How to Ensure Business Readiness before an ERP Project

1. Create an Organizational Change Management Strategy

Ultimately, your newly integrated system should lead to ERP business benefits, but only if there are strategic steps in place to ensure user adoption.

Developing an organizational change management strategy can help you achieve the ROI you expect. It helps you manage and minimize employee resistance and build overall change competency.

2. Ensure Executive Support

Put simply, an ERP project cannot survive without the support and buy-in of your C-suite. Executives and key stakeholders in your company should be visibly supportive of the project’s vision, strategy, costs and risks. In addition, they should also be involved in key decisions and informed about what resources you will require along the way.

ERP implementation companies can help you develop a business case that convinces executives to not only invest in ERP but be actively involved throughout the project.

3. Communicate Clearly and Often

This isn’t a project to keep under wraps until your go-live date. Every step of the way, it’s important to communicate with employees.

A good place to start is by answering the fundamental question, “What is ERP software?” While this may seem obvious, you’d be surprised how many companies assume employees don’t care about these kind of details.

Employees also want to know about new job responsibilities and changes to their roles within the organization, so you should be prepared to communicate the change impacts of new systems.

Additionally, it’s important to communicate the impacts of new business processes as many organizations undergo business process reengineering as part of their ERP project.

As you consider the best way to craft your communication strategy, keep your organizational culture in mind. In other words, consider the values that guide the behavior and emotions of your workforce when determining how to convey important information.

4. Provide Customized End-user Training

In addition to simply being hesitant, your workforce might completely resist new software because it appears too complicated or confusing. This is where customized end-user training comes in.

It’s essential to work with your software consultant to provide each individual employee with the specific training they need to understand the new system. Doing so helps them feel empowered, not intimidated, by the new technology and processes.

Helping Your Organization Embrace Change

Implementing an ERP system means making an important investment in the future of your organization. However, if your company isn’t prepared for change, you could end up with robust tools and resources that your company isn’t able to support.

A business readiness assessment can help you understand if your company is positioned to accept organizational changes. If the answer is no, then the steps above can help you prepare your organization.

Our organizational change management consultants can help you assess your company’s appetite for change and ability to transition to new ways of working.