- Failure to identify your business drivers, IE, The top 15 to 20 items in your enterprise that a new system must address and provide a workable solution..
- Creating a list of 200 top issues and items that you expect the system to solve. Obviously the list must be much smaller.
- Not fully understanding that “What you do in your business is different” from “How you do it”, a clear separation must be made between Processes and Procedures.
- A failure of not bench marking your critical metrics before you begin the implementation, IE, inventory turns, customer delivery metrics, cost of quality, supplier performance, quality errors, asset utilization, actual cost of product versus selling price. And more………..
- Under budgeting for the ERP Project Implementation, and attempt to make the Project budget numbers work out by reducing User training. The result being that users will revert back to the old way of doing their job and benefits will lag… Or never be realized!
- Selecting an ERP system that is not in your niche market, IE. ERP systems functionally requirements in a Formula based manufacturing company are different than functionally requirements in a Medical Device or Engineering make to Order environment.
- Selecting an ERP system because the financials, A/P, A/R, and G/L are all from the same supplier therefore losing key niche functionally your business must have to be successful…
- Failure to understand that ERP systems technology has limitations, if you do not see it demonstrated before you purchase… Very bluntly, “don’t be disappointed when you don’t see it later”…
- A lack of total project planning, IE, the Master Project should be to (A) start the election process with an end date, (B) completion of the selection process begins the implementation phase. The two should be seamless. This is a Project; therefore it should have a beginning and ending date. Selecting and Implementing ERP is not a continuous “Process”.
- Failing to understand that you are the buyer, therefore buy the best ERP system for your company; do not be sold a quick fix.
Posts Tagged ‘manufacturing’
Top Ten Most Common ERP Evaluation Mistakes
Friday, November 20th, 2009Clients First Fall Dynamics NAV (Navision) Newsletter
Friday, November 6th, 2009This particular issue has both Dynamics NAV and general business related articles so whether you use Dynamics NAV or not, there is alot of great content here.
Topics Include:
- Microsoft Customer Source
- ERP Optimization
- Champion Containers, a Success Story
- Bio Analytics- Business Intelligence for Dynamics.
- General NAV tips & tricks from Chris Young, our resident guru.
Microsoft presents Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009September 2009, Holmdel, New Jersey (NJ)
Clients First Business Solutions is proud to present the following announcement. We have been an active member in the design and testing of this breakthrough release.
Microsoft Corp. today announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, a comprehensive, innovative business management solution that helps people work faster and smarter, and gives businesses the flexibility to adapt to new opportunities and growth.
The Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 release offers breakthrough user experience and technology innovations while maintaining the simplicity that has always been a core value of this solution. Never before has so much effort been put into a Microsoft Dynamics NAV release – from extensive customer research and a complete architecture redesign, to a concentrated focus on quality. The product has been thoroughly tested by partners resulting in more than 10 customers live on Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009.
“Customers and partners are facing complex issues today. Customers need to streamline operations and find ways to use resources more efficiently, while partners are looking for strong opportunities to create and maintain vertical solutions,” says Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions at Microsoft. “Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 allows us to squarely address the needs of midsize businesses in today’s economic climate and to support our partners’ investments. By using the role-specific, user-friendly ERP solution, both groups can boost productivity and work smarter, maximizing their effectiveness in driving business impact.”
With Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, businesses can:
•Provide a streamlined, RoleTailored user experience to help people work more effectively.
•Adapt to meet changing business needs with improved agility and enhanced flexibility.
•Connect Microsoft Dynamics NAV easily to a wide range of applications with .NET Web services.
•Provide new options for designing reports that are intuitive to work with and easier to distribute.
•Maximize existing investments in Microsoft products and technologies, including Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
“One of the biggest challenges faced by customers using ERP systems is how to get started using the right functionality in the applications. With the release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 and its new RoleTailored client, we finally have a great answer for that challenge. Those capabilities allow users to focus on the 20 percent of the application’s functionality that they need to do their job and push the rest into the background,” says Scott Brennan, managing consultant with Sikich, a US-based solution provider and Microsoft Dynamics NAV reseller.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 introduces several new capabilities designed to increase usage of ERP and fuel individual and organization-wide productivity, including the following:
•Personalized Role Centers corresponding to 21 key job functions. Based on research into the way employees really work, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 delivers simplified access to RoleTailored views and business processes through Role Centers designed and delivered out-of-the-box for more than 21 key employee roles. Role Centers change the work paradigm for the traditional user by providing a single overview of job-related tasks and information. By helping people to organize, prioritize, and access their work from a single location, Role Centers can increase productivity and effectiveness. With an easy-to-navigate window into their work world and the ability to personalize their Role Centers to fit their own unique work styles, employees have a powerful way to get work done accurately and efficiently.
