aham brahmaasmi

 

ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning ,the much touted integration software package hardly warrants success without a lot of factors intertwined to work together and in proper synchronization .These factors  which are normally called Critical Success Factors at different phases of implementation and  are very much inter connected with each other in a dynamic way(one gets changed with others). While in beginning selection of best people as project leaders or project champions are as important as to select the right software vendor or knowledge partner as well as system integrator for successful roll out. Top management ‘s support with committed time and attention (qualitatively and quantitatively )are as important as the organized and pure and clean data while migrating to such a monolithic environment at one go or in staggered phases. Change Management just prevails at the core of any such all pervasive software suits which plays the most important role to resolve the conflict or remit the opposition which will be followed as a natural  phenomenon  with such total transforming technology. But amongst all those factors the most critical one which just spins the cobweb to sensitize every end of the PAN Organisation implementation of such integration is the designing and developing robust training infrastructure with customized delivery of knowledge bites of ERP at different layers and levels of the organization. May be it on appraisal or appreciation  by the top management , may be it is adoption and adaptation at users, process owners or module owners , may be it is  on coordination and  supervision at the level of project leaders ,  laying infrastructures  , networking , making a full scape training  or  learning layout at different phases and stages of implementation is of foremost importance. Amongst all those data, people and leadership , the people issue simply is the most predominant as the whole ERP deals more on integration of mindset rather than integration of some servers or applications where the departments , desks or the divisions will be ready to share the platform, share the information and that also in real time  for faster and better decision making. Training  in ERP is not just about acceptance of the new technology or system , it is about acclimatization with it , growing deep association with it and ultimately proper appreciation of its benefits  , tangible intangible both.   In general training must precede even conceptualization of any new initiative for first information report or first appraisal , best awareness to comprehend the investment as well as impact in its best possible views. So is in the case of ERP implementation also where training plays much more critical role considering its complexity and all pervasive effect on the industry. As it is called a big beast which keep scratching scraping  and then scrubbing every entity whether its process, project or people to get the dirt off, to shed the flab off otherwise age old obese and outdated  system to make it a smart , sleek ,svelte and sophisticated one, the preparing of mind , apatite both, honing the aptitude and attitude both all these  are very much necessary for ERP implementation.

In the organization like ours where the age old activities have been quarantined  for decades in its own territorial boundaries or departmental diktats and which never ever got tried or tested in its  new avatar being process centric the much aspired change which will set fast at the core of the design of the integration software will be surely looked as a paradigm shift supposed to be occurred  more in mind rather than the mechanism.

The business processes will be suddenly viewed as assets of the organisation . The treasure trove of these reinvented and to a great extent reengineered functional processes will be ready for  further expedition and exploitation to its full potentials . This concept of building up process vault with its automating software simply cannot come out of blue rather than very well structured , sincere organizational learning exercise to further percolate it , permeate it across the industry demanding more and more intense training of the people associated with the system.

As the complexities of the system multiplies with process configured , customized or reengineered as the case demands , the stakeholders of it like user , process owners even technical staff needs complete clarity of transition , confidence in use and the concrete rationale behind the whole transformation. So a training needs much more about whys , wheres , whosabout the business processes  not only howsof the system. While taking cognizance of the fact that ERP implementation is much more managerial and people issue rather than the technical or application architecture , the right training with right resource people equipped with both right style and substance  can only warrant better implementation. There is every chance that being in the industry for quarter a century , some ERP implementer(third party or system developer themselves) normally  goes in automode with a standardized version of the training and push it down the organization pipeline even before understanding the psyche of the company which got a huge vulnerability of repulsion and rejection by the users. So customization of training according to the level of information or technical literacy is precursor of any effective training. Just paying a lip service will certainly defeat the whole purpose of the training which is at the core of success of implementation any such complex modular software suite.

So what a training must aim for in ERP implementation ?

While introduction to acronyms or taxonomies are the foundation course  of any enterprise software training , appraisal of the underlying architecture (three tier ), the level of integration and depiction of post implemented process flow as well as system with changed impact (enhanced efficiency , faster business cycle , global visibility , deeper understanding of customers etc) are the primary motif of such intense training.

 

The next mission of ERP training is certainly to understand the relationship between the data, people and the application /system the main three vertices of such solution. So at every point the readiness is basic prerequisite of flagging off ERP implementation. Missing any timeline to prime or prepare the incumbent(data, people or system) will just end up in nothing a recipe of failure or disaster. The comprehension of this bondage which is any case is very much mission critical and which is only possible by well scripted training programme.

