ERP Implementation Readiness Is a Key Success

¶ … ERP implementation readiness is a key success factor to going live. Research two businesses that have implemented an ERP system that have used a readiness process and describe the process to determine the level of success they had with that process.

During the last three decades, the emerging field of enterprise resource planning (ERP) has revolutionized the methods by which multifaceted organizations, including corporations and manufacturing plants, by enabling management to "integrate data across and be comprehensive in supporting all the major functions of the organization" (Motiwalla & Thompson, 2009). By allowing companies to fully incorporate all aspects of their enterprise's daily operations, such as capital financing, accounting, production, marketing and public relations, implementing a sufficiently structured ERP system is a crucial component within the operational hierarchy of nearly every major business. Before an ERP system can be actuated and adopted by a multi-tiered corporate enterprise, an extremely intensive process of implementation readiness planning must take place, because the going live "is the culmination of a number of planned tasks, activities and resources brought together to implement the system based on the goals of the organization" (Motiwalla & Thompson, 2009).

The rapid growth and expected expansion of Summit Contracting, LLC, a heavy civil and specialty construction company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, necessitates the implementation of an ERP system to manage the detailed data tracking and resource facilitation a thriving enterprise requires. Andy Shoulders, who serves as Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration for Summit Contracting, LLC, recently stated that his company "wanted an enterprise resource planning solution that could handle the unique and comprehensive requirements of our businesses, providing real-time visibility into our financial and operational performance" (Computer Guidance Corporation, 2012). By selecting industry leader Computer Guidance Solutions to apply their proprietary eCMS v.4.0 ERP system, Shoulders and Summit Contracting, LLC are planning to position themselves as a viable enterprise within their market by utilizing the most efficient and effective ERP methodologies. The readiness process employed by Summit Contracting, LLC has been comprehensive and complex, because the firm "will utilize eCMS construction enterprise resource planning solution to obtain a single source of consistent and accurate data for the management of its four multi-disciplinary business units" in order to successfully "leverage core financial, business intelligence, time and material billing, payroll, human resources, project management and enterprise content management applications to standardize business processes and share resources across its operations" (Computer Guidance Corporation, 2012). An objective evaluation of the implementation readiness exhibited by Summit Contracting, LLC, as shown during the planning phase of their adoption of a new ERP system, indicates that proper preparation and due diligence on the part of the company's senior analysts significantly enhanced their ability to harness the power of Computer Guidance Corporation's superior eCMS v.4.0 technology.