Interesting Facts about ERP Implementation Strategies

Although there are several articles written on “best practices” for implementing ERP software, still it is quite difficult to understand each strategy and choosing the best option. However, a survey hosted by “Software Advice” can enable you to get enough information’s to select the best implementation process for your company.

Here are the main highlights of the Software Advice’s survey

In- order to find out which ERP implementation strategies are the most popular and successful, the survey was conducted with the help of Twitter and the company’s preferred industry bloggers, and the survey received 45 responses from business organizations that have been involved in an implementation. Participants in the survey were asked four simple questions in a brief informal manner. Like –

• Which implementation strategy did your company select?

Phased rollout– Execution happens in a particular instance. On a given date all users move to the new system.

Big bang – Changeover happens in stages over an extended period of time. In a series of steps, users move onto new system.

Parallel adoption- At the same time both the legacy and new ERP system run. While working on the old users learn the new system.

Big bang and phased rollout combo, or the other.

• If you preferred the other, explain the strategy you chose.
• Was the implementation turned out to be successful?
• Explain why if you selected no?

Although the survey revealed some interesting data, still according to industry expert Jonathan Gross from Pemeco, while one strategy may work for most of the business organizations, it may not be the best strategy for your company.

Below mentioned are few results of the survey –

Firstly the survey demonstrated that 89% of participants followed “big bang,” “phased rollout” or a combo of the two strategies.

The number of phased rollout users and big bang users were nearly same with 40% and 38 % respectively.  Parallel adoption was selected by only 4 users; the other came in last with only 2 users.

88% of implementations or 40 out of 45 emerged to be successful.