 

The erp system which fast becomes the digital nervous system of the whole company (with suppliers and customers aligned on common platform) needs a robust support system , which hardly be outsourced once the go live or and ultimate sign off occurs by the consultants. Whether its about the maintaining server , running application or occasional trouble shooting for users , the knowledge osmosis is just indispensible.

 

Training enlightens mind , it smoothens the rough edges of any machine or mechanism, system or solution. The change management which writes preamble of any enterprise system omnibus  hugely owes its vocabulary from training manual designed distinctively for different layers/stakeholders of the system . The otherwise die hard resistances deeply entrenched in any organization culture gets its first upheaval by meticulously designed , deftly delivered knowledge bites in a slow but steady inception of psyche individual as well as organizational.

 

The science of management has never been so triumphant over the art of managing. Suddenly the Coal India in its 44 years of existence started getting the warmth of cohabitation and collaboration  of hundreds of processes this industry has been dealing with or even exceling in just started feeling a huge level of solidarity  and get togetherness an close knit relationship , an extended  family with  deep bond gluing all members together. The HR, The Marketing, the Production , the Planning , the Finance all the process members just  started feeling a strong pull ,  an community connect between themselves . Some were well organized and got its patting on back , some lacked coherence or consistence some again just never congruent with the definition Champy & Hammer once espoused 25(incidentally the same year ERP name coined by Gartner to enable these process flow) years back. Those all and others who are till the other day were so indulgent to feel self centred , self aggrandizing and self glorifying are suddenly feeling urgency of communicating in-between , conniving together and , cocreating the best possible outcome . It is the emancipation of process from its claustrophobic  self obsession of compartmentalization . It is long awaited release from its quarantined , cocooned , cloistered life inside the four walls of the departmental activities which just  keeps growing along  with the organization while never falling short of its  share of narcissism nor  ever ready to  reconcile with other departments instead of  the fact that all of them are supposed to tread with same mission , same vision , same goals set forth by the organization at its early years of foundation .  Till date the infighting between any two departments were quite intense which sometimes snowballed to the  level of face off. Till today the only way out in extreme of divergence  or dithering on the issue across the departments is to put them under ages of one  Sr management (at director  level)  who may pull them together  by his or her post or power most of which  sometimes yields nothing apart from reluctant obligation of warring departments . Till the other date the marketing  deptt was never ready to buy in the production people’s logic of seasonality or slump in production due to sudden hazards or  hurdles very much natural to mining under the earth  arguably toughest profession in the world . The HR people always were in their automode to decide and derive any rule to be followed by just giving least heed to the account department ‘s capacity or constraints. The material department was simply obsessed with their custody of materials affording full indulgence in their  own style of rationing and rationalizing the issue or indenture of materials without even caring to be in sync with production scheduling or machine maintenance. And yes with so much disintegrated thoughts or non communication , organization  have been surviving like anything and testing some success although at sub optimal level. Thanks monopoly , this suboptimal level performance yielded no  less return with huge price leverage. And this monopoly dividends just created another complacent , condescending environment which could easily defy and deny any logic of market design which believes in developing  competence and competiveness. So being complete devoid of such rationality , the  vicious loop created with these process owners  or the process users just let them  be allowed to be more disintegrated and disoriented anyway. A downward spiral appeared to become too tough to  be stopped over the years of operating in such protected and so distorted market design.

Not any more. The suddenly reinvented processes seasoned (rightly or wrongly) over the years just bridged the gap amongst the departments , across the departments  and inside the departments being the linchpin of communication and connection. A process concept is itself a fluid one which never allows any single activity to be left in the lurch. It symbolize the flow or conduit of activities sequencing them , synchronizing them , standardizing them ultimately setting them free from people centric  or place centric performance  where process once captured  and contoured in right way will always deliver the same at any condition. Individual style or say of department has no place in its workflow which gets refined and refurbished depending on the customer’s or consumer’s (of the output of that process) demand. In other ways here the process descends on our company to bid adieu to all those islands of works or

 

