SOFTWARE SELECTION – ARE YOU ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS?
Today’s research indicates this every time again. The determining factors for successful ERP/CRM projects are about your customers, your people, your organization and your business processes. And about managing all the associated change processes. But NOT about technology! Surprisingly however, the average questionnaires and Requests for Information (RFI’s) are still mainly about functions and features. Time for new insights!
The conviction that an ERP/CRM system is a tool that companies and their customers can benefit from has penetrated in almost every boardroom these days. Whether any success is actually achieved, however, depends mainly on your organisation. How else can we explain that one company is hit hard by an unsuccessful implementation while the other organization is successful (partially) because of that same system? Potentially with the same version. Implemented by the same partner with the same team of consultants.
Pro-active support and sponsorship from top-management turns out to be the critical factor again and again. Management teams that turn their backs on the project as soon as the price negotiations have ended steadily score low. The attitude towards change management is also of crucial importance. Next to the quality level of, amongst others, the key users and the internal project leader.
This is all familiar to you, right? And still aspects pertaining to the quality of people and organisation and their willingness to change are barely addressed in most RFI’s. And if they are, they will surely deal with the quality of the vendor’s staff. Important, that is for sure, but being critical of your own people is just as important! Many vendors still lack the courage to deal with this subject timely. They will only bring this up once the project has failed. Once they are around the table with an angry customer, flanked on the one side by his or her legal advisor and on the other by a pile of unpaid invoices. But by then, the damage has already been done!
As your implementation partner, we can help you map out risks concerning the quality of your personnel. Moreover, we know about possibilities for solutions, such as hiring an experienced external project leader. Or focusing the attention from your management in a project board. The only thing you need to do for this is asking the right questions in your RFI, which will make these topics less sensitive and easier to address for us.
Admitted, it is a slightly different category of questions than those you are probably used to asking. But paying attention to their relevance for the success of your next project will certainly be worthwhile!
