What Contributes More to the Success of an ERP Project: the Right Software or the Right Implementation Approach?

Editor's Note: Tim Hourigan will be leading a session at Decisions Fall 2010 on November 2 and 3.

While almost all ERP buyers spend a great deal of time analyzing the functional differences between competing products, they seem to spend very little time scrutinizing how each product will be implemented. Often buyers just assume that all vendor implementation approaches are the same and simply compare total estimates to make their solution selection. This is a big mistake and a common reason why so many ERP projects under-deliver on their intended ROI.

For the success of your ERP project, here are three reasons why you should spend more time carefully analyzing competing ERP vendor implementation approaches:

1. ERP Projects are Change Management Projects - Not Technology Installs

At their core, ERP projects are fundamentally people-driven change management projects intended to improve business capabilities. Business capabilities comprised of people, process and technology solution elements. Just throwing your users the keys to a new technology product will not spontaneously result in the business improvement desired. Doing so will just result in one more under-utilized systems. A more comprehensive implementation approach that includes stakeholder engagement and knowledge transfer will enable high user adoption and proficiency, feature utilization and post go-live self-sufficient solution operation.

2. People-Driven Implementation Tasks Are The Highest Cost Driver

Arguably, the required tasks and work effort of implementing any ERP solution successfully are nearly the same for any leading product when deployed by a competent ...