After a brief hiatus from The 6 Stages of ERP Implementation, we are back to discuss the next stage.
Stage #5: Going Live
You have worked hard on making this implementation a success – researching and selecting just the right ERP vendor, designing, analyzing, and developing the modules that you’re going to use, training your employees, etc.
Here is where the rubber meets the road. Going Live is shutting down the old system and completely embracing your new ERP software.
Before you do, however, make sure that you:
Had a Mock Go-Live
We’ve talked about this more than once, but now that we’re here at the official go-live, this is the first step: making sure you’ve practiced the go-live. Did you simulate the go-live environment as closely as possible? If yes, then read on – and good luck! If not, go back and complete that very important step.
Determine If Your Users are Proficient
All throughout this whole long ERP implementation process, you’ve been training your users. You’ve created training plans, assessed training plans, revamped training plans, and trained. And trained. And trained. Now is the time to determine whether or not all your employees have been absorbing that training.
Team members should be subject matter experts in their departments and other users should have been trained for their particular roles. For example, the controller should have been trained in accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger.
All users must have had enough time working with the system to comfortably do their jobs.
Set Up Your System
So far, you’ve been working with your ERP on a smaller scale. Before you officially go live, however, you must make sure that all the necessities are set up – servers, the physical computers on which people will be working, network connections, passwords, etc. – at all locations.
Finalize the Configuration
Back during the planning and designing phase, you answered questions about the procedures you had and the procedures you wanted.
From the answers, you determined what issues you had that needed fixing and what kind of configuration you wanted your ERP system to have.
Now, look back over the issues you named and the configurations you planned on. Are there unresolved issues? How critical is it that those issues be resolved before the go-live? If you can’t work without fixing those issues, can you fix them before the go-live?
Just Do It!
When someone said not to test the water with both feet, they weren’t talking about successful ERP implementations. If you don’t stop the old system and start the new system – running them both together is known as running parallel – employees will be doing their jobs twice during the transition period. Each job must be done in both systems and then the differences must be reconciled. Not only is this exhausting for your employees, as it doubles their workload, it also leaves a lot of room for errors.
Don’t forget: the “Go Live” is NOT the end of the process
Even after the system launches and becomes official – even if it works flawlessly, as a matter of fact – you and your employees will need continued training and support to keep the ERP software running successfully. Make sure you check with the potential ERP vendors to see what their policy is on consulting after the go live date.
