360° Workshop - Plan and secure your ERP migration

The desire and ambition to migrate your ERP is a strategic business transformation orientation. However, the failure rate is high.

We firmly encourage decision-makers to review the literature, in depth study the subject, gather opinions. Many issues and risks must be taken into account.

The idea behind the workshop is to take a 360° look at the challenges to be addressed.

It is clearly useful to bring stakeholders together and move forward with a consensus.

ERP - The definition

What exactly an ERP is? The concept of ERP has evolved and continues to evolve.

Depending on the sector, ERP offerings vary in nature and size. Each publisher will have taken care to provide a definition that promotes its marketing. So, we will not attempt to provide a precise and absolute definition here.

It is clearly a suite of third-party software used by organizations to manage their daily activities, such as accounting, finance, purchasing, project management, supply chain, and production. It is the heart of the company and its information system.

What seems typical of an ERP system is the involvement of business processes from different areas and the flow of data between them, with centralization in a database that guarantees integrity.

The ERP provider indirectly provides the organization with sector-specific business expertise and, at the same time, imposes a vision of how the organization should operate. It should be noted that the customer-supplier relationship can be unbalanced. The provider is often relatively closed to ease collaboration with other applications. ERP has become the point of truth for business information in the key domain of the company, which must coexist with other truths or views.

360° approach to a complex equation

Les sujets à aborder sont nombreux :

What will be the contribution to the strategic roadmap? There are many drivers, and they need to be clarified as the road ahead is likely to be difficult. Migrating for the sake of migrating because the ERP is aging is often not a sufficient reason. The project will probably not bring gains that justify the sacrifices made.

Shouldn't we aim higher, great ? Improve customer relations, accelerate sales, and open mobile access? We must also consider the need to arbitrate between a CRM system that is becoming increasingly cumbersome, the proliferation of digital tools on mobile devices, specialized financial management tools, AI innovations, etc.

What are the data and business process gaps between the existing system and a target system whose operation is not easy to anticipate, particularly given resistance to change?

Issues such as APIs, integration, repositories, and the positioning of a data platform bring ERP migration back to the very fate of the IS. What is the key architectural decision for the company? Is the criterion for a good ERP system its attractive user interface, its openness, its flexibility, its integration with other systems, or its business value?

And we need to talk about migration strategies and schedules.

As there is a risk of getting lost, it is useful to address these multiple issues with a structured enterprise architecture approach.

The deliverable is to set out the equation for this complex, multi-dimensional problem with the main options for simplification in order to move forward.

For sure, an interesting workshop. And certainly worthwhile, given the risks and challenges involved..