The Value of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step: Beyond implementation standards

Veteran ERP consultants understand how to execute an implementation project. They can call on their years of experience to design a new project that will have a good chance at success.  And when the next generation of consultants joins the team, those practices are passed along, even if there is no process in place to manage the knowledge transfer. Many implementation consultants can probably recall their own experience learning "the way it was always done" at their early jobs.

Consulting companies can apply their own implementation methodology based on previous projects, and there is no problem with that as long as the company achieves its objectives and satisfies its customers.  And the company should also be committed to continuously improving its own methodology and building on it by experience.

But there are a range of problems with an implementation methodology based on transferring the senior consultant's knowledge and experience to the next class of junior consultants, because     Such informal or small-scale approaches will lead to variances in implementation approach between different consultants, even in the same company, and it may create differences from one project to another, even for the same consultant. To add to the risk, a consulting firm that depends on consultants to provide an implementation methodology are exposed to a loss creditability with their customer in the case that that the consultant is changed, and the new consultant has his own approach.

Alternatively, there is an implementation methodology built up by an experienced organization where information and data have been gathered from a range of experienced implementers based on the best practices from a broad range of previous projects and experiences across a range of business domains and client types. That organization is, of course, Microsoft, and the methodology is ...