January 10th, 2011 | 
Author: 
If you’ve ever watched the Food Network – and who hasn’t? Personally, we find Iron Chef reruns a late-night guilty pleasure – you know that the perfect recipe produces a dish that’s not just delicious, but also visually pleasing and intriguing.
Whether you’re a pro in the kitchen or you can’t boil water without almost burning down the house, everyone can appreciate a great meal, even if you have to go to a five-star restaurant to get it. Furthermore, great meals don’t always come from complicated recipes. Sometimes the simplest, freshest ingredients produce the most tasty meals. For example, a caprese salad with basil, tomatoes, mozzarella and olive oil is almost always a healthier and more delicious choice than a low-fat meal that comes out of a freezer, microwaves for five minutes and has an ingredient list longer than a T.S. Eliot poem.
In a lot of ways, choosing and implementing the right ERP system is a lot like finding and making the perfect recipe. It seems like the systems with more bells and whistles are going to be the higher quality ones – they’re certainly more expensive, usually. But like the microwave dinners, these systems often come with a lot of ingredients that you just don’t need, ingredients that are designed to make a subpar product seem more like the real thing, the thing you make from scratch in your kitchen.
Are we suggesting that you should always opt for the simpler ERP system? Of course not! But you should be aware that you don’t need to choose the most embellished system to find the best system for your company. Be realistic about what you want to get out of your system, and choose the option that offers the things you need – without the things you don’t. Kind of like how your doctor advises you not to throw a ton of unnecessary salt or sauce or butter onto your meals, don’t overdo it with the rich extras when it comes to ERP.
What about when it comes to implementation? We’ve got a recipe for that!
The Perfect ERP Implementation
Preparation time: Six to 24 months, depending on the size of your project
Serves: One company looking to be the best it can be
Ingredients:
1 ERP core team, chosen from the best and brightest IT, HR and executive leadership in the company
Several hours of training, begun early in the process
A pinch of change management to mitigate any employee confusion or resistance
1 jar of dedication to the project
A comprehensive understanding of the fact that ERP is a business-wide solution, not just an IT one
Start by selecting your core team and delegating responsibilities amongst them to make the process flow more smoothly. Begin training early and train often to manage change anxiety and ensure the best go-live for your system.
Work hard for several months, until you start seeing significant ROI – that’s how you’ll know your ERP recipe is ready for everyone to enjoy.
Related articles
- ERP Training (sageerpsolutions.com)
- Your Best Bet for ERP Success (sageerpsolutions.com)
Source: The Sage ERP Team
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Hello, my name is Asaf Gilad.
I’m an information systems engineer and nowadays I work in a consulting company for project management.
During my very short career I have managed to work as a programmer, system analyst and project officer. The lack of a solid experience in any of those functions makes it very difficult for me to find out what is the secret for a good project.
I’m well aware that no one has solved this riddle before and that probably, no one ever will. I have spoken with a lot of people: friends, colleges and even a couple of CEO’s. I’ve read books which represent the opinions of many others. It seems that a “teach your self project management in 21 days” book is just not practical.
So, as you probably understood by now, I’m not going to write about new methods or new ideas. I will present this exciting world from my point of view and as I understand it.
I have mentioned before my multi disciplines point of view which let me examine this world from a multiple different and sometimes opposite angles:
I know what it is like to be a developer in a cubic or a mechanic in the operation floor. You do your best; work all day long, only to get a basic salary or less and being criticized by all.
I also know the huge pressures on the management that must master enormous volumes of data and some out turn it into information and if this monstrous task is not enough, it has to take good decisions as fast as possible.
I also know that the project manager is trapped in the middle in a position which is hard to accept: the employees just don’t have the time or the will for this overhead effort and the management feels like they are loosing control by letting the project manager manage the project.
I’ll try to solve this conflict for me by analyzing the tasks of the PMO and hope that you’ll find this little brain storming interesting.
Asaf Gilad
Source: giladasaf
“Have you ever noticed how certain questions come up again and again on Stack Overflow sites?”
— From The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions, over on the Stack Overflow blog.
Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn’t drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
Source: Joel Spolsky
We’ve been saying it at Sage for ages, but the analysts at Gartner have finally confirmed what we already knew: If business intelligence projects are to succeed, they need to be treated as part of a larger, broader change and more than just a software implementation.
“Traditionally, BI has been used for performance reporting from historical data, and as a planning and forecasting tool for a relatively small number of people in an organization that relies on historical data to plan ahead,” Gartner analyst Patrick Meehan told Computer World UK.
Gartner analysts added that BI projects need to be treated as a “cultural transformation of the business, instead of an IT project.”
Computer World UK has several suggestions that could help business executives get the most out of their BI projects, starting by encouraging companies to view BI as an organizational change and not simply another computer program. Like enterprise resource planning and other business software applications, there’s a lot more to BI than its computerized aspects – it works best when it is applied in tandem with executive efforts to streamline business processes, improve business functionality and make the entire company more efficient.
One of BI’s main applications is its ability to facilitate effective and efficient communication across various departments or divisions of a business – a benefit that shouldn’t go under-appreciated by executives and company managers.
“Focus BI efforts on delivering the right information to the right people,” advises the magazine. “Apply a business process orientation to BI that connects horizontally across functional areas and outwardly to … customers and partners. To keep strategy execution on track, BI must address all staff and management levels in the organization.”
Allocating resources – including people – properly is a major focus of BI and other business software applications. Being able to do this effectively is one of the things that separates a good business from a great one. Putting the right information in the hands of the right people, and putting those people in the right places, is key to getting the most out of your business strategy.
When you view BI as a change in business culture rather than a simple IT restructuring, you’ll be able to fully enjoy its benefits.
Source: The Sage ERP Team
As the days spin forward changes are in the wind. The new PMBOK is just around the corner and only God knows what will change.
I have been doing some work for PM Mentors in Austin, helping to edit curriculum and develop a PMI test simulator. They have a 97% pass rate with their students, so I am am fairly intimate with many of the subtle changes in the certification exam that have already happened. Do you know what a “stakeholder networking meeting” is? Or which former PMI suggested meeting name it replaces?
Most changes in the exam are not announced. Heck, they may not see the light of day till the new PMBOK arrives! That is one reason sites like this are so helpful… professionals can exchange ideas and stay on the cutting edge with up-to-date info. There are ethical considerations too- PMI does not want testing PMP candidates to disclose the specifics of the exam. And rightly so. A Project Manager should know the job well, not learn it by rote.
For those of you who are project managers and have never sought your certification but are considering it… be aware that a lot of the stuff on the exam is not in the “Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.”
Okay, the “project briefing meeting” appears to now be the “stakeholder networking meeting.” If you know of any other items in the PMBOK which are obsolete or things it would be helpful for certification candidates to know about(without being unethical) post it. May all your projects succeed!
Source: austinjoep