The importance of an Enterprise Business Application Strategy

The Problem and Opportunity

At most companies, management would admit that business application usage and enterprise business process continuity could be improved—often significantly. Toward such improvements, smaller business system projects are often rather straightforward and not too costly or risky. But how to best improve major systems like ERP is not usually so clear. To proceed with proper confidence on ERP improvements the following questions should be answered.

• Can existing ERP software be improved or upgraded to meet current and projected needs? And for how long?
• Are there enough deficiencies in current ERP functionality, technology, or vendor status to justify searching for new ERP software?
• What is the proper role for other existing or potential new business applications?
• Who should be responsible for business applications, and related department coordination and change management?

Without clear answers to these questions companies tend to delay improving ERP and other major business application. The answers to these questions and many related details will be called an Enterprise Business Application Strategy plan. Having such a plan is especially important as companies enter the green zone in the chart below.

Developing this Important Plan

The Enterprise Business Application Strategy plan is designed to improve confidence in whether a company should improve existing ERP or implement new ERP, and when—for the greatest benefit to the company. The plan also contemplates satellite business applications that may integrate with ERP; hence the name Enterprise Business Application Strategy planning. The details of this planning, as summarized in the diagram below and described in this document, would be tuned depending on company specific factors.

The Enterprise Business Application Strategy Planning Process

1. Project Set-up Planning and Prepare Company Team:  This includes relevant education for company team members on current-market ERP, Cloud ERP risks and benefits, techniques to comprehensively control ERP software project costs and risks, and more.
2. Enterprise Discovery Collection:  Includes the following for affected business process areas and business units:
   • Big Picture: Discovery about the company from a big-picture or strategic level. Discussions take place in both groups and/or individual executive/stakeholder interviews as appropriate.
   • Affected business process areas and business units: The business process area or business unit interview techniques are built to detect weaknesses and potential business processes opportunities related to ERP and satellite business systems.
   • Current business applications status: This discovery seeks details about strengths and weaknesses of ERP options, satellite business applications, and overall IT infrastructure that supports business applications.
3. Enterprise Discovery Build-out and Stabilization: Further develop and organize all company findings for potential use in the development of the Enterprise Business Application Strategy plan. The results should be placed into a unified Enterprise Discovery structure to make the background information easily usable in future business application projects.
4. Strategic Goals:  Confirm, develop, and unify business strategic goals for use in influencing the Enterprise Business Application Strategy plan.
5. Enterprise Business Application Strategy:  Develop Enterprise Business Application Strategy plan components and initial Enterprise Business Application Strategy Report. The typical components are:
   • Enterprise Business Application Strategy diagram - initial opinion on the legitimate domain of ERP and other key business applications.
   • Current status of business applications at company - a baseline status established before studying improvement options.
   • Benefits for improving existing ERP or new ERP estimated - a comparison of the major improvement options.
   • Test current market ERP - if replacement is a viable option, a few candidates are tested with targeted questions.
   • Cost for improving existing ERP or new ERP estimated - relative hard and soft costs of the two major ERP improvement paths.
   • ERP project risks and control methods - General analysis in the context of a client company.
   • Cost, risk, and benefits analysis - a role up of prior sections to look at the full picture for major ERP improvement options.
   • ERP improvement timing - factors that may influence the timing of the major ERP improvement options.
   • Executing the Enterprise Business Application Strategy - Key success factors
6. Enterprise Business Application Strategy Plan Validation Workshop:  This workshop is intended to 1) confirm that the Enterprise Business Application Strategy is meeting expectations, and 2) tune how it should be communicated to the larger company team that needs to approve the plan and be involved in executing it going forward.
   This workshop is intended to include the key company project members, other selected company team members, and one or more external experts presumed to have led the planning up to this point.
7. Final Enterprise Business Application Strategy Report developed and debriefed:  The report includes the components listed above in Step #5, with the bulk of the findings in various addendums, referenced documents, or other sources. The final report is debriefed to the company team members.

Please call us if you would like to discuss your ERP improvement ideas/concerns and how our expertise may help.