What is the Role of an ERP Advisory Consultant?

Most project groups from mid-market manufacturing and distribution organizatons are challenged by an ERP analysis and selection mission.  The sheer dimension of the project is a key cause. The typical ERP mission cuts throughout every space of the enterprise, impacting practical areas from finance, accounting, and provide chain, to buy ground, manufacturing, stock, high quality administration, delivery and etc.   It’s troublesome for staff to free themselves up from their practical duties and instant duties and apply the wanted time, effort and a focus to the project.

Also, noteworthy – it’s extremely unlikely anybody on the mission staff has gone by means of or led a complete analysis and selection project. At greatest, maybe one staff member has some expertise within the space, however usually, their expertise took place a decade or so in the past.

Another important issue – a profitable ERP choice and implementation calls for a myriad of skillsets – from project administration, enterprise process mapping, change administration and danger administration, to a full understanding of contemporary enterprise expertise and the seller panorama.

That’s the place the position of an ERP guide comes into play.

Driving Value – That’s the Role of an ERP Consultant

With ERP expertise and experience, the function of an ERP Advisory consultant includes figuring out the very best practices for evaluating and implementing techniques, mitigating danger, serving to the mission keep on time and on price range and driving ROI.

We have grouped the specifics of the position within the following classes:

1. Offering Experience, Independence: Drawing on many years of expertise in enterprise expertise, the position of an ERP advisor is to view the mission from an out of doors perspective based mostly on trade greatest practices. Independent consultants will not be software resellers and don’t receive compensation from software firms. They maintain up-to-date on the vendor panorama, technology platforms and choices of recent ERP and might present unbiased and vendor-neutral steerage.
2. Sharing Industry Knowledge: The function of an ERP advisor is to supply expertise implementing ERP software in a particular business or with different related companies. An excellent guide may also recommend greatest practices from exterior of the trade that may very well be of assist to the enterprise if included.
3. Providing Specialized Skill Set: The position of an ERP advisor additionally includes mission administration, practical experience, danger mitigation and scores of different particular abilities.
4. Leading Business Process Transformation: There’s worth in acquiring unbiased opinions about what’s working or not working relating to enterprise processes. This professional outsider’s perspective could be invaluable all through the project to counter the staff’s private biases, based mostly on their job roles and the way issues have been finished previously.
5. Driving Change Management:  Selecting and implementing an ERP system ends in massive adjustments for the complete enterprise. These adjustments could be overwhelming on your staff and the remainder of your workforce. An ERP guide attracts on organizational change administration abilities to assist in consumer adoption and acceptance of the project.
6. Managing Implementation: When the function of an ERP advisor is concerned in implementation, the mission has the next probability of success when led by assets with expertise in setting the plan, project administration,  ERP data conversion, and all facets of ERP implementation. Once again, the involvement of an unbiased useful resource helps maintain the mission on time, inside scope and on price range – and helps mitigate any conflicts with the seller.
7. Providing Training:  In many projects, the position of an ERP advisor is to assist develop and ship consumer coaching, ERP training and help throughout your entire project – from choice to go-live.

The Role of an ERP Advisory Consultant: The Place to Start

As we’ve made clear, with the intention to enhance the prospect for achievement and cut back dangers, ERP project staff works more successfully when drawing on professional methodologies. When contemplating the position of an ERP advisor, the place to start out is enterprise process transformation. When the main target is enterprise course of transformation, and not solely expertise, the project staff has a greater likelihood of conducting an efficient expertise analysis that’s designed to fulfill future state needs.

For at present’s profitable tasks, the function of an ERP advisor is to information the group by means of the essential part of Business Process Improvement. Before any dialogue of ERP vendors or system features, it’s a greatest apply to place into motion multi-dimensional BPI (Business Process Improvement) methodologies.  Apagen’s confirmed BPI methodology contains the following phases:

Current State: For true enterprise course of transformation, an ERP advisor guides project groups to begin with a present state evaluation that includes in-depth discovery actions to establish present enterprise processes in all practical areas. This entails a complete overview of

present “As Is” processes, accumulating all of the enterprise course of enchancment alternatives or “pain point” reducing throughout every practical space of the enterprise.

Education: Taking the time for an intensive training of all these concerned within the mission is important for the project staff to be nicely versed in ERP ideas and business greatest practices. This is a key space led by the ERP Advisor Consultant.

Future State: The subsequent step is ERP necessities definition to establish sure standards a brand new enterprise software program ought to deal with, which is decided by means of thorough future state mapping. The future state is a improvement of the “To Be” state, with standardized processes throughout all practical areas that meet the alternatives or “pain points” revealed within the Current State evaluation.

Moving to Evaluation, Selection: After the Future State evaluation, and constructing out the particular listing of necessities, the focus of the ERP advisor turns to analysis of the technology merchandise or products from the enterprise software program distributors that greatest serve the trade and aligns with enterprise necessities. Enterprise software program selection is deceptively advanced – involving a complete overview of the findings from present state and  future state evaluation.

Final Thoughts

The function of an ERP advisor consultant serves to make the method go loads smoother, speed up time to worth, cut back the possibility of threat and supply the group with a lot wanted ongoing administration and assist.

Heading into an active project?  Contact Apagen for a have a look at the worth an ERP consultant can deliver to your organization.