Change management and ERP: Understand the limits

It is hard to argue with a successful entrepreneur that his processes are not the primary reason for his company's success.  Not only does a business leader believe in the process, he or she may have actually authored it. Companies, whether they perform well or poorly, will hang onto their processes for dear life. They have been institutionalized and are almost unchangeable.

The question is, does the process drive success? How can two companies using exactly the same process get wildly different results? I believe that it is the execution of the process and the focus on the results that truly makes the difference. In other words, it is the people that affect the results, not the process. The process only affects the results if it is a bad process.

This means there can be many processes that can be employed to get the desired result. It also means that the biggest obstacle to adapting different processes are the people executing them.

Understanding the Constraint

My perspective on process and people stems from decades of work on ERP projects at organizations large and small, in various industries and markets, all with their own processes. And yes, many teams use the same processes as teams in other divisions or companies, with wide-ranging outcomes.

The single biggest challenge to the success or failure of an ERP implementation is not understanding and accepting the constraints that any system puts on how an organization will operate. A company's resistance to change can doom a project. No matter how skillfully we build flexibility into a specific business process, we are constrained by that process. This means that we do not have infinite choices when it comes to mapping of activities, transactions, entities, and ...