Friday, March 7, 2014



We are so sorry for not posting last week that we will provide the next 3 steps into this week’s installment.   First we will discuss Blueprinting and how this action will benefit you in keeping project costs down.  Second is the Holistic, Enterprise-Wide Impact and how it affects the entire value chain of the company.  Third is Testing.  This is a required step to determine any problems prior to implementing the system company-wide.

5. Blueprinting

Without it: While the product was selected for its close fit with the company’s goals, no ERP software is ready to go out of the box.

With it: ERP system implementations are all about business processes and the blueprint is all about how you design and configure the systems to support the processes across all aspects of the company. Lean and Six-Sigma tools and techniques will give you an opportunity to find out where value is created and how to streamline your business processes. 


During your blueprinting you need to think about innovative yet pragmatic ways to transform your processes.  Also consider how much your business can practically tackle at one time. It is wiser to change in phases than to take on too much too quickly. In the end, a well-defined blueprint can help differentiate you from your competition through enhanced work flow efficiency and increased customer satisfaction. While customization is a natural part of this process, keep it to a minimum. Limiting customization helps contain implementation costs and keep the project timeline under control. This can also impact ongoing maintenance and utilization costs long term. 



6. Holistic, Enterprise-Wide Impact

What it Means: ERP systems have influence across the entire value chain of the company. For the company to run well as a whole enterprise, the individual pieces must work efficiently and integrate seamlessly.

Why it Matters: These implementations have wide-ranging impact and definitely affect everyone within the organization, as well as your suppliers and external customers. It is important to understand how the transactions upstream affect the transactions and results downstream. As we mentioned earlier, getting all the stakeholders involved early in the process is important. You need cross-functional buy-in to ensure that everyone understands their role and commitment in the process. Their input at the beginning will save time and money in the long run. 



7. Testing

Why it matters: Testing of the system before it goes live is a must. It allows you to address any problems and evaluate the training required for a smooth company-wide transition. 

Where to start:
  • Prepare for the testing phase by identifying all business scenarios.
  • Follow rigor of unit testing, integration testing, user-acceptance testing, and regression testing.
  • Create test scripts.
  • Maintain a master file to keep thorough records of what works and what does not.
  • Set up a plan to manage the gaps.
  • Use data in testing that will match closely with what data you will have in production.
  • Don’t just test normal data scenarios but test bad data scenarios as well.


Testing should be done first by the implementation team and then by the end users. For the end users, testing should be done according to their roles and security permissions.  Once everyone signs-off on the tests, then the system environment is ready for prime-time.

Next Week: #8  Data Accuracy   

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