Successfully set up an ERP

Setting up software is part of change control. The challenge is the adhesion by users.

As for any computer based project (example: setting up an ERP), the participation and proactivity of users remain success factors. Behaviours facilitated by the implementation of a change control approach.

Confidence is the conducting wire in the successful completion of a project.

1. Defining the view: Fix the change goal and the rough outlines of means to implement.
2. Mobilize: Create a change dynamic with employees, validate challenges defined in the view and define the main associated improvement focuses.
3. Catalyze: Define the project structure and the associated operating mode capable of supporting, facilitating and accelerating this change.
4. Control: Define and control all actions making it possible to guide the change process, to ensure best performance of installation.
5. Concretize: Implement the change, i.e. materialize the view in the daily operational reality, in other words, change structures, ways of doing things, attitudes, culture... and generate the expected qualities and financial results.
6. Participate: Ensure the participation of all employees involved, both to enhance the view and facilitate its implementation.
7. Manage emotional aspects: Eliminate resistance and blockage caused by change to enable its achievement.
8. Manage power stakes: Reorient power relations to ensure their cohesion with the views and make them efficiently participate in the change process.
9. Train and coach: Provide both technical and relational training to help employees to contribute under the best possible conditions to the change process and be able to live with the view on a daily basis.
10. Communicate intensively: Create organized widespread communication, encouraging the participation and involvement of everyone, and therefore change.

Source: L'entreprise en mouvement, Benoit Grouard - Francis Meston, Dunod, 4th edition, 2005

The customer's responsibility is the obligation to act and participate. A software is not a plug-in like a photocopier. The customer must incorporate his data in order to control and finally optimize its operation.