ERP implementation is an imperative process for making your manufacturing business workflow streamlined and automated. The cloud-based ERP system enables manufacturers to manage and integrate various business processes like finance and accounting, manufacturing, supply chain, distribution, and human resources to have a centralized database.
Crucial Phases of the ERP Implementation Plan
The implementation phase of the ERP includes some specific steps. Every business is unique and hence the requirements vary as well. Thus, you will need to focus on the actual requirements of your manufacturing business to ensure that you have selected the right solution.
You may look at the crucial phases of ERP implementation including planning, designing, development, testing, deployment, and support. Now, find the elaborated information:
1. You must evaluate the capacity of your current business system:
It refers to analyzing the improvement area where you must focus on streamlining your manufacturing business workflow. If you evaluate the features and drawbacks of the existing business system, you can choose the right ERP solution to recover existing business inefficiencies. The vital areas you need to focus on are:
- Production aspects include the management of inventory and supply chain operations.
- Sales and marketing processes and CRM and sales forecasting.
- Financial operations like accounting.
- Reporting and data management.
- Business process automation.
2. Analyze the scope and goals:
After analyzing the existing business system, you will need to focus on the areas where you have to work for improvement. Thus, you may start working for improvement by assessing the particular business activity and the processes where ERP with advanced technology can help you. It would also be crucial to realize which business data needs to be integrated for enhanced collaboration across the business ecosystem. You may also think about these aspects:
- Need for management of specific data.
- Analysis of key performance indicators.
- What do you need to automate to streamline your business processes?
- What kind of stakeholders do you have?
3. Now select an ERP system:
Once you analyze the business requirements and other areas of improvement, you may select the appropriate ERP software solution to manage your manufacturing business. You may efficiently research and analyze the real-time features of the enterprise software to choose the best-suited one. Manufacturers must focus on these factors while selecting the ERP software solution:
- Look for whether the ERP software meets functional business requirements like accounting, CRM, and inventory management.
- Does manufacturing ERP provide the required reporting and analytics capabilities or not?
- Whether you integrate the ERP software with the existing business system or not?
- Is it scalable and flexible enough?
- Later, you may emphasize connecting the trusted ERP solution providers.
4. Further work to configure your ERP system:
Another crucial step is the configuration of the ERP software solution to manage your organizational requirements and grow your business successfully. To configure ERP you may:
- Establish the organizational structure.
- Customize the software to have specific functionalities.
- Explain the user's access control to ensure the smooth functioning of your business.
- Integrate ERP software with the required business system.
5. Focus on preparing the migrated data:
Migration of data to the ERP system takes cleaning and formatting processes of the current system's data to create compatibility with your ERP software. Migration of Business data is a tedious activity and takes a lot of time. You may opt to follow these:
- You need to conduct a complete data audit across the existing business system.
- Now, focus on cleaning and validating the data to maintain accuracy.
- Later, you will need to track the data migration process.
- Further, you must pick out and categorize migrated data.
- You may focus on creating a backup and recovery plan to prevent data loss.
6. Examine the ERP system:
When you complete ERP implementation, you must examine the functionality to ensure that your ERP system includes all business management features to manage manufacturing business. At the time of testing the ERP system. You will require:
- Identifying the document and user acceptance criteria.
- Validate all the migrated data.
- Perform user accessibility and system security.
- Make sure about the compatibility aspects of the ERP system.
7. Implement new ERP to the fullest:
New ERP software system implementation improves the management of the entire business process. You may ensure that the ERP system is accessible to all employees within the organization. You will be required to look for these to manage the implementation of the ERP system:
- Security system.
- Workflow processes
- Data accuracy and integrity
- Data Accessibility
