4 Tips To Prepare For Your Move To Cloud ERP

Your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is the most mission-critical of all business systems in your organization. If your ERP goes down, your business cannot function properly. With out access to it, your employees cannot properly perform their duties. So, why haven’t more businesses moved their on-premise ERPs to the cloud? Aside from obvious costs and time for implementation, many decision makers have yet to find the urgency to switch over to the Cloud – even though the risks of staying on prem should be a big enough reason alone. Those who are considering the move still have some concerns, which could easily be addressed. Eric van Rossum from SAP shares an article on Forbes to help ensure that you move to a cloud ERP successfully and for all the right reasons, so you can achieve your desired business outcomes.

1. Understand WHAT you’re doing. “The term cloud ERP means different things to different people. There needs to be a clear understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, in business terms. Write down your business objectives and make sure everyone sees them. It sounds simple, but most companies don’t do this.”
2. Understand WHY you’re doing it now. “What’s going on within the business that means now is the right time to start a cloud ERP transformation? This may be a new strategy with ambitious growth plans; the launch of a new product line that requires new processes; the desire to enter new geographies or markets, etc. There may be (and probably will be) external drivers too, such as changing customer demands around sustainability, issues with fragile supply chains, and changing government regulations.”
3. Prepare for the mindset shift. “Moving from (an often highly customized) on-premises ERP system to cloud ERP and its standardized processes is as much about changing the way you work as IT transformation. But how do you guide your organization through such a radical shift? It starts with looking at your business and accepting that there are a bunch of things you do that are non-differentiating. Don’t spend valuable time maintaining a business process that works just fine following the industry standard. Let cloud ERP do what it does best and handle your most essential and non-differentiating business processes, so you can focus on what does differentiate your business and excite your customers.”
4. Get a handle on your current business processes. “Before you can say with certainty which of your business processes are differentiating or non-differentiating, and before you can credibly assess the feasibility of moving to a standard set of processes, you need to have a clear picture of what your current business processes actually look like. Business process transformation tools help you create detailed roadmaps of your business processes so you can see how data and decisions move across your organization.”

Rossum concludes that without a clear view into where your business processes are today and where they need to go, you won’t be able to make a compelling case for moving to cloud ERP.

 

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