Professional Consulting Services
JLT’s professional consulting services focus on our clients’ most critical issues and opportunities: strategy, marketing, organization, operations, technology, transformation, digital, advanced analytics, corporate finance, mergers & acquisitions and sustainability across all industries and geographies. We bring deep, functional expertise, but are known for our holistic perspective: we capture value across boundaries and between the silos of any organization. We have proven a multiplier effect from optimizing the sum of the parts, not just the individual pieces.
Cloud Managed Services
Cloud managed services are IT service offerings that provide for the day-to-day management of, and operational responsibility for, cloud service environments. Cloud managed services generally include day-to-day monitoring and management of cloud service environments, including configuration management, performance management, cost optimization, security and compliance monitoring, capacity management, financial management, and governance. Cloud service brokerage is often delivered as a cloud managed service.
ERP Implementation
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system coordinates the daily business activities including finance, accounting, project management, supply chain, and manufacturing. ERP systems provide integrated access for human resources, financial and supply chain management to deliver benefits such as increased productivity and efficiency.
Implementing an ERP system is a complex undertaking and a carefully designed implementation plan is critical. Dividing implementations into phases with clear objectives makes for the most successful projects.
In contrast, ERP implementations without established project direction, scope and structure often encounter significant problems.
What Is an ERP Implementation?
ERP implementation describes the process of planning, configuring and deploying an ERP. The process is complex and typically takes a few months because an ERP system supports and automates many different functions.
To ensure a successful implementation, the organization needs to:
- Carefully define its requirements
- Determine how to redesign processes to take advantage of the system
- Configure the ERP system to support those processes
- Rigorously test it before deploying it to users
Careful planning and a structured, phased implementation approach is required to successfully complete ERP implementations on schedule.
ERP implementations should involve stakeholders from financial management, HR, sales, and manufacturing to prevent and mitigate challenges during implementations.
What Are the Phases of an ERP Implementation Plan?
A typical ERP implementation plan is divided into six phases. Every business is unique, so the phases may vary and overlap depending on the company.
1. Discovery & Planning
What is the first phase of ERP implementation? This includes researching and selecting a system, setting up a project team and defining detailed system requirements.
The project team will handle a broad range of roles related to the implementation, including laying out the project plan and target dates, ensuring adequate resources are allocated, making product and design decisions, and day-to-day project management.
The ERP project team typically includes an executive sponsor, a project manager and representatives from the departments that will use the system. Involving senior management is critical to ensure the project gets the resources it needs and to provide the backing needed to implement change across the organization. The team also may hire an external consultant or ERP implementation partner to provide expertise in designing and configuring the system. It should also include any internal specialists involved in implementing the system, such as a representative from IT and a report writer who will develop customized reports for users across the organization.
One of the team’s early goals will be to develop a detailed understanding of current issues, including process inefficiencies and requirements for the ERP system. If the organization has previously developed an ERP business case, it may have already defined broad business issues and goals for the implementation, which may include a faster financial close, improved insight into operations or preparing for an IPO. These can be used to direct more detailed analysis, including documentation of existing workflows, and to focus development of the system.
The team may select and acquire an ERP system during this phase, as the organization develops a clear idea of its requirements. One major decision is whether to use an ERP system that runs on-premises or in the cloud. For an on-premises system, you buy and install hardware and software in your organization’s data center. In contrast, cloud-based ERP is generally provided as a subscription service accessed via the internet, so it can be faster to implement and requires fewer in-house IT skills.
2. Design
The design phase works from detailed requirements and an understanding of current workflows to develop a detailed design for the new ERP system. This includes designing new, more efficient workflows and other business processes that take advantage of the system. It’s important to involve users in the design phase, since they have the most intimate understanding of current business processes. Involving them in the design also helps to ensure that they’ll welcome the new system and take full advantage of it.
Gap analysis can be used to identify process intricacies and unique quirks that may require customization of the ERP software or changes to workflow or processes to more closely align with the ERP system itself. The team can present the gaps to its implementation partner or supplier and ask them to identify potential solutions.
3. Development
Armed with clear design requirements, the development phase can begin. This involves configuring and, where necessary, customizing the software to support the redesigned processes. It may also include developing integration with any of the organization’s other existing business applications that won’t be replaced by the ERP system. If you’re using an on-premises ERP system, the organization will need to install the necessary hardware and software.