•Improved business intelligence and reporting capabilities based on the new Microsoft SQL Server database layer introduced in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009, enable employees to drill into data, identify trends, generate business insights, and monitor how they’re tracking against key performance indicators. The new Business Analytics in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 delivers powerful new features designed to make it easier for your clients to create and consume business information. In this new release, Microsoft Dynamics NAV focuses more than ever on simplicity and making information available in and intuitive and easy way so all employees can gain the insight they need to act on behalf of the business.
• .NET Web Services allow partners and customers to integrate data and business logic from Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 with other applications to support a wide range of scenarios. For example, businesses wanting to deploy credit check functionality to enable employees who normally do not have access to the ERP system to run credit checks on a new customer can easily create web services that make the process simple and efficient in providing the employee with access to recent and accurate credit data.
“Our employees have enthusiastically embraced Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 because it fits their individual needs rather than force-fitting them into a one-size-fits-all system,” said Henrik Dam Jespersen, CEO of Hurup Furniture. “The ease of setup and tight integration with the Microsoft products we already use allowed us to get up and running quickly and smoothly, and we’re already seeing increased productivity, reduced costs and smarter decision-making.”
ERP Optimization – How to get the most out of the solutions you already own
Monday, September 14th, 2009Our “Coffee with Chris” Series of live training events and videos are designed to help our Clients and Friends maximize their Return on Investment (ROI) by providing powerful tips, tricks, and educational information. Most organizations never fully leverage this powerful technology and therefore never achieve the maximum benefits.
In today’s most difficult business climate working lean and gaining a real competitive advantage is more vital than ever. The educational video link below is designed to help you rethink your business processes and truly leverage the investment you made in your ERP solution. We strongly urge you to take the time to see this excellent one hour video on ERP Optimization. If it wasn’t worth your time contact us and we will provide one hour of free telephone consulting.
Whether you use Sage MAS90, MAS200, MAS500, Microsoft Dynamics NAV (Navision), AX, GP, SL or SAP Business One, the principles in this presentation apply equally.
Bob Abair, the chief presenter here, is an undisputed leader in lean manufacturing and ERP optimization.
Efficiency Never Goes Out of Style
Saturday, August 8th, 2009Today’s business world is filled with buzz words that change from year to year as business improvement techniques come and go. I recently read an article on résumés that emphasized such terms as “team player”, “results oriented”, etc., have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Process improvement models such as TQM (Total Quality Management) have given way to Six Sigma, and JIT (Just in Time) to Lean Manufacturing. But the processes themselves have never gone out of style, and never will, although the next management fad may hang a different moniker on them and package them in a slightly different way. Efficiency and process improvement will never become obsolete, no matter what you call them.
When you purchased your current software system, you went through an installation process with the help of your Clients First implementation team where you defined your requirements, configured your software, set up your processes, and trained your employees. For the first few months on the system, your Clients First software support team helped you work on your issues, write or modify reports, and get to the point where you are probably pretty self sufficient, depending on the size of the company and the role of internal IT staff.
If you have a ‘mature’ implementation, you probably only call Clients First when you have a problem or software related issue. But did you know that we’re much more than “Software Repair People”, we’re Consultants and can help you with your business process requirements beyond your software related needs. If fact, as your business partner, we have a more in-depth perspective of your company than you probably realize. Not only can we do an Account Checkup to see if you’re using your software to its full potential, but we can help you when you’re planning on adding product lines, changing the way you do business, acquiring subsidiaries, downsizing and needing to streamline processes, just about anything that has to do with business processes. There is no need to go to an outside consultancy firm, when you’ve already got one that knows your business, but is still far enough removed from day-to-day operations to provide the objective eye you often need when trying to make improvements.
Is it taking too long to get an order out the door? Do you need a job description for an IT employee? Do you need assistance doing long term planning? Are you adding a department and need to develop process flows? Has the way your company does business changed? Are you using workarounds because you believe your software doesn’t support a function? Has your system been implemented for more than 2 years without a review to ensure that you’re using it in the most efficient way? We’re your business partner and many of our Project Leaders and Implementers are also Business Process Consultants. Call us in the planning stages and we will probably be able to save you a lot of pain later on. Don’t know what your pain is? Call us, and we’ll help you define your pain areas and develop a plan to remediate them. Don’t think your primary support rep has the knowledge? Call and find out. If the primary doesn’t, he/she will bring in someone from our staff that can help you out.
So whether you call if efficiency, good organization, total quality or whatever word they use next week, let Clients First help ensure that it describes you.
Please contact Clients First for more information. Thanks to Karen Wevick from our Alabama office.











