The ERP Selection Process: Where can executives add the most value?

An executive board exploring current ERP offerings can easily feel overwhelmed with the breadth of options. New solutions have added depth to the market, creating competitive price points across the board. With the addition of cloud-based deployment options, the selection process becomes even more involved, bringing up questions regarding the future of a company's hardware provisioning roadmap. Even the most experienced IT leaders need a bit of guidance as they sort through the endless variety, especially considering the rapid evolution of end user and customer demands in recent years.

Business leaders overseeing an ERP selection process must take the time to identify the key technical and operational capabilities that they and their teams will evaluate. Financial outlooks, integration concerns, support of business processes, analytics, quality, and other capabilities, at both a granular and big-picture level, all play into a successful selection process.

While subject matter experts throughout the organization can participate in evaluating the components of a potential solution, here are three areas where executive sponsors should be taking the lead in the evaluation and selection process.

Redefine Total Cost of Ownership

Many business leaders don't recognize some of the indirect costs of their ERP deployments. We pointed out that since modernized solutions are so tightly integrated with operations across departments, it can be easy to overlook how deeply the software will impact the productivity and flexibility of end users everywhere. The cost of the actual implementation is only a piece of the puzzle - many other factors must come into play as decision-makers calculate the total cost of ownership. This figure should comprise much more than the actual ERP purchase.

Make User Adoption a Priority

Few things can put the ...