Largest Software Selection for North American Process Manufacturer
Advisory IS Solutions has been involved with a variety of local and international Software Evaluations and ERP Rollouts. We have been ERP Advisors for 10+ years with an additional 10+ years working with multiple ERP Software companies delivering complex system implementations. These combined skills have allowed us to provide this results oriented Software Selection for our client.
The scope of the System Selection covered the following business areas within North America:
- 130 Retail Branches.
- Multiples Sales & Marketing locations and teams devoted to the trade, industrial, and dealer sectors.
- 9 Distribution Centers, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management locations.
- 8 Manufacturing Plants & Sales Centers.
- 6 Research and Development sites.
- 2 Country Finance Offices.
- 1,400 employees with two Human Resource Offices.
- I.T. Infrastructure Review for ERP Solution readiness.
Phase 1: The Requirements Gathering phase required our team to interview over 100 key staff members to determine their current requirements, pain points, and areas for business improvement. The objectives for this phase were to cover two primary Business and Software Management Initiation:
- Business Management
- Company wide standardization.
- Process improvement.
- Business streamlining and process re-engineering.
- Process automation
- Process simplification
- Solution Management
- Integration to best of breed silo systems.
- Intuitive systems with enhanced user experience
- Real time reporting.
- Business collaboration systems.
- System scale with extendable functionality.
- Easy to manage and maintain applications.
The key to this phase is to collect the business requirements, taking into consideration the Business and Software Management objectives, and to ask the right questions to uncover business needs today and into the future. Any failure of this phase will be ripple down effect to the other phases of the ERP System Selection.
Phase 2: The Technology Assessment identified the top 10 software technology vendors that could deliver a full solution given the size, complexity, budget, and timelines required by my client. We then performed our rigors due diligence process and analysis to determine the right vendors that should be considered as part for Phase 3 – Software Selection. This culminated in a presentation to the Executive Steering Committee for the findings and next steps to move forward with Phase 3 – Software Selection.
Phase 3: Software Selection process utilized our templated approach to rapidly move through this phase efficiently, taking into consideration the sheer number of client resources that were involved during the selection process. This phase covered things like Request for Proposal (RFP), RFP grading criteria, selecting the top vendors for product demonstrations, follow up on product demonstration gaps with clarifications, deployment strategy to be utilized with sound principles, project timelines, software and services pricing, and into final contract negotiations with the vendor of choice. We were able to drive the process effectively and achieved the client timelines and resource constraints working closely with the client IT Director and the Executive Steering Team.
In Summary:
All three phases of the ERP System Selection are key to a successful outcome to selecting the best Multi-Vendor ERP Solution.
We are thankful that this process delivered a rapid process where we were able to manage the Project Team’s expectations. We advised the team what would happen next and when so they would be prepared for each milestone activity. Our proactive Project Management, Methodology, and Approach evoked confidence that led to the success for Stage 1 – ERP Software Selection.
With Stage 1, Software Selection completed, we now move into Stage 2, ERP System Implementation, where our role is to ensure the client is ready for every phase of the project and the project is on time, on budget, and the implementation tasks and deployment strategy is well executed.