Precision ERP Configuration

The configuration of ERP and other high end business systems plays a major role in the success or failure of ERP and other business systems projects.  The JAR&A precision configuration approach ensures a high value outcome:

1. Mainstream products are mature and configurable — all significant ERP systems today, as well as all other major business information systems, are extremely mature and highly configurable.

2. Configuration is critical — the benefit of this extreme level of configurability is that any significant commercial product can in large measure be configured for any organization. The downside is that if the configuration is weak or sub-optimal the ERP is difficult to use, inefficient and generally sub-standard – this is evidenced by the failure rate of ERP implementations which is currently running at around 75% according to Gartner and other authorities (search on Google for “ERP Failure Rate”).

3. Problems with reporting and analysis — one of the consequences of this situation is that reports are time consuming and difficult to produce and maintain, expenditure on personnel to extract and maintain reports and business intelligence dashboards and suchlike is excessive and frequently executives and managers cannot easily obtain answers to straightforward questions without time consuming restructuring of data. Export to Excel and then manual or semi-manual analysis is at epidemic levels in some organizations.

4. Experience and precision configuration — over the years, based on experience in zoology taxonomies, library systems, the NATO document classification scheme and other areas the Strategy Doctor has developed a very robust strategic approach to the Precision Configuration of ERP and other business information systems. This approach is discussed in detail on the second ERP Doctor website (email for the URL) this includes a number of white papers on the subject.

5. Improve efficiency and effectiveness of ERP — precision configuration improves the efficiency of ERP operation, dramatically improves the quality and accessibility of management information, provides “answers to the questions you have not yet thought to ask” and opens the door to clever pieces of bespoke software alongside the ERP that enable organizations to do things with their data that competitors are unable to do thereby opening the door to secure major new client contracts.

6. Unlock the full potential — in terms of unlocking the full potential of any ERP investment Precision Configuration is the most tangible long-term deliverable. Precision configuration can also be applied in the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) of Data Warehouses and BI tools in order to bring structure and order to the data in order to improve the precision and reliability of reporting and visualization.

Some examples:

1.  V3 Consulting Engineers — ERP implementation – precision configuration throughout the implementation including a highly structured “cubic business model” Chart of Accounts resulting in greatly improved management information, reduced accounts department headcount and greatly reduced audit time resulting in unqualified financials for the first time in fifteen years.
2. African Sales Company — ERP turnaround – precision configuration throughout the implementation together with clever bespoke software add-ons associated with the ERP resulting in greatly improved management information and 12% revenue uplift almost overnight through securing the Dior account because they could do things in terms of brand management that their competitors could not do — all driven by precision configuration and clever bespoke software add-ons.
3.  Foodcorp — Group Consolidation General Ledger using the ERP Doctor “Cubic Business Model” approach — greatly improved management information in much less time consolidating financials for 12 group companies.

We look forward to assisting your organization to achieve a high-value ERP implementation.