Implementing ERP more effectively – Part 1

Implementing ERP more effectively

Part 1: Building a house on a solid foundation

You can hardly miss it these days: questions about why Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects hit problems, or worse, fail, appear on so many websites. I have seen many ERP implementations and thought I had some answers, but it was only after I had been involved in building a house that I could see the similarities between building projects and ERP implementations, and why we don’t see buildings collapsing in the same ways some ERP projects fail.

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Coming out of the (book) closet

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I like books. You know, the kind that are made out of paper and have words typed onto a page. You may remember them. That was before we had eReaders which I really don’t like. With a real book you can feel the pages and turn them with your fingers. I cannot remember a time when the battery on my book ran out, and if I drop my book on the beach by accident I don’t have to worry that its casing may be broken. In any case, I like my bookmark.

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From getting lost to getting there

Isn’t it interesting how people give route directions differently, each believing to get the listener to his rightful destination in his own way? So often they start off with: “You know where XYZ café is? Well, from there take ….” Others may draw a crude sketch, showing the number of traffic lights you need to cross before turning left; but always adding “I think” before continuing. Still others take a map book, open it on the right page … and before providing directions, turn the book to face true north!

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Maturing seamlessly

Imagine living in a world where we humans don’t age gradually: we do so in one leap every birthday. After being fed at your mother’s breast for a year, your first birthday brings a rapid doubling in size, the ability to move around on four (perhaps even two) legs, babbling a few words, wide open eyes that see everything clearly … all in a flash. The second birthday sees you suddenly walking and running unaided and making conversation. And so the process goes until a ripe old age. An ideal situation? I don’t think so.

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Dear Diary,
My friend David popped round for dinner the other evening, deeply troubled. He told me that when he woke up last Thursday he noticed a change in his wife’s demeanour. It wasn’t immediately obvious, he said, but he just knew something odd was going on. It wasn’t just the unblinking stare that worried him (although that normally would have been sufficient cause for concern), it was the newly acquired interest shown in anything related to computers. Almost obsessive, he said, to the point he was seriously thinking that she had been taken over by some alien. Now David is not one to exaggerate and even if I privately thought that perhaps he had been watching too many movies, still he is my friend and deserves a considered hearing. I tried to calm his unease, told him that he was worrying unnecessarily and sent him on his way.

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True Grit

A long time ago when a man was a man, a woman was a woman and a horse was, well, a horse there came along a real hero. His name was Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne in the original version of the classic western movie True Grit. Rooster is a tough marshal who decides to help a woman get even for her father’s death. Basically her problem becomes his problem. Ok, I may have simplified the plot somewhat, but I’m not a movie critic and I wouldn’t want to spoil an evening’s viewing entertainment by giving away all the fun.

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Chapter 1,023

I have tried. I really have. But no matter how many times I have attempted to read a James Patterson novel I just didn’t have the will to finish it. I think it’s something to do with the endless number of chapters, each one no more than one or two pages long; I suspect that the author is worried that the reader might lose interest or get distracted by wanting to do something else like watching paint dry. So, to have some fun I tried an experiment; I rearranged the 1,000-odd chapters in one of his books into a random sequence (I admit that took a while) and then started to read the book again. The interesting thing is that this had no effect on the plot. I even started reading the book at chapter 1,023 and it didn’t seem to matter that the previous chapters had been skipped.

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