Let’s talk about ERP implementation; it sounds difficult! Isn’t it? Well, it isn’t when you choose IFW ERP, the best ERP solution for schools, colleges, and universities. We have all the right knowledge, skills, and experience to do an excellent ERP job for you! Here are 10 tips for a quick and easy ERP implementation.
- Know why you are implementing the ERP:
Every organization has different reasons and needs for an ERP. In a school, college, or university, you might need the ERP to have better control over your academic process, or you might need an ERP to make your financial management more effective. Like this, there will be different objectives you might need to achieve with an ERP. It’s good to list these objectives and discuss them with your vendor and team before you start the ERP implementation process.
- Make a Perfect Team:
Choose the most prompt, motivated, result-oriented, fast, computer/email savvy members of your staff and divide them and make them in-charges of each module or few modules as per their knowledge and domain. You can broadly divide them into the 3 segments of your campus Academic, Administrative, and Financial. It should be known to all who are in-charges, and all other staff members should give them full support for the implementation process.
- Give Proper Responsibilities and set Milestones:
The team or in charge will only be able to execute if they are given responsibilities and clear milestones and timelines to complete the tasks. You will have to set deadlines with your team so that work happens at full speed. A delayed and slow implementation makes everyone in the organization lazy about the implementation, which hampers the overall implementation process.
- Data is the Key:
Data Entry of your non-digitized data from papers, old records, or documents will take time and additional resources and human resources. Plan for it before implementation. Data Migrations in the ERP from your old software(s) or your digital data sheets etc., will help you in quick implementation. Discuss its possibilities with your vendor before the implementation. Keep a team for verification of all data that is getting entered or updated in your new ERP to avoid any data discrepancy or loss of work and working hours of your team. This verification process should be a regular activity so that any wrong entries are controlled before too much is done in the system. This will assure you of the accuracy of your data in your new ERP.
- Give your requirements First:
When you take the demo of an ERP from any vendor, your GAP analysis and planning of customization requirements, etc., get started with the vendor before beginning the implementation. It’s always better to have a detailed GAP analysis before the implementation with the vendor and see if the vendor is ready and able to accommodate your needs and expectations in his product. If this is done before implementation, then in 90% of cases, the ERP implementation will succeed.
- 3rd Party Integrations:
Discuss before the ERP Implementation all 3rd Party integrations needed by you with your new ERP in your School, College, and University with Barcode Scanners, Biometric Machines, RFID Machines, Time and Attendance Machines, Bar Coded I-Cards, Library Cards, Smart Cards, Rapid Access Terminals, LED Screens, SMS Gateway, Email Broadcaster, Payment Gateway, etc. These things sometimes become a bone of contention between the ERP Vendor, the 3rd Party, and the Institute later during the implementation process. With IFW ERP, we have a clear policy of 100% Free onboarding for the 3rd Party Integrations available in the product for the comfort and ease of our clients, but you from your side should make the 3rd Party Vendors talk to your ERP Vendors first to avoid confusion later. We design the best ERP solutions in India as per your needs.
- Keep Systematic Checks and Balances:
During the Implementation process and after the implementation, you have to ensure that someone from the top management is checking the core reports of all modules regularly. It’s a human tendency that if no one is reviewing or evaluating the working on ERP, the motivation to work on the ERP with a systematic approach will die down slowly. Soon you may have a case in modules that were working or in a Live state earlier that will get down to closure slowly. So, it’s better that you set up responsibilities, checks, and balances for it in the best suitable way to avoid this from happening.
- Conduct Review Meetings with your Team:
Just like you regularly conduct review meetings with all your teams on campus on different topics, you must do the same for ERP during and after the ERP Implementation. This will help you to take action on any delay and negligence by anyone. Also, you will be able to analyze the difficulties of any department in the implementation process. The faster you take action on these things. The faster will be your ERP Implementation.
- Honour and Reward the best performers:
With so many modules in an ERP and so many departments on your campus, it’s only possible for some of them to have the same speed and smartness to get their respective modules LIVE. Some will be fast, and some will be slow. It’s always good that you honor and reward the best performers who can make their modules LIVE first. This will motivate others to speed up the rest of the modules.
- Be Nasty if needed:
We had a client where the top management stopped approval of leaves by the staff manually as per the old system. They released a notice that all leaves will be approved on ERP only. Now, this pressed a panic button in all staff members, and everyone involved in Employee Attendance, Payroll, etc., had to speed up things and get all data and policies sorted in the ERP for the staff to allow them to apply for leaves. Also, all leave approvers and sanctions had to promptly attend to all such leave requests and take quick action. We are not saying that you should be nasty, but something that helps in Quick IFW ERP Implementation.
Thanks for reading this. Your suggestions and comments are eagerly awaited below. For a demo, connect with us today.