The biggest challenges associated with ERP implementation is to spend the time upfront to carry out a business analysis before the project is underway. If you skip critical aspects to the overall project delivery (this includes the timeframe, resource management and mapping), this creates difficulty in tracking the progress and overall success of any implementation.

Let’s look at some of the other biggest challenges that can arise:

• Limiting the ERP project to one department – as mentioned before, it needs to be a business project with stakeholder buy-ins across the board. If the focus rests purely on an IT or finance department, this limits the chance of success due to the lack of support when the implementation goes live
• Not spending enough time with upfront analysis – it’s easy to focus on the technology part of the implementation. However, without a full understanding of what certain technologies can do for your business, you’ll struggle to challenge the processes that you’re currently doing and what they could be
• Not working with an implementation partner – with our expertise, NaviWorld was able to get a complete system that was designed to fit their needs based on their functional requirements
• Having an implementation at the wrong time for your business – external events such as labour shortages, Covid bring up their own challenges, which may halt the overall progress of your project. This could lead to increased costs and a lack of belief in your change management processes

An effective change management strategy ensures that the right people are on board for the right part of the project. NaviWorld acknowledged that change should be a continuous process with no end point, ensuring teams were aware of any updates to keep the change management cycle alive.

This is the value that an ERP upgrade provides:

• Motivation towards employees thanks to digitally enhanced ways of working
• Enhanced customer experiences with a centralised database, offering one version of truth
• Improved business performance to improve waste reduction

For customer to get the most out of their upgrade, stakeholder mindsets need to be aligned with the goals of the project.

Testing is always critical before a go-live, leading to problems if you underestimate this step. Ultimately, it ensures that the new system won’t impact your other integrations or processes before it’s too late after a go-live. UAT (User Acceptance Testing) should be carried out regularly, allowing you to validate changes and gain complete understanding of how the software works.

Key tips when testing your ERP system

• Keep a log of prior tests so you can learn from past mistakes when you come to make further changes
• Try to “break” the system – this seems counterintuitive, however, how else will you really know your system is resilient when you come to use it every day?
• Allow enough time to implement your ERP solution with and without security permissions –if this is left until the last minute, new rules within your system can lead to issues down the line if you haven’t got enough time to identify them and test it thoroughly