In parallel with software development, the team should develop training materials to help users adjust to the new system. It also needs to begin planning data migration, which can be complex since it often involves extracting, transforming and loading data from multiple systems, each of which may use different formats and may hold duplicate or inconsistent information. The project team should determine which data to migrate in this phase, avoiding the blanket migration of all historical data, lots of which is likely irrelevant. (See more on data migration below.)
4. Testing
Testing and development may occur concurrently. For example, the project team may test specific modules and features, develop fixes or adjustments based on the results, and retest. Or, it may test one ERP module while another is still in development. Initial testing of the basic functions of the software should be followed by rigorous testing of the full capabilities of the system, including allowing some employees to test the system for all their day-to-day activities. This phase should also encompass testing of the migrated data and include introductory end-user training.
Most vendors can supply pre- and post-deployment tools to begin user training. But in addition to vendor support, the organization should make good use of the training materials created in the development phase. There is real value in resources that specifically cater to your end-users’ day-to-day responsibilities.
5. Deployment
This is what you’ve been striving toward: the day the system goes live. Be prepared for potential issues, since there may be a lot of moving parts and possibly some befuddled employees, despite your best efforts to prepare them for the change. The project team should be readily available to answer questions, help users understand the system and attempt to fix any issues. Your implementation partner should be able to help with troubleshooting if necessary. It may take time for users to adapt to the system and achieve the anticipated productivity gains.
Some data can be migrated ahead of deployment, while other information—such as current transactions—should be migrated immediately before going live.
Some organizations aim to deploy all the modules of the ERP system concurrently, while others focus first on specific high-priority modules or processes and add others later in stages. To minimize risk, some organizations also continue to run older systems in parallel with the new ERP implementation for a time, although this can add to the overall project cost and reduce user productivity.
6. Support & Updates
Nurturing your ERP implementation after deployment helps to keep users happy and ensure the business achieves the desired benefits. The project team may still be responsible for the ERP system during this phase, but its focus will shift to listening for user feedback and adjusting the system accordingly. Some additional development and configuration may be needed as new features are added to the system. New staff will also need to be trained on the system.
If you have an on-premises ERP system, you’ll need to install periodic software updates and may even need to upgrade hardware over time. If you’re using a cloud-based ERP system, your vendor may update the software automatically.
Professional and IT Staff Augmentation Services
JLT has a strong staff augmentation division. It is a key instrument that allows businesses to accelerate their projects, fill the skill gap, and increase agility. Enterprises and tech companies have chosen us as their strategic IT outsourcing partner.
We have technical experts in more than 10 locations across Asia, Europe and the Americas. Having access to vast talent pools worldwide, a strong employer brand, and effective sourcing capabilities, N-iX attracts and retains top tech talent. As a trusted staff augmentation company, we offer advanced sourcing strategies, cost-efficiency, streamlined processes, comprehensive domain knowledge, and wide tech expertise to ensure you gain maximum value from our staff augmentation services.
- A strong internal sourcing team and collaboration with top recruitment agencies;
- Thorough talent selection process, including CV screening, interviews, hard and soft skill assessments, etc.;
- Proven track record in nearly all technologies and wide domain expertise;
- Smooth integration of new experts at any stage of the software development lifecycle;
- Ability to bridge any talent gap you have quickly and efficiently.
ERP Application Selection
Selection of your future ERP solution is an extremely expensive and complex endeavor. Having the right people to assist your company is extremely important to ensure you identify the right solution and system Integrator. Our team of ERP experts and selection specialists can assist with the planning, organizing, identification and selection of your future ERP application or System Integrator.
Our ERP Selection process involves the following steps:
- Define your specific needs.
- Research and shortlist ERP and System Integrator vendors.
- Request for proposals (RFPs).
- Evaluate ERP solutions and options.
- Attend vendor demonstrations.
- Make a decision.
- Negotiate the contract.
Our ERP selection process considers many areas like scalability, functionality, ease of use, integration requirements, vendor reputation, and implementation services. Our team will provide you with a comparison of Tier 1 and 2 ERP systems that support your industry specific applications. We understand the importance of flexibility, deployment options, requirements around reporting and usability. Additionally, our team will provide you with the total cost of ownership as well as developing an implementation approach.
Once you have selected an ERP system, our team of consultants can assist you with your implementation requirements.