but it’s safe to say that he has been down the ERP rollout road before.  We chatted for a second about ERP’s and discussed both companies’ initiatives to rollout new ERP’s for our companies.  He said something that scared the daylights out of me….he said, “Ron, I rolled out an ERP package when I came to our company and they should have fired me afterwards because it was a complete disaster.”  Now, I’m sitting here thinking the lights on my future just got dimmer!  He followed up by saying that this time around he hired a professional project manager to run the process from start to finish.

At this time I am 3-4 months from “going live” with our ERP, had run into many issues, and didn’t hire a professional PM to run the process.  I wondered if I would be telling a similar story that “it was so bad that I should have been fired” to someone in the future.  The truth is, we got it rolled out but with troubles all along the way and our entire company learned allot of lessons.  Now, in the future I may do a blog about the “issues along the way”, but for now I’m just going to focus on the experience and hope to provide some wisdom to others.

The first piece of wisdom is to absolutely know what you are buying.   Now this is my third ERP rollout so I have some experience but still missed the target on this piece.  You need to clafythat what was presented during demonstrations is the actual base product or if it had been enhanced.  Most of the mid to high end ERP solutions have a base package that can be enhanced by you or by the software company or by a vendor of the software company.  Ask the question “is what you showed me the base package or was it enhanced.  If it was an enhanced version, how much will the additional enhancements cost me to get what I saw.”  Watch out for those extras that will need to be added on to get what you thought you were getting.

The second piece of wisdom, don’t expect the member of your team who manages a department or a business for you to manage a rollout while still managing the business.  My experience has been that an ERP rollout requires focus and dedication.  Our business is based on customer focus as most small to mid sized entrepreneurial businesses are, so why divert your teams focus and dedication away from the fuel that fires your business.  Sure they will be involved, but asking them to be responsible for the project has not proven to be wise to me.  All three ERP system rollouts that I have been a part of were done with internal resources that we focused on the customer and we found a way to get through it but it was very hard.  It took me three times to learn this lesson, but hopefully this experience will lead you in another direction.

The third piece of advice is to the ERP companies not the companies buying the packages.  My question is where is your wisdom?  Why is it that ERP companies let you go down so many wrong roads in the initial setup of the package?  Why is it that these companies try to be so accommodating to your ideas that they let you setup things that won’t actually work in the real world?  I’m sure they are proud to show off how flexible their software really is, but your customers actually need your wisdom.  They need you to help them “see around the corners” because they truly don’t completely understand your software during the rollout.  Letting them set something up that will not work puts their business at risk when they actually “go live.”  Now I have an exceptional team at IAS and I’m proud to say we do not employ any idiots.  We were ignorant on the ERP software packages in all three occasions but we are exceptionally good at what we do as our core business.  A little more wisdom from the ERP vendor, in all three occasions, would have made a profound impact on the rollouts.  I’m proud to say that every time I have done a rollout, everyone at our company was proficient and all the functionality of the software worked fine in 4-6 months, but if the rollout went better we wouldn’t have to wait that long to feel like it was a success.

For now, I’ll stop bloviating.  I love a good ERP system and think every growing and thriving business needs one for efficiency as well as accurate reporting and accounting.  Unfortunately, my experience has a bad stain on the purchasing and installing phase of the ERP system life cycle.  Doing these things wrong can completely stop your business, hence causing “Death by ERP.”