Enterprise Software systems are complex environments. They may consist of multiple, integrated software platforms and incorporate modern technologies, such as Cloud, mobile or IoT, to deliver sophisticated business functionality. Even more difficult than implementing them is determining in advance the real business benefits they must deliver to effectively satisfy your enterprise strategy, and deciding how to extract that value fully.
Benefits First
Too often, Enterprise Software implementations are left to technology experts who measure project success against technical excellence and efficiency of execution. At Onpro Consulting, we beg to differ. A project is only successful if it speaks to the business purpose that gave rise to the existence of the project and delivers verifiable business benefits as defined by the very stakeholders who drive enterprise strategy. So identifying the business purpose and the benefits and how they will be measured should take top priority.
The Onpro business purpose framework is a management model backed by twenty plus years of experience, and by which you can achieve maximum return from your enterprise systems investment. The framework is preemptive in nature and ensures that a comprehensive benefits strategy is in place before project go-ahead. It also provides a system for tracking benefits realisation during project execution and validating benefit delivery after project completion.
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Foundations
The framework establishes confidence in the following foundational areas which are critical to successful implementation:
- Initialisation. Developing a vision and mission statement based on a well-researched and concisely defined strategic business objective for both the enterprise and the project.
- Leadership. Identifying leadership roles and responsibilities, supported by open lines of communication with the executive committee.
- Preparation. Ensuring that all role players are ready for your ERP endeavour before embarking on it.
- Risk. Establishing a risk management strategy developed from exhaustive risk analysis.
- Change. Developing a change management strategy to ensure optimistic adoption across the enterprise.
- Stakeholders. Ensuring that the entire ERP team, including staff, stakeholders, partners and vendors work together towards the same strategic business objective.
- Team Selection. Assembling a team with the right competencies to propel the project to its successful conclusion.
- Purchasing. Selecting technologies and implementation partners based on strategic fit rather than features or skillsets versus price.
- Contracts. Emphasising project outcomes, strategic success factors, and team member responsibilities, rather than deadlines or accountability shifting.
- Design. Ensuring that
- Requirements align to the business purpose of both the organisation and the project, and are not merely based on task, process and system demands;
- Requirements elicitation is driven by business strategists rather than system implementation specialists;
- Requirements are matched to fit-for-purpose technology solutions.
- Impartiality. Ensuring that the project is guided by professional, independent project execution management.
Preparation
If a project is to deliver the expected business value, a suitable amount of worthwhile preparation must take place to cover the above foundations. This means teasing out the business purpose, determining the best approach to achieve it, and ensuring all participants are fully conversant with that process.
Onpro Consulting offers an advisory service that covers the topics described below.
Advisory service aimed at the business leadership team
- Service philosophy and mind set. How to unpack and codify a well-defined business purpose that the project must satisfy to ensure the ERP system serves the enterprise and not the other way around.
- Benefits realisation. How to define the “strategic why”, the project purpose and develop the means to ensure it is achieved.
- Scenario planning before project planning. A risk management approach that takes into account 4 possible courses an ERP or enterprise software project might take – total failure; being on the precipice of failure; being efficiently delivered but not ideally fit for purpose; and being completely effective in satisfying the business purpose. Leaders will also learn to assess project health and develop appropriate responses to each risk condition.
- Project team selection. Learn to identify the right people for the project team, whether they are managers or not.
- Performance measurement. How to ensure that KPIs and incentives of executives and senior managers are aligned with the project, so as not to present a conflict of interest that might hamper progress.
- Project governance and leadership. How to establish governance and leadership principles that focus on the project business purpose instead of arbitrary variables like deadlines or budgets.
- Challenges. Understand the typical challenges facing an ERP project – especially those that could result in failure – and best practices to remedy them.
- Stakeholder management. Who are the stakeholders, both inside and outside your organisation, for your project? How do you engage them to ensure that everybody is aligned behind the project vision and business objectives?
- Pre-initialisation activities. What work needs to be done before the project kicks off?
- Strategic success criteria. What are the strategic success criteria for this project?
- Project management mandate. What is the mandate given to the project manager?
- Fit-for-purpose technology solutions. How to choose technologies for their ability to deliver benefits rather than secondary considerations like technical excellence, performance or low price.
