Our clients usually ask if we can send them a quote with all the expenses involved in an ERP implementation process. We kindly decline.
Why? Price does not determine a successful implementation. There’s no standard pricing plan as each implementation is custom tailored for your medicament needs. Several factors influence the entire experience from beginning to end. Some are dispensable, while others are essential.
Bottom line: it all depends on what you, the buyer, needs for its ERP to integrate smoothly with its business and operation processes. These divergent requirements commonly affect the expense dramatically, WorkWise Software warns.
When we help our clients plan their deployment strategy, many fixed and variable factors affect the cost of their implementation.
Need to run your ERP through the cloud? Only need on-premise? What about both? Our friends at Oracle NetSuite say there are pros and cons to each alternative.
On-premises solutions require large upfront and ongoing costs for purchasing and managing the perpetual license fee; there are added costs related to “maintaining the solution’s IT infrastructure with the necessary hardware, servers, and facilities, as well as additional personnel
Any right ERP implementation processes need a plan of foreseen and unexpected stages and costs. It can be done either in-house with or without the help of an implementation consultant or by a third party, preferably, a certified ERP implementation consultant. Columbus Global insists that you should factor in the costs of labor and consultation fees for initial and extra work for both.
This plan should include:
If it’s external, both the implementation service vendor and the customer determine the plan design, procedures, and deployment. Make sure not to leave anything to chance as much as possible and to document every agreement.
This factor must make it into any ERP implementation budget plan. But we prefer to leave it separate as it weighs heavily when budgeting. The number of employees and the level of access they’ll have to the system will influence the deployment expenditures. According to ERP Software Blog, mid-sized companies tend to have a higher budget per user than large companies; the latter benefit from economies of scale.
These highly technical factors typically comprehend:
To plan and implement, you need a dedicated team. Everyone should have a specific role in every part of the process. One of the 8 most common myths about ERP implementation is that only IT people should make up the team. And I don't recommend it. It should be a group of expert managers from your ERP vendor or implementation partner, your employees, or a mix.
In this regard, change management is crucial. I cannot stress this enough. No matter who makes your ERP implementation team, they need to have experience in handling rejection and other issues that arise when the system changes.
If the budget allows it, include someone on your team who is solely dedicated to managing change, Columbus Global suggests.
For NetSuite, any ERP implementation plan should include a specific chapter for change management that provides analysis; role assessment; communication; workforce enablement; and training.
I’ve gathered a few best practices we always like to give our customers to keep when planning their ERP implementation process from start to end.