Knowing When Your Firm Is Ready For A New ERP System

1.  Is Your Business Data Rich, But Knowledge Poor?

In other words, do you have a lot of information available but no wisdom to make use of it? An ERP system will provide this wisdom so that working practices can be improved and better insight can be gained across all areas of the business.

2.  Are Your Finance Procedures Costing You Money Due To Drawn Out Month End And Invoicing Processes?

Increased profitability can be achieved by putting more efficient finance department processes in place and using one back office system across the organisation so that a finance team has access to the real-time data from other departments to manage payroll, payments and other tasks. This can significantly improve cashflow.

3. Are You Finding It Difficult To Analyse Staff Costs Against Project Cost?

For a service-centric organisation, your people are your most valuable asset. Focused strongly on the personnel within the company, project-based ERP looks at utilisation at a per-employee level, and can integrate key factors such as billable rate and bandwidth. Ensure you don’t have people on the bench or projects under-staffed, or your profitability will be compromised.

4. Are You Over-Reliant On Silos Of Information And Excel?

Research shows 88% of Excel spreadsheets include errors – don’t take the risk of running the everyday operations and making business-critical decisions for your growing firm on the basis of inaccurate and untimely information.

5. Do You Lack The Capability To Manage Projects Successfully From Inception To Evaluation?

It is critical to identify potential project pitfalls as they are happening so alarms don’t only ring when the customer is walking out of the door to your competitor. Working on one system that provides access to the entire project. ERP delivers a solution to this problem that will save time and money.

6. Is Your Business Growing Quickly, Expanding Internationally Or Onboarding New Acquisitions?

Scalability is important in today’s business environment, and having a systems infrastructure which allows you to scale up (or down) as your company evolves and provides you the necessary visibility and control to make the right business decisions. Also, financial capabilities such as multi-company and multi-currency, and compliance to local auditing and reporting legislation (e.g. GAAP and IFRS) is critical to ensure back office governance.

Choosing The Right ERP For Your Project-Centric Firm

Traditional ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, were developed to support the needs of the manufacturing industry, and depict a company as being flat; analysing information, data and resources accordingly. However, project-based companies have their own distinct needs and requirements and need to have complete control, visibility and maximum efficiency of every element of their project operations, costs and resources.

When Embarking On A Review Of Your Existing Systems Or Considering An ERP System Upgrade, Be Sure To:

Define clear business goals:

The direction for your ERP project and what your chosen solution needs to achieve in business terms is critical.

Involve all relevant stakeholders:

Selecting an ERP system is not something that is done in isolation and its selection and implementation will touch all facets of your business.

Define your business requirements and workflows:

Don’t get carried away with additional ‘bells and whistles’ functionality if it doesn’t support your core business functions. In essence, for a professional services organisation every aspect of the project needs synchronising – every single transaction is tied to an account and a department, as well as the over-arching project.

Look for a system which installs best practice throughout your business:

Improving productivity and profitability should be key deliverables and measures of success, so ensure you chose a vendor who has a track record of delivering these for their clients.

Agree realistic implementation expectations:

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same is true for an ERP implementation. Choose your ERP with a clear understanding of deployment milestones and an agreed project plan. Change management and a thorough approach to staff training are also key components in getting a new ERP system deployed.