Having discussed in details about the user's role in successful ERP implementation, it is time to look into the other element which is the consultant or you may refer them as vendor or ERP solution providers.
The task of selecting a suitable consultant is very important and there is no point in cursing the consultant later for their poor performances. There are various reasons behind poor performance and the prime being the poor industry knowledge followed by lack of knowledge on client's key success factors. The other factors are lack of understanding of user's perspectives and also limited consulting experience.
A soft approach towards customer and user is a way to show the consultant's integrity, which many consultants do not possess. Adamant attitude will help bring only unfruitful result. The problems should be solved with loyalty and dedication, which will boost morale of both the customer and the user.
Unfortunately, this does not happen with every consultants, which prompts some company to believe, 'consultants know nothing; they come here, learn from us and then vanish one day for the self-betterment without solving our problems.' Interestingly, in many cases, consultants are not blamed for their poor ERP product knowledge, but for their approach.
Contradictory to the above, Eresource ERP clients are extremely happy with our product service as well as our approach. All of our personnel are professionally qualified along with long years of functional experience.
A good ERP consultant should be an equally good business consultant too. This may help in reengineering of existing set-ups in the client's side to improve ERP performance.
To improve ERP performance it is very important to focus on reengineering of existing set-up in the client's side. The expected qualities of the ERP consultant are that they should have adequate level of pure functional experience, a deep knowledge of ERP product, must possess good HR skills with convincing abilities and eye for process improvements rather than automation. They should also have a cool head with a composed personality.
Many a time consultant needs to encounter various 'orphan' activities and deal with them in a proper manner.
The following incident will indicate why an efficient consultant is needed to address these issues. The design department in an engineering company used to claim that making Bill of Materials was their job, but selecting and arranging branded components required by customer should be the purchase level decision. And the problem was, purchase may select some economical brand, which in turn affects the performance of some other assembly, hence, again, the design department comes into picture. The process was continuous and creates a lot of back and forth interactions for one decision. Users were demanding the automation of such discussions across departments in ERP.
In this circumstances what to be done by the consultant is to revamp the whole process of BoM structuring in the organization. They must convince the client to form a cell of BoM structuring for complicated customer configurations. The cell consists of each user from marketing, engineering planning production, purchase, and also from accounts. In fact, by doing this the consultant had reengineered the functional set of the organization into a temporary process set-up for improving decision-making quality and speed.
Eresource ERP consultant follows a few general guidelines regarding BPR preparations required during consulting.
It is the job of consultants to take only the policy decision from users on various scenarios and then design, map and implement and process suitable to user's culture. In such cases, it is better to avoid more discussions.
For example, in one company, the same item was available in domestic as well as in imported market. The price difference was high. Since the company follows standard costing, ideally there should be different identification for the same item having such price differences to account for inventory costs separately because it has not implemented Lot Control Module. The company was unable to understand the need of separate code of them item. In this case the consultant must be able to convince the accounting repercussion to hardcore functional guy from stores. Since the user doesn't understand commercial, operational and legal implications of the process completely in the ERP, consultants should exhibit dominating role in such cases to ultimately give the best out of ERP to the user.
The consultant who can manage the implementation with the above qualities and techniques can be classified a genuine, reliable and a simply good consultant. Without doubt, eresource ERP stands tall here.
COMING NEXT: The Methodology
