Author – Okan Kurdoğlu
“Approaches to ERP Software”
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is a set of applications that find a place for itself in a process or shape the process, touching on company culture and human aspects. The multitude of variables in this situation brings different results to the success rates of ERP projects.
The approach of the company’s top management and the clarity of what is desired
How much the company’s employees want to change their habits, and how much the company management believes in change
Correct program selection based on needs and budget
Whether the right project team and the right business partner have been selected internally
Competency levels of company employees and the business partner
You can see the above points, which can be considered fundamentally, as reasons for the failure of ERP projects in many sources today. Following this, we encounter in the continuation:
Projects exceeding their budget
Company owners and management feeling that they did not get value for the money spent
Users who cannot get used to the program due to usability issues
Lack of trust in the generated data
Lack of synchronization between systems and departments
Inability to adapt company processes to the program and excessive customization also emerge as the outputs of an unsuccessful project at the end of the first section.
If we go back to the beginning of the projects, that is, the sales stage, we usually see the situation where the mountain gives birth to a mouse. In short, summarizing; the mismatch of the topics discussed during the sales process with neither the company’s realities nor the software used’s realities and the project outcomes not matching the company image talked about at the beginning of the journey bring regret, distrust, and hopelessness.
Generally, the fundamental problem in this pessimistic view is the inability to correctly identify needs and outputs and the attempt to adapt incorrect processes to the system. “Simple is difficult, or simplicity is the ultimate form of complexity” are meaningful words in my opinion and are also valid in the ERP world. Designing a simple but solution-oriented design at the beginning requires more thinking, spending more time for design, more empathy, and more experience in the past. However, generally spending less time on design and trying to do a difficult development or business is seen as a misconception as a satisfaction point of doing a good job and being successful. A spontaneous goal scored in a match is beautiful, enjoyable to watch, but it may not win you the match or show you will score such a goal in every match, while simple goals scored dependent on a system/tactic may take you to success with less uncertainty. At this point; a system that is simple, step-by-step designed, understands the needs born of realistic goals well, and provides correct outputs is a system that is likely to be successful. The new needs that develop based on success in the beginning and the synergy that occurs will turn into a system that changes places with complexity for other companies when looked at as complicated.
A short future…
Will ERP software be able to have more standard flows in the future and transform the project approach into products that can be put into use very quickly? Is the nature of the business suitable for this? As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, there will be no clear answer to this question in the short term, and there may be different answers depending on the variables. Cloud technologies, the transformation of productization and service models that are changing our traditional project approach, will bring different questions and needs in the near future. Being prepared for these questions, the increasing dimensions of data and speed in today’s world, having established the basic ERP processes has become a necessity rather than a luxury for businesses that want to grow and keep up with the changing world.
In the technology world where different developments occur every day in many fields, the change of business models in line with this, the systematization and standardization of sectoral processes, and the systematic work of businesses with the right processes and methods will ensure that maximum efficiency is obtained with resource management. At this point, we can foresee that the transformation of projects tailored with tailor-made approaches into systems close to products that work integrated with sectoral standards and the emergence of new sectoral standards that will guide companies will increase new business partnerships and new product formations and put an end to many products.
In the technology world, where we frequently hear and will hear terms such as Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud-based, RPA, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Low code, Big data, Open Source Technologies, Innovation, Virtual Reality (VR), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), many definitions will continue to evolve into integrated applications where clarity replaces blurriness.