CIOs need to avoid common mistakes in “vanilla” ERP plans

Every enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation I've been aware of starts with a mantra that ‘we are going to implement vanilla.' However, months down the track and millions spent, some vivid flavours of vanilla emerge - some very successful, some less so. So how do you make the decisions on where vanilla is right, and how do you make those decisions stick?

The lure and economics of utilising ERP Products (SAP, Oracle etc.) to replace legacy complex estates have long been understood and adopted widely across most sectors. And it is perfectly true that over the last ten years and more there have been many highly successful ERP implementations, from medium-sized single-site companies up to major government departments and indeed global rollouts at some of the world's largest multinationals.

Yet we continue to see very much less successful ERP projects - ones that deliver disappointing (sometimes even disastrous) results - despite huge amounts of time, expertise and money spent on them. Why is this? The reasons can be varied and complex, but in many cases they reflect one or more basic errors in the implementation plan. However they are all related to that key, vital concept of ‘vanilla' ERP. That is, using the out-of-the-box ERP product without the excessive customisation that is always difficult, time-consuming and expensive - and usually unnecessary when one balances the high configurability of all today's ERP offerings against the real information needs of any given business.

Having understood and accepted the extreme desirability of vanilla ERP, why do so many CIOs find it so hard to achieve? In my view there are three basic mistakes that are made time and again.

First, there is the important issue of leadership. For successful change management you must engage with the people whose activities you want to change. With vanilla ERP you are immediately limiting the amount of choice you have in shaping the solution, so the challenge is more difficult. In these circumstances user engagement needs a strong leader - one who can articulate how simplicity and standardisation support and enhance business value. It also takes strong leadership to drive decisions that optimise the whole when some out-of-the-box processes contain noticeable but not material compromises.

Comments