- Business-value-driven requirements. How to ensure that requirements will result in benefits that satisfy strategic outcomes rather than isolated, technical deliverables.
Advisory service aimed at the project team and employees
- Project cause. What is the anatomy of an ERP project and why is your company embarking on this project? Why implement a new ERP system or replace your current one?
- Business processes. What is a business process? How and why would you optimise a process?
- Requirement type. What is the difference between business-value-driven and task or process-driven business requirements?
- Project roles. Learn the importance of the following roles:
- Sponsors
- Stakeholders
- Project champions
- Departmental champions
- Subject matter experts
- Hardware and software technical experts
- Process uniqueness. How to determine which processes can be the same as other companies without sacrificing competitive advantage and which differentiate you from your competition.
- Fit-for-purpose technology solutions. How to choose technologies for their ability to deliver benefits rather than secondary considerations like technical excellence, performance or low price.
- Typical ERP project risks. How do you use scenario planning techniques to prepare for and mitigate identified risks.
- The project manager’s role. What is the role of the project manager?
- Quality assurance. What is the role of quality assurance?
- Testing. What is the role of testing and how do you achieve maximum results with testing? How do you implement testing in your project for maximum effect?
Aligning Role Players and Stakeholders
We collaborate and consult with all strategic stakeholders to better understand their business value drivers. All of these value drivers are then added to the melting pot when the scope and expected business benefits of our projects are determined.
Our approach further endeavours to bring non-negotiables, positive and negative perceptions, and the aspirations of our clients and their strategic stakeholders to the fore. We then work to find the best possible compromises for the non-negotiables up front to avoid unpleasant surprises later in the project lifecycle. Positive and negative perceptions and aspirations of all stakeholders give input to detailed project scope and planning, to ensure that all key role players are aligned behind the project vision. This leads to smootherproject execution and higher success ratios for strategic business projects.
Finally, we utilise formalised stakeholder engagement and management practices to ensure that stakeholders are continually Informed, consulted, involved, collaborated with and empowered. Engaged stakeholders always improve the outcome of an integrated ERP project.
Business-Value-Driven Requirements
Our overall value proposition ensures that business benefits are at the core of investment, project execution and ongoing management decisions.
- All stakeholders must have a clear understanding of the business purpose and expected benefits of the ERP system, and buy into them completely.
- It must be clear exactly who is responsible for the realisation of each of the expected benefits.
- It must be clear how the realisation of benefits will be measured.
- Each business requirement must be measured against the business value it will deliver, to avoid a system that effectively works the same as the previous system.
Fit-For-Purpose Technology
We help our clients reduce the overall cost of ownership and improve business agility by continuously exploring cheaper and more agile mechanisms and technology solutions, to deliver accurate business value to stakeholders faster.
Not everything has to be built and deployed onto the core ERP system. We help you define an integrated software ecosystem rather than a set of isolated, standalone components.
Professional, Independent Project Management
“The Devil’s Triangle” describes a general set of dysfunctional relationships that push many ERP and enterprise software projects to failure. Software companies want to sell more licenses. System integrators or value-added resellers (VARS) are conflicted between maximising billable time and driving customer value. Customers often experience operational silos, internal conflicts and cynicism (negative perceptions and differing aspirations). This results in a lack of focus on the strategic business purpose and expected business benefits for the company as a whole.
The above factors often result in ERP projects with too great a focus on risk, deadline and budget and too little focus on the business purpose and the real expected business benefits that gave rise to the project in the first place.
Our professional, independent project managers treat all parties as stakeholders and ensure that they are aligned with the vision and business objectives of the project.
Our project management service only makes use of senior and very experienced project managers and we focus on benefits realisation.
Will Your Project Benefit Your Business?
Benefits realisation management (BRM) is a complex undertaking that requires special insight and expertise. At Onpro Consulting, our motto is “benefits first”. Whether you’re investing in a new ERP or enterprise platform, or extending your existing system, we’ll help you get maximum business value from your endeavour. The Onpro Benefits Realisation Framework is a complete benefits management model. It delivers business-critical results during strategy development, project initialisation, project execution, project conclusion, and across the lifecycle of your ERP system and enterprise software.