ERP's not Everyone's Remedial Panacea
Several important issues:
1. ERP amplifies management practices. Good and bad. Managers that can properly use the flood of information that a properly-running ERP system sucks up, will be able to improve the way that the company functions with the help of the information. The ERP system reduces the guess-work and the hard slog to bring the information together. ERP is a tool.
1a. Sort out the business first. Make sure that managers understand what they are doing and have a clear idea of management objectives.
2. Changing a business to suit the software is usually a good way to destroy a business. And it reduces the possibility of being competitive through smarter business practices.
3. Failing to plan is planning to fail. An implementation plan must outline all goals, ascertain the necessary resources for implementation and schedule them according to reasonable availability. Reasonable availability doesn't mean 196 hours a week for project staff members in the final weeks. If project staff members are spending more than 36 hours a week on the project, then they are very likely losing perspective.
4. Plans must provide for contingencies and effective paths of communications so that show-stopping problems are addressed quickly. The risk assessment associated with various options at different project stages must allow for cancelling the project when unforeseen problems become too costly to solve.
5. Abandon the project if a deadline is set before the comprehensive plan has been made. Going ahead with the project will not fill requirements, blow out costs and miss the deadline.
These points are all bleeding obvious and as a consequence, ignored.