Who to Include in ERP Choice Process

ERP Selection Team The author of this report has been given a case study situation where the warehouse manager and the author are on a team to help select and otherwise discuss a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The author of this report has been asked to bring up who else should be on the team and why. For each team member mentioned, there will be a rationale and justification for why that person should be on the team.

Of course, only involving the warehouse manager would be foolish and there are definitely some other people that should be on the team. However, the team should not be too big as involving too many people could cause a bogging down of the process. While striking the right balance might be a tad difficult, the author of this report has a good idea of who should be on the team and why.

Analysis The warehouse manager would be a good start for the team as this is basically the operations manager for many locations. The precise nature of the business might dictate who else on the operations end should be included. Indeed, if there is an actual office manager of the business, that person should be included as well. If the demarcation between the administrative side of things and the front-line side of things is pretty wide, then the managers of both departments should be included.

Indeed, the software needs of both the day-to-day manufacturing and/or customer service should be involved and so should the manager of the person that does the operations management for the more back-end tasks like accounting and interaction with vendors. The other person suggested by the case study parameters if the executive of the company.

His involvement would be required as he ultimately would make (or at least approve) the decision and his support of the project and the selection of the software is key to getting support from the rest of the company, especially those that are not involved in the ERP software selection process and/or anyone that might disagree with the decision made regarding the same (Cook, 2016). Another person that should absolutely be involved in the process is the top person in the information technology group.

Preferably, this will be a Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Officer. If that position does not exist or that person is not a viable option, someone very close to that person should absolutely be involved and they should have the proper depth and breadth of knowledge to be in a seat of power.

They would need to know what the current capabilities are from an information services and information technology standpoint, what they could be, what they should be, what the current resources are for the information technology department and a general understanding of ERP software and its common vendors, at the very least.

The involvement of the highest (or one of the highest) information technology staff members is required because it is indeed a software suite that is being selected and that person would be among the leaders that help implement and administer the ERP software once it is running. If someone adept at ERP and software in general is not running point, the overall process will probably get extremely messy and it is entirely possible that the whole process will fail outright (Sage ERP, 2016).

Another person that should be involved is the project manager. Whether it be someone internal or external, there needs to be a singular person that spearheads the project and coordinates the involvement from all of the departments. This person should absolutely have ERP experience and they should also be a very adept project leader in general when it comes to software and ERP setups.

While the nuts and bolts of the ERP setup might be handled by others, the tasks themselves need to be scheduled and arranged by the project manager and his/her directives (Anderson, 2016). Other people that should probably be involved in the process are the top finance or accounting people in the business, the top customer service manager in the business and functional heads of any major departments or divisions that exist within the business.

The head of accounting is a must because the ERP software suite selected must mesh with the structure and patterns of the business. Another person that must be involved is the person in charge of training and development of employees, whether that be a sub-section of human resources or whether it be its own department. If training and human resources are segmented, leaders from both groups should be involved in the process.

Basically, there needs to be a person that is an expert and a leader from their department (or at least a subject-matter expert) so that all of the proverbial bases are covered in terms of system requirements, training needs and what would otherwise be necessary or at least preferable when it comes to the software paying dividends upon implementation rather than being cumbersome and wasteful to use.

The departments cited should also have a voice because no department should be glossed over or ignored unless they make no use of the software. For sure, the cleaning staff will probably not.