I am grateful for your article and the 13 points that you have identified. You do say that there is more than this, which is undeniably true. I would like to offer my thoughts on what some of that might be by picking up on one of your topics i.e.
‘Change management’……………

I have come to understand that the idea of change assumed here is associated with the introduction of new or changed technology or changes to applications; that, predominantly, the ‘change’ is about the employee in the role which is associated with particular processes being ERP enabled.
If that were all the change required then it might be achieved quite easily.
However, it seems to me that changing processes and how people do their work and work together in processes is not that simple. More importantly, it’s not primarily to do with IT apps.
What it is to do with can be illustrated by reference to two commonly occurring diagrams: One is the ‘organisation chart’, the other is the process flow (or work flow or business process) diagram.
These are two very different, but related, representations of something. I would like to suggest that the organisation chart can usefully be thought of as ‘a map of our working relationships’. The process flow diagram can be thought of as ‘a map of the work we do together’.
The process flow diagram represents the collaborative work output from a particular organisation (e.g. a whole organisation, a structured team, a special project team).
In the IT world and the world of process improvement, there is an in-depth understanding of process and process improvement. Unfortunately this in-depth knowledge may have been inappropriately extended to assumptions about the other diagram i.e. the organisation chart, and how it works.
The ‘working’ relationships charted by the organisation chart should have specific rules of engagement, one-to-another, one-to-many etc. There needs to be a clear understanding of role types (e.g. a manager is significantly different to a none manager) and to role relationships (e.g. advisory, coordinating, service giving, auditing, monitoring, prescribing). Each role and role relationship must be defined by the appropriate ‘accountabilities’ and the matching ‘authorities’ to be able to deliver on the accountabilities.
The working relationships are also affected by how well the organisation is designed e.g. how well its reporting levels reflect different levels of complexity, how well the functional divisions are informed by value chain requirements and specialization.
“Too much theory.” Your might say. Well, the point is that there is theory associated with organisation design (and its deployment through leadership). When we envisage ‘continuous process flow’, we are assuming (or hoping) that participants in the process will collaborate. This is not a given without a full understanding of how those relationships are designed, structured, mapped (i.e. to the processes) and enabled (i.e. by authorised managers).
This brings me back to the idea of ‘change’. What might be assumed as a modest training process to show employees how to use a new or improved application associated with a process or processes, won’t come anyway close to addressing the organisational changes which will immediately result from (i.e. as consequences of) the introduction of the new process enabling technology.
The real change to be addressed is that of re-calibrating the multiple dimensions of organisational relationships, and re-aligning participants (maybe even new participants) to processes – with full managerial authority.
This itself seems like a straightforward task but, alas this is not so. The degree to which the existing organisation is ‘effective’ will be a key determinant of the effort required for more complex ‘cultural change’. Although somewhat clichéd, ‘cultural change’ is a useful term to describe a challenge that may not respond simply to education and training.
Cultural change can be seen as required when employees in an organisation have reached a point of sharing fallacious ‘felt truths’ about ‘how things work around here’, or ‘why things fail’, or ‘what you need to do to get on’. Such circumstances (which are quite common) require a ‘reforming’ approach i.e. a change management approach which is a long way different to the ERP-related change management I think is generally assumed.
What kind of change do we face when installing ERP? Well, as I said above, it will depend (in part) on the current organisational effectiveness (read ‘readiness’). Unfortunately, the ERP intervention itself – because it sets out, expressly, to interfere with the workings of the organisation – will trigger significant ‘cultural’ responses.
You could surmise that an ERP intervention is a litmus test for the current effectiveness of the client organisation. Unfortunately, by the time this becomes obvious, the hardware and software are installed, the company is committed and the rest we know from countless ERP surveys.

Could it be that there is a whole school of thought - a whole piece of knowledge - missing? Could it be that no matter how hard we try as IT technologists and process specialists, that our theorizing about what makes people tick, what makes organizations tick etc might be wide of the mark? Consider these
quotes (from a longer passage):

“The absence of a language, concepts and a general theory of administration (i.e. organization)* is a serious impediment to the efficiency of industry…..

In the absence of a body of knowledge which can be taught, training has to rely on the
uncertain process of ‘learning by doing’. This is a ‘hit or miss’ approach, which is just as capable of leaving minds fogged by fantasy notions and unreal ideas as of instilling sound knowledge….

What is the present state of explicit conceptual knowledge about administration in general? There is no general theory, and a great paucity of concepts and hypotheses about managerial processes…..

The study of administrative methods is the study of people at work, their behaviour, their relationships, the way work is split up between different roles, and the often unrecognized social institutions which companies have established and are using….I would ask you to consider the following: Are you quite sure that your notions about your own practices are consistent with the reality of what really takes place in your own company….?”

Wilfred Brown 1960 ‘Exploration in Management’
* My clarification

Way back then (i.e. 1960) Brown (a long-time CEO writer, researcher and industry policy maker) was drawing our attention to the pressing need to understand the nature of human work and of people at work; of organizing, managing and leading; of task assignment, performance management; of structure and levels of work; of role definition and role relationships; of systems and processes.

