Yesterday, Panorama Consulting Group has published their new ERP report, and it was a really interesting read. It shows some interesting effects of economic recession on ERP industry, but it proves once again that ERP projects are risky, prone to budgeting and scheduling issues, and still chances to get reasonable benefits are roughly 50:50.
Panorama Consulting Group, the authors of the ERP report, have just made available two interesting tools: ERP Quick Diagnostic, and ERP Readiness Assessment.
According to their website, if you are “in the early stages of selecting a new ERP software or if you’ve already completed your project, our ERP Quick Diagnostic will help you benchmark with other ERP projects across the globe”.
On the other hand, if you are thinking about starting an ERP project, you can take advantage of the ERP Readiness Assessment which can “determine how ready you really are for ERP”.
All in all, two simple online tools which can help you understand how well your ERP project is going or completed, or what can you expect if you decide to venture into one. Click here to check this out.
I’ve just got the news about Part III of Panorama’s ERP Report in my inbox. If you missed my analysis of the report, please read it first: part three builds on findings of the first two. I know that I am biased when writing about this, but how can I not be? Microsoft Dynamics is the best choice ERP and the report (as a whole) clearly shows why exactly.
Agile has been gaining momentum among software development methodologies for past decade or so. Various researches and surveys consistently show that software developed under an agile approach is generally better than the software developed under waterfall approaches.
At the core of any agile approach is an assumption that whatever the requirements might be at the beginning of a project, they won’t be the same at the end of the project. The longer the project, the more truth there is in this assumption. To mitigate this situation, agile methodologies start with smaller sets of requirements, they start small and deliver functionality incrementally in a series of releases. No single release covers all requirements, but every release delivers more than the previous one.
With ERP implementations, we generally don’t subscribe to this idea. And at that, we might be wrong.
For a long time, the ruler of project reports was Standish Group’s (in)famous Chaos report, which analyzed IT project success/failure factors. While many of the Chaos report’s findings applied to ERP implementation, the report as a whole was primarily about software development projects. And as we all know, implementing ERP is not the same thing as software development. Hopefully.
Panorama Consulting Group, an independent ERP consulting firm from Denver, Colorado, has conducted a market research in 2008, that explains ERP implementation project success factors and reveals some interesting metrics about real ERP costs, duration and benefits. Finally, we have a decent ERP project report, which reveals some important facts about Microsoft Dynamics.