So the jobs across the discipline or desks suddenly got huge momentum to get redefined , rechristened in the new taxonomy . The production planning , project monitoring , E-auction or recruitment just moves beyond its four walls of departments of origin and  started touching upon the others’ fiefdom as well. As the system integrator started to take the stock of the process inventories and its existing design (the work flow, flow chart, schematic diagram ) the truths are being further revealed. There were more blurred areas  than the bold ones , there were so many disconnect and so many inconsistence all of which made the whole process enough vulnerable to be exploited by human intervention .Simply enabling these activities with IT will not rout rather reinforce the incoherence or incongruence already spread their tentacles all over the years. So it was the time to capture the As-Is , means business as usual(read Process as usual or in existence flow and features) . To decipher any process in its constituent activities  has never been less challenging and so less  exciting. Challenging because every process  must have its  chained lines of the activities which are rarely present in our company and where there are so many missing links in between  thus creating so many fissures  and fertile ground for manipulation or meddling by any unscrupulous process stakeholders which unfortunately includes a section of our management also. Exciting because the first time ever the organization is now getting the scope to decipher it , dissect it, design it and if needed redesign it which is called Business process reengineering in the enterprise language. The variance , the expectation the gap analysis and the delta analysis  before final blue printing all which come in  the taxonomy of SAP implementation , suddenly started working as the oracle of business process catharsis  of CIL. And whole litany of the force got intoxicated with fluidity of the processes.

 

 

Success word is one of the most ill defined word in the lexicon of our work place , our life and of the world we live in. Most of the time it simply gets camouflaged  or cocooned inside the veil of relativity  rather than absoluteness as with different perspectives, the parameters of success get changed its meaning or corrected its course . In fact with the moving timeline also the same parameters get further refined or redefined  so also the word success  shifts its explanation. It is not so surprising while taking any new drive or starting new project , implementing new scheme or working on any new solution , steering forth a new initiative  or settling down a new deal,  the bigger tranche of study ,survey and scholastic exploration simply dedicated to capture the timeline as well as trueness of success achieved as set forth at the beginning of the activity. Very far reached tangibility, or elusive measure as correlation between investment and impact have never been direct enough just put the entity claimed to be successful one(may be project or person whoever) always in dilemma to declare when it can raise the toast for its  achievement as success.

Nothing is more truer when it goes for the implementation of modular software packages called ERP in any organization. In an Enterprise Solution (which includes all the extended family of ERP like SCM, CRM, Sales automation and so on)market highly consolidated rather than fragmented where SAP, Oracle, Sage, Infor or MS rules the maximum roast, the most  sought after word if any by the clients are when they can call it success while implementing it. Just googling the success rate of ERP will bring forth more harrowing stories rather than helpful ones which may be enough to upset any organization to further contemplate to stich and smoothen its process by any such packaged suite of solution most of which(the stories or allegories) are always half truth because whether you celebrate it as your achievement or  condemn it as failure  all these narratives depend on how you conceive it at first instance , contour it at the beginning of its journey.

Defining an objective framework for any such all pervasive solution which scratches at every nook and cranny inside the organization once unleashed has always been seen to be the first critical factor or determinant of future success of such complex software. These objective may vary from highly tangible and short term or operational one like  faster cash cycle or business cycle  to intangible  and long term or organisational ones like empowerment  etc which may be summed  as follows:

1. Operational:cost reduction/cycle time reduction/productivity- efficiency improvement/quality improvement /responsiveness improvement/ Supply chain frontiers improvement
2. Managerial: Better resources or optimal utilisation/ sustainable/ improved decision making/performance improvement
3. Strategic: support for business growth/business alliance/business innovation/cost leadership/product differentiation/customer focuses, networking etc.
4. IT infrastructure(Building business flexibility for current and future change/IT cost reduction/Increased IT infra capability
5. Organisation benefit; Changing work pattern/org learning/ KM/empowerment/sharing and sticking to common goals)mission vision and strategy.

And all these objectives whether defined by tangible or intangible parameters or else by time lines (long term , short term or intermediaries) are the result of running the best business processes as professed by the developer with real time data delivery on a monolithic system architecture.

