The promise of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is that it will make your company more efficient, profitable and agile. Nevertheless, a lot of businesses are reluctant to implement the technology or update their legacy system because ERPs require fundamental changes, they are a significant investment of time and capital, and implementation failures can and do happen.

Fear often disguises itself as logic. If you applied the above ‘logic’ elsewhere, it would suggest no business should ever try to improve. Any plan can fail, right?

What logic truly dictates is that, since there have been a lot of successful ERP implementations in a lot of businesses, the trick must be knowing what features they have in common so that yours can have them too. Here are some of the main ones.

1. A vision

There are lots of cloud-based ERPs out there. Choosing the right one for your business should begin not with their capabilities, but your needs. Consult with your organisation’s key stakeholders and create a list of where you’re looking to become more efficient, what kinds of reports you want to create, and other functions and technology you require.

2. The right technology

Some implementations don’t fail so much as they become redundant quickly. The right ERP technology shouldn’t just help you now, it should continue helping into the future.

You should look for a solution that has built-in flexibility, so it can both adapt to your current business process and make it easier for you to adopt new business models. It should also be continuously updated to offer you the latest innovations, such as real-time analytics that leverage artificial intelligence.

Oracle NetSuite is one of the most mature and widely adopted Cloud ERP platforms because it offers these capabilities and more.

3. A champion

No one knows your company better than your people. Since the goal of an ERP implementation should be the merger of your best practices with the best of what the system can offer, you need a ‘change champion’. Someone who is across the former and who can then be trained in the latter. This training is crucial if they’re going to drive the implementation. That’s where the next feature comes in.

4. A partner

A lot of implementation failures share a root cause – a lack of experience. This is both on the technical side and the change management side. For an ERP partner, you should be looking for someone who has specific expertise in your industry; who can adjust as the scope of the project shifts and navigate your unique circumstances; and who can support you for the long haul.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach, your partner should also have a process that’s proven to be effective. For example, Liberate I.T. has a plan that takes you from initial workshops, champion training and customisation, through to your ‘go live’ date and ongoing optimisations.

At Liberate I.T., we leverage our experience of over 130 Oracle NetSuite implementations across Australia and New Zealand to deliver optimal results for our customers. Get in contact with us to discover the Liberate I.T. difference and begin your ERP journey today.

Find out more

To learn how to unlock the power of NetSuite for your business, please visit www.liberateit.com/caanz or contact the Liberate I.T. team at [email protected].