Project Governance: The Guardrails for Your ERP or HCM Implementation
ERP failures and pitfalls are not due to chance. Like a car that runs off the roadway, common challenges result from not having the proper guardrails in place. Organizations and teams often think that hiring a strong project manager or one of the big ERP systems integrators will be enough to prevent some of the […]
How to Estimate ERP and HCM Implementation Time
ERP and HCM implementations often take longer than expected. In fact, this happens more often than most in the industry would like to admit. The fact of the matter is that change is hard, and the difficulty of change involved in any ERP or HCM implementation takes time. Forget about cloud solutions, easy-to-use user interfaces, […]
Problems with Organizational Change Management
Traditional change management strategies for ERP and HCM implementations fail more than often than not. Ineffective change strategies too often focus on training, communications, and activities that don’t enable real change. Worse yet, many organizations don’t have an organizational change strategy at all or don’t see the value of this critical activity. This led to […]
Best ERP Executive Steering Committee Ever?
As ERP consultants that help some of the world’s leading organizations through their digital transformations, we have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly among client team members. Some are well prepared and wired for a successful implementation. Others are misaligned and ill-suited to handle a transformation of this magnitude. Most are somewhere in […]
What Causes ERP Implementation Delays?
As Pink Floyd once said: “every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time.” This classic rock lyric is true for ERP implementations as well. ERP implementation delays are one of the most common problems with digital transformations. Your software vendor or systems integrator assures you that you can do it in that […]
How to Get Executive Alignment on Your ERP or HCM Implementation
Executive misalignment is one of the biggest challenges with ERP and HCM implementations. Misalignment among executive is one issue. Misalignment between an executive team and its transformation team poses a second layer of difficulty during transformations. But what exactly does “alignment” mean? It’s a nebulous term at best. Actually solving the alignment conundrum can be […]
How to Define Your ERP and HCM Strategy for the 2020s
Now that a new decade is upon us, it can be a good time to reflect on your digital strategy and pivot to more effective approaches. It is a good time to ask: what are we doing well and what can we doing better in the coming years? This question can lead us to a […]
ERP vs. HCM Implementations: Which is the Better Bet?
I don’t know why I didn’t realize this sooner, but I may have discovered the real key to transformation success in the coming years: human capital management (HCM) software implementations. I have spent a good deal of my career analyzing why ERP implementations fail. But if my digital transformation and ERP predictions for 2020 are […]
Lessons from the 2020 ERP and HCM Report
The digital transformation landscape is changing at a breakneck speed. Technology is shifting to the cloud, new functional capabilities are being added at a record pace, and companies implementing these technologies are themselves going through unprecedented changes as well. Against this backdrop, we recently published our 2020 ERP and HCM Report. This annual report captures […]
Why Digital Disruption is Overrated
Industry analysts and academics often tout the concept of digital disruption as a good thing. But the reality is that while technology has the ability to positively transform your business, it is more likely to create operational disruption of the negative kind. Digital disruption vs. operational disruption For example, while many companies look to disruptive […]
What is ERP Software? Explaining to My Kids What We Do
Although we advise clients on it every day, ERP software isn’t a commonly known term outside of the IT and consulting industry. Understanding the basics of what ERP software is and how it works is something that we often take for granted as independent ERP consultants. With this in mind, I set out to teach […]
SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud: Clash of the Titans
When considering new enterprise technologies, many of our clients consider SAP S/4HANA vs. Oracle ERP Cloud in their ERP software evaluation process. In fact, our upper mid-market and larger enterprise clients choose between these two systems on an extremely frequent basis. In the most recent rankings of the top ERP systems, it’s not surprising that […]