Indisputably these all are transforming parameters (rather than just automating as normally known ERP as) of any organization to make it a smart , sleek new age company  has to face inevitable collision with anachronism prevailing in the company till the other day. All these refined, renewed or newbie processes will go under the constant scrutiny and scanning of the employees who had been invested in their old , conventional ones for so long and that’s also to their satisfaction so far. While the system world got hugely invested in  to know what actually any user, the end customer of such complex solution wants , the first break through came from Mcleane Delone in their scholastic article to articulate what an user desires from  new system. The mostly cited paper so far on success measurement  so far  in any system research.  The duo authors  in fact reoriented their most discussed  findings on success measures in another decade  to squarely focus on individual impact and organisational impact  of IS system  in general which surely  includes the entry of e-commerce  or ES at the later stage of information revolution. The framework of these measures very aptly fit with the broad definition of success which trifurcate well accepted perception about success of ERP as

1. How satisfied the user is . The basic idea of success is always about the satisfaction of user who are supposed to get over to new environment from the conventional one. It should certainly help him or her to work with more ease , further functionality , more reliability , flexibility of system , portability , integration and importance of it as well as data quality. The attribute is called in breadth System Quality

 

2. Once convinced about the system quality , the System-Use the next attribute of success would be followed naturally with the frequency , time , dependency , pattern of use of the system by user .

 

3. Information qualityplays another role to declare whether the implementation is successful or not. While switching over from legacy or silo system to integrated or modular one , the data plays the major role to create enthusiasism or excitement. Pure , pristine data  when processed creates hugely valuable information helping to take the faster decision . So the  accuracy , timeliness, completeness , consistency and integrity  of data is what an user gets assured of while shifting to new system. This quality data actually decides the quality of decision again.

 

4. In such a new environment the best incentives to attract the users are always derived from efficient and effective knowledge transfer or more precisely knowledge osmosis between the SI or Software Developer with the client organization. So Service Qualityof these complimentor as normally the System Integrator or solution providers called is another index of success .The empathy, the assurance , the competency to transfer knowledge  all these are the most desired from the service providers for the users to feel content with the new environment.

So the “net benefits” comprising of all the above ultimately lead to user satisfaction which may warrant the success the organization set forth because of achievement of predefined benefits , tangible and intangible both.

In the other case success may be attributed to the implementation of the whole system as desired (with integration, control ,tables and reports ) by simply automating  the process where the integrator gets signed off showing how the packaged software enabled the system  not showing how effective or efficient  it has been benchmarking with the best in the industry. Success here is defined by the project time lines  not the  performance metrics (normally in state run organization which are bound by norm and obsessed by nature  most of the time with the cost of any project rather than the benefits from it)

While declaring the success of the integrated software like ERP , we must not  forget that this type of implemenation has been always an irreversible journey. Once switched over from the legacy to this monolithic , single data defined  technically three tier environment , it will be disastrous if we leave in between or stop at the middle as  any retraction ,retreat or reversal from such project where huge amount of resources  like time , money  etc invested will  surely dent deep in the financial health of the organization. And once the stability or robustness of the software are unsettled because of the reluctant implementation or half baked integration, the whole decision support system of the company will collapse or get a huge jolt creating a sense of entrapment in the industry from which recovery or reverting back to past process or system will be a tremendous challenge. As we know the half information or fractured knowledge does more harm than help, so once abandoned  in the midst where information won’t be federated with centralized control and coordination  the same solution  which promised the moon will just end up in creating a huge crater in the industry from which the recovery will be just next to impossible. Whether the failure comes in objectives unfulfilled , project (and so cost)over run , or just unaccepted by the users (due to organization or cultural misfit ) , it ultimately cost the company very high  specially when a transformative change have already set in and the company is at the cross road to get over to a completely different environment. Unlike normal information technology of any stand alone software or net working solution ,which gets built up from the scratch , the shared software like ERP just impound its knowledge from its deep and wide process-ware and system-ware in existing environment by further configuring them , customizing them and if needed changing them totally which by default is unidirectional in nature creating very fast the point of no return.

And finally we must appreciate any organization keeps running on so many new initiatives, schemes and strategies  of which ERP is one of them  which basically works on management of data transfer , data processing and decision making with equal human intervention. Now espousing  or evaluating a direct correlation between the investment and impact of a particular solution  in the form of rate of return, net profit after tax or any  increase in turnover or any such change in all those  efficiency indexes is quite difficult when captured all the activities in an interdependent and dynamic state. Studying any of them in regard of success in a mutually exclusive way is susceptible to lots of error and misinterpretation at any point of time. So continuous vigil as well as valuable time of the top management , close monitoring by project team backed with with change management plan along with seamless knowledge transfer from SI  must ensure the strategizing , restrategizing , course correction whenever required not to allow any ERP project to be converted to another money sucking black hole in any organization .  The org. transformative traits  of this type of project demands containing the failure at any cost rather than claiming success which normally keep elusive for long.