an ERP implementation

It is difficult for a project to go live with any degree of assurance if the readiness procedure for an ERP implementation is unavailable. Since it is crucial for the deployment of ERP, the preparedness process should start well in advance of the go-live date and be repeated every month. In order to adopt ERP, the preparedness procedure is essential. It has a checkpoint to make sure that no steps are skipped in order to adhere to the Go-live date or move it to a future time. This checkpoint evaluates the operations, configuration, infrastructure, conversion, testing, development, reporting, users, communications, and training (Soja, 2006). The evaluation provides the company and the project team with information and organization and the project team. The senior management must have a readiness review and a well-detailed report. According to Wang et al. (2007), the process ought to be done after every month until the system is ready. Therefore, it becomes easier for the project team to clarify and address the open tasks, activities, and issues.

All project areas in the whole project must be evaluated in a readiness process. A few of these sectors include the users, configuration, testing, development, infrastructure, training, command central, conversion, communications, reporting, and operation (Soja, 2006).

The stabilization timeframe includes the following: the users getting acquainted with the new process and system, supervising the infrastructure for response time, proper backups taking, and availability of sme’s to provide assistance to multiple users. This phase, do not contain any development of the ERP system (Wang et al., 2007).

Knowledge transfer is very crucial to long-term stability since it assists to subdue the difficulties encountered when moving from implementation to production. The best transfer of knowledge is necessary when the project teams change in different phases particularly in the Stabilization and Go-live phases to guarantee an efficient transition from software implementation to stabilization. The first process should have a detailed plan for knowledge management to oversee the changes between stages (Wang et al., 2007).

There are five areas described in the post-production support. The first one is training which means the beginning of going live and continuing after. The second one is Go-live support which is a system that assists the users. The fourth support is Data validation that has a way of testing the users and ensures their proficiency while using the system. The other one is data correction that updates the bad data and the last one updates with new features (Soja, 2006).

Training is a temporary program that provides assistance to the workers for their development in the job. First, I will check the number of people who need the training and collect their knowledge and proficiency levels in the particular ERP system. I will prepare a schedule based on the two steps and handover a similar statement to the trainer. In the first step, the plan was to lead a classroom session which would explain what is in the package, how it works, and its benefit to us. The step will cover the full introduction of the ERP systems, its functioning and the help it provides. The second session will demand every employee to have a system where they will be asked to observe and follow the operation of the ERP system. The workers will be given the same period to perform the task individually. If anyone gets stuck in the process, the trainer will be available to resolve the problem. Once the program is over, there will be a small test. The employees who will not perform will be given another session which will have a brief explanation.

References

Soja, P (2006). Success factors in ERP systems implementations: Lessons from practice. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 19(4), 418-433.

Wang, E. T. G, Lin, C C-L, Jiang, J. J, Klein, G (2007). Improving enterprise resource planning (ERP) fit to organizational process through knowledge transfer. International Journal of Information Management, 27, 200-112.