ERP Project Management

A project is bigger than the software

An ERP project usually starts as a software installation and ends as an organisational change. Purchasing, production, the warehouse and accounting start sharing the same data; familiar ways of working change. What puts a project in trouble is usually not the software itself but this change going unmanaged: scope creeping up bit by bit, decisions never written down, data left to the last week, users meeting the system on go-live day.

ERP Project Management takes on this work. We run the project on the company’s side, against the company’s goals: schedule, budget, scope, team and risks are held in one place, and the software vendor, the implementation team and the internal teams work from the same plan.

Stages

1. Needs and selection. First, what the company does and what is missing is made clear; this step can run together with Process Consulting. Then selection criteria are written, candidates demonstrate against your own business scenarios, and proposals are compared line by line on the same items.

2. Planning. Scope, budget, schedule and team are set. Who takes which decision is written down at the start; the risk register is kept from day one.

3. Configuration. Needs the standard system does not cover are discussed one by one: should the process fit the system, or the system the process? Every configuration decision is recorded with its reason; unnecessary customisation is the most common burden that later makes upgrades hard.

4. Data migration and testing. The data to be brought over from the old system is identified early, cleaned and checked through trial migrations. Tests use real business scenarios and are run by the users themselves.

5. Training and go-live. Training is given by role; go-live follows a checklist and a fallback plan.

6. After go-live. Intensive support is given in the first weeks; how the system is actually used is monitored, and open items are followed until they are closed.

What we deliver

• Project plan and regular status report
• Decision log: which configuration was made, why, and who approved it
• Risk register and open-items list
• Test scenarios and results
• Go-live checklist and fallback plan

Where AI fits in

AI does not replace project management, but it speeds up some steps. When checking migrated data, the questions that compare records in the old and new systems can be asked through Kai without writing SQL; Kai runs on a local model, so the data never leaves the building. After go-live, tracking with ErpwareBI dashboards whether the system is really being used, and in which process records are piling up, ties the “project is done” decision to data rather than to a feeling.

erpware has products of its own. If one of them is going to be recommended in a project, we say so separately and openly; the selection decision is yours.

Experience

erpware is a new company; the experience in ERP projects belongs to our founding team. We use that experience to know what connects to what inside an ERP, and to see in advance where a project is likely to get stuck.