Solar power systems designer and manufacturer Amonix recently completed an 18 module ERP implementation and training in 10 weeks. Yes, you read that correctly: weeks not months. Panorama Consulting recently reported the average implementation has actually increased in duration over the past 2 years, from 14.3 months to 17.8 months. 5 key factors enabled Amonix to implement a whole solution in less time than it takes most companies to close their quarter.
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No customizations. “We had a million requests internally to take on different configurations,” CFO Pat McCullough said. “We said ‘no’ to all of them. We said, ‘No, you’re going to live with out-of-the-box for six months.'” Customization can be time-consuming and complicated to sync between modules when they aren’t already integrated. To avoid this problem, choose a system that is flexible and scalable right out of the box.
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Solid deadline. With the company’s IPO just a few months away, McCullough was very worried that the company’s buggy legacy system would not be able to keep up with the company’s rapid growth. The deadline to implement the new ERP solution was non-negotiable and had to be met. Having a strong business case along with a hard deadline helped benchmark success. It is difficult to track completion of ERP implementations that don’t have a clear goal.
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100% buy-in from leadership. The CFO (now CEO) of Amonix describes the implementation process as “heavy-handed” leadership. The otherwise laid-back company achieved this amazing feat because upper management kept the project moving at a deliberate and precise rate to reach their looming deadline. Order was enforced from the top down.
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Direct support from the ERP manufacturer. The implementation was a direct, collaborative effort between Amonix and their ERP manufacturer. No dealers or third parties involved. Software manufacturers will usually have a deeper knowledge of their software; hence, are able to implement more efficiently than a third party. This minimizes approval time and efforts wasted in trial and error.
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Dedicated training teams. 12 employees became full-time educators to form a dedicated training team. Their sole purpose was to make sure end users on all teams and departments understood how the solution worked for them. This ensured consistency in both usage of software and information entered. The team’s depth of experience in the system made them resident experts, decreasing Amonix’s reliance on the ERP manufacturer for support in the future.
Carillon ERP is a top 10, fully integrated, feature-rich software that makes implementations like this one possible for any company. Our team of US based customer support is here to help organizations implement cost effective solutions as quickly as they want. We have been improving our software in-house for more than 20 years now, and its real-time updates are still faster than most other software on the market. Over the past two decades, we have developed hundreds of scalable features that can be turned on and off at your convenience, making our software simple to use but highly functional right out of the box. For more information on our basic modules or the hundreds of individual solutions possible, please contact us.
Sources:
http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/news/2240179867/Spend-smart-on-Oracle-ERP-implementations
http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/feature/No-ERP-customization-for-you-says-solar-company-to-users-in-upgrade