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A Tool to Assess Your ERP Selection and Implementation Risk

If chosen and implemented correctly, ERP systems provide significant benefits. But what happens if an ERP implementation fails? Companies stand to lose millions of dollars, disrupt operations, and create reputation harm (read a Harvard Business Review study here). You need to be able to effectively track and manage ERP selection and implementation readiness risk.  

Notwithstanding the high-profile ERP horror stories, you can take proven steps to ensure your ERP project succeeds where other ERP implementations have failed. And, we’ve packaged up many of the early success-driving steps – starting at ERP selection and ERP implementation readiness – into an easy-to-use ERP Selection and Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment scorecard that you can use to quantify risk and pin-point specific actions to mitigate those risks. 

This ERP Selection and Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment is based on lessons-learned and best-practices from Pemeco’s 40-plus year history of successfully delivering more than 700 major implementations and helping clients select, implement, and optimize more than 140 different enterprise software systems.  

The ERP Selection and Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment tool scores your risks at key ERP assessment, selection, and pre-implementation phases, and provides actionable insights to fill gaps and help you ensure readiness for ERP implementation. As you bring your score within acceptable limits phase-by-phase, you can proceed to implementation with confidence. 

 

ERP Readiness self assessment

 

 Below is a summarized version of the phases and risks set out in the tool.  

Risks of inadequate digital strategies and ERP requirements definition 

An ERP implementation project is risky and costly. Major changes to business processes, data structures, organizational structures, and systems should be firmly anchored in a company’s business strategy.  

In this section of the ERP Selection and Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment tool, you will rate your company’s risks relating to definitions of digital strategy, solutions architecture, process mapping, ERP business requirements definition, and project plans. The results will dictate whether your company is ready to proceed to ERP selection or whether more ERP assessment work is required. 

Risks of an incomplete and biased ERP selection, RFP, and evaluations 

Once clearly defined strategies, requirements, and plans are defined, you next need to ensure that you have established and are executing a sufficiently detailed and completely unbiased ERP selection methodology that you can trust to deliver the right fitting ERP software and systems integrator. If you fail to consider key dimensions of ERP analysis (learn about the eight dimensions of fit here) and/or fail to ensure a fair and equitable ERP selection process, you introduce a real risk of making the wrong ERP decision and selecting an ERP system that does not meet needs, is excessively difficult to implement, and/or fails to deliver key benefits. 

 In these three sections, you will quantify the following risks and readiness: fairness and completeness of your ERP selection methodology, the request for proposal for ERP software and services, and your scoring and evaluation approaches. 

Risks of Being Unprepared for Implementation 

As you near the end of ERP selection and approach implementation, it is critical that your company be prepared for a high-impact and demanding ERP implementation project. If you are not fully prepared, you run risks of scope creep, implementation delays, poor decision-making, and failing to complete tasks when due.  

 By scoring your implementation readiness across critical project teams and governance, project management, and scoping dimensions, our tool can help you evaluate whether your organization is truly ready for implementation and identify actionable recommendations to fill gaps.  

Assessing Whether your ERP Contracts Will Support your Business Interests 

 ERP contracts are critical and often overlooked. If ERP is the systematic backbone of your company’s operations for next 10-plus years, it is critical that you properly structure the relationship.  

In this section, you will rate your readiness to conclude ERP contracts by assessing how well you have negotiated key concessions relating to system scalability, cost, implementation delivery, vendor support commitments, system performance commitments, security and data privacy, and liability obligations, among other areas.  

Download and Keep the ERP Risk Assessment Tool by Your Side 

Download the ERP Selection and Implementation Readiness Self-Assessment and keep it handy as you guide your organization through the pre-implementation phases of ERP assessment, ERP selection, ERP implementation scoping, and ERP contract negotiations. It will help you assess your organization’s readiness, manage risks, and ensure that you putting your organization on the path to a successful implementation.  

 

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