Whether you love them or hate them, ERP upgrades are a fact of life.
Nowadays, they are often the vehicle for a digital transformation that enables new lines of business, vastly improves the user experience and boosts efficiency. But when executed poorly, an ERP upgrade can threaten business continuity by disrupting your core business operations.
For these reasons and more, the ERP upgrade process calls for informed decision-making and a well-thought-out project plan.
Why you should upgrade your ERP system
There are a number of other reasons for upgrading to the latest release of your ERP system, including the following:
Access to a more modern ERP system. Technology is outdated soon after it is released.
No employee retraining. You won’t have to retrain end users as you would if you moved, say, to an Oracle shop from an SAP shop.
Vendor support. You don’t want to get too far behind on upgrades, because at some point the software vendor stops supporting older releases.
Upgrade vs. replace
If you’re not satisfied with the return on investment that the current ERP system is delivering to the business or its cost of ownership, you may want to consider starting over from scratch, particularly when the upgrades to the latest version involve moving from on premises to the cloud.
8 tips for ERP upgrade success
Regardless of the reasons, upgrading a mission-critical system like ERP is a major undertaking that requires significant preparation and know-how. These experts offered the following eight tips for meeting your goals.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain Expert, Lisa Anderson advises that you have to educate your users, which is different from training them.