Here’s How Long an ERP Implementation Really Takes

According to a 2013 study by Panorama Consulting Solutions, ERP implementation takes 18 months on average. What’s more, the same study found that 61 percent of projects run late. Such delays tend to be very unpleasant, especially when the new system’s go-live is tied to a specific date – say, the start of a fiscal year, or the expiration of the existing system’s licenses.

Beyond the high costs, a long implementation often also has a negative psychological effect. Key stakeholders, especially on the customer’s side, gradually lose drive and motivation, because implementation is, after all, not really “their job.” And so a vicious circle begins. So what can be done to make an implementation as fast as possible without sacrificing quality? Let’s look at the key factors behind a successful, fast implementation.

Choosing the Right System

Above all, both the company’s current and future needs need to be taken into account. A precise definition of system requirements, based on identifying the real weak spots, is essential. The worst outcome is implementing a system you don’t actually need. The company’s vision also needs to be clear – where it’s heading and what needs it will have down the line. The system must be able to support growth, not become a limit on it.

Requirements are categorized by priority, reflecting the importance of the process each one comes from.

When defining requirements, it’s important to work from the core processes and functions outward toward the less critical ones. Requirements are categorized by priority, reflecting the importance of the process each one comes from. A good solution provider can help define requirements, or at least review them, bringing an unbiased outside view of how the company operates. The implementation is then driven by these essential requirements, and no time is wasted building things that aren’t actually needed.

It pays off to choose an experienced provider who acts as an all-round partner to the company throughout the system setup. A good solution provider needs to master not just the system itself, but also the customer’s specific line of business. The implementation team then doesn’t waste time learning the customer’s business – instead, it can bring interesting ideas and suggestions for optimizing processes, since it can look at things with fresh eyes.

Project Management

Following on from the definition of system requirements, clear project goals need to be set. From the perspective of implementation speed, it’s important to focus only on activities that lead toward those goals. That’s ensured by a well-constructed project plan, which needs clearly measurable checkpoints so it’s obvious at every stage exactly where the project stands and whether it’s falling behind schedule.

A good project plan alone isn’t enough, though – you also need strong project management on both sides (provider and customer alike), which tracks how the implementation is progressing but, above all, creates the best possible working conditions for the rest of the team. In practice, project management is often exactly where companies try to cut costs. For many companies, a project manager is a hard-to-justify line item in the project budget, and they push the provider to minimize it.

Unfortunately, project leadership on the customer’s side is often underestimated as well. This role usually goes to someone who knows the company’s day-to-day operations well but has no experience running similar projects. If there’s no one in the company with the right experience, it’s worth bringing in an experienced project manager from outside. Experience shows that good project leadership is often exactly what separates successful projects from failed ones.

A good project manager can keep the project’s goals in constant view and keep steering individual team members. It happens that, with good intentions and in the heat of the moment, a team ends up tackling things that might be useful but aren’t among the project’s priorities. This is often caused by rank-and-file (future) system users, who, trying to help, keep raising more and more requests. Failing to keep the project’s scope under control is one of the most common sources of trouble.

Methodology

Most implementation projects follow some kind of implementation methodology. Good ERP solution providers have their own established methodologies, proven in practice. Whether an agile approach is used or good old “waterfall,” what matters is that the chosen methodology fits the nature of the project – and, above all, that it feels natural to the people on the implementation team. This is definitely not the place to experiment, or to force a “modern” approach on a provider whose team hasn’t internalized it.

Various forms of prototyping work very well. A common problem, especially with waterfall, is that at the start of a project, during the analysis phase, work happens at an abstract level, and it takes a long time before the customer actually sees anything – after all, they don’t know the system and can barely picture an abstract solution. A prototype, by contrast, makes the project tangible very quickly and helps engage key users much more effectively. They can then give the solution team fast, precise feedback, which eliminates the risk of the final solution drifting away from the original intent.

The Implementation Team

It’s clear that in an ERP implementation, the quality of the implementation team’s work on both sides is decisive for the project’s success or failure. It’s important for the team to work together as much as possible. Remote implementations, where the provider’s team works things out on its own and only occasionally validates with the customer, rarely lead to success. The ideal, instead, is forming a single joint team that treats the implementation as a shared project.

That said, if some team members simply don’t click on a personal level, it’s not a good idea to overlook it. Team chemistry genuinely matters.

Support from Top Management

Even with a well-crafted project plan, strong project management, and a capable solution team, implementation success still isn’t guaranteed. An implementation project needs clearly declared support from top management. If the customer doesn’t view the ERP implementation as a strategic project, that’s a problem. In that case, it isn’t treated as a priority by the customer’s own solution team either, and key users often have more “important” things to do than deal with some ERP system.

Even with a good project plan, solid project management and a quality team, success isn’t guaranteed without declared support from top management.

Above all, though, insufficient support from the customer’s management often shows up as early as the goal-setting phase, when the implementation ends up not covering important, strategic areas of the company’s business. In that case, the implementation will never be seen as a success from the client’s point of view, even if it comes in on budget and on schedule and formally meets every project goal. It will just be an expensive operational system that fails to deliver any real competitive advantage.