More particularly, his work and that of his collaborators was concerned with understanding and defining the total system of organization - a system which is many-faceted, with interlinked constructs, principles and practices; it could be said, a non-linear, ’socio-technical’ system.

Trying to understand why and how employees may work with or ‘work around’ work process enabling IT applications (e.g. ERP) should be, first and foremost, informed by an understanding of the ‘institutional conditions’ of the workplace/organization that they find themselves in. The starting point must be to understand the organization; its design and how we deploy it.
This is the ‘people stuff’ that is often agonised about when we think about what might have gone wrong with a particular ERP project.

Some very good work has been done on understanding this system- and by fully functioning real-life companies. This goes to the heart of these questions about organising, managing and leading. Not much of it can be found in academia (academics are simply not managers). However, there is a deeply researched, tested and solid (and practical) body of work available. It was started by Lord Wilfred Brown and Dr Elliott Jaques (both now deceased).

Anybody who is interested in this (my sincere apologies to those who might have got this far without getting any value from my remarks), should start a web search on Wilfred Brown, Elliott Jaques, Glacier Metals and go from there. In particular there exists an extensive annotated research bibliography of the core research together with records of related research. This can be found at globalro.org and downloaded free.

My small company specializes in this work and ‘importantly’ has developed rapid organisational assessment tools which can easily be adapted to provide a reliable measure of ‘execution risk’ in relation to significant initiatives such as business systems projects.

Best wishes

Barry Deane
Peoplefit Australasia

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Great article :)

Clear basic info.

Regarding my tow experiences of implementing Oracle Business suite in tow different companies, there is tow very important points to add:

14 - You must have an add hoc organization based on Steering comity (including CEO, CFO, CIO and your ERP provider) that deal with the acceptance of the deliverables and the main mile stones.

15 - You must communicate to all of the company, not only at the end of the project, but also as many as you can and specially in the beginning to say “we choose it and we go for it”.

At least, this will take us out of the #13.

another important point:

16 - Identify the leaders of every process (not necessarily the boss of every substructure) but people that are competent and enthusiastic to the new ERP) and make them work for you (or for themselves), make them meet together, within your coaching, twice a week and congratulate them every main mile stone.

000. Develope a well defined requirement analysis of the customer needs while understanding his current needs, the flow of his processes, and the development of his future requirements and best business practicies. These needs should be documented in his RFP docs.

The contract items for ERP-RFP documentation, in Iran includes:

??? ???: ???) ?????? ????? ? ????? ???? ??????? ????? ? ??????? ????? ? ??? ?? ????? ?? ????? ??? ICT ? ????? ?????????? …. – IT Master Plan
?) ?????? ????? ? ????? ???? ??????? ????? ? ??????? ????? ?? ????? ?? ????? ERP ? ??? ????? ??? ???? ???? …..
??? ???: ????? ????? ????? ??????? ?? ?????? ????? ??? ??????????? Paperless ? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ??????? (ERP) ??? …..
??? ???: ?????? ? ????? ????? ???? ?? ????? ??? ERP ????? ?? ?? ???? ????? ??? ?ERP.
??? ?????: ???) ???????? ???????? ????? ? ?????? ????? ??? ????? ?? ??????? ?? ?? ???? ????? ??? ?ERP.
?) ????? ???? Data Flow Diagram ??? ????? ??? ERP
??? ????: ????? ?????? ??? ???? ?? ??? ????? ?? ? ????? ERP
??? ???: ???? ????? ???? ?? ????? ERP ? ????? ?? ???? ????? ?? ???? ????? …..
??? ????: ???? ????? RFP ????? ERP ? ???? ??? ??? ???? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ??????? ??? …. ?? ????? ????? ?? ?????????? ??? ???? ?? ??????
??? ????: ???) ????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ??????? ???? ???? ….. ????????? ? ???????? ???? ????
?) ????? ??? ??? ???? ??? ICT ???? ???? ….. ????????? ? ???????? ???? ????

curiously, most of the comments of this blog post are from meddle east and north Africa ;)
I’m from Tunisia and my personal EMail is m.khalfallah@yahoo.fr

[…] TEC Blog Excerpt: Have you ever wondered why every time you hear a story about an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation failure, the vendor gets the blame? The customers did everything they could to avoid it, but the vendors either provided inappropriate training and support, or simply a poor quality product. […]

One important point:

xx - We have to Identify the User leaders of each process becausse they know very well the process and it is very important and they should be a permanent team member and onther important point is to implment a training pilot room.

Initiatives beyond implementation program (formation of Centre of Excellence,building a project charter), aspects like SLAs and degree of it’s deployment by end users in a organization is critical. Ability to keep getting updated based on support feedback and re-alignment of the end user resources is critical to the effectiveness of the ERP utility and long run benefits. I agree with Barry the mgt of change is very critical considering the organizational changes it ensues…from a Organizational Design & culture perspective. the impact on delpoying change procedures using IT tools would appear to be a subset.