It’s May already and I am just 6 weeks away from my epic run across England, the Wall Run. 69 miles, loosely following the route of Hadrian’s Wall. Preparation for this ultra-marathon has been all consuming; 5am runs before work, full weekends spent running 20 plus miles and cross training. Tempo runs, intervals and fartlek’s have become part of my everyday vocabulary, not to mention testing the kit and worrying about race day nutrition and hydration.
Recently I have been exposed to a big debate on an ERP LinkedIn forum around the use of descriptions in the industry such as customizing, personalizing, tailoring, and configuring. Is this just marketing semantics, or are there very real differences in the meaning of these phrases and the implications of using these phrases when describing, or more to the point, promoting an ERP system?
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While performing the recent seven day challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, there was time during the daily six – eight hours of walking to reflect on various subjects of life. On one of these days I was struck by the strong parallels between “Team SYSPRO” and “Team Kili” as we affectionately called it.
A few weeks ago my ageing TV packed up and it was a sad moment when I threw my trusty appliance of many years onto the tip. I am now the proud owner of a flat screen, HD, Internet connected, “you name it my TV has got it” TV and wondering why I didn’t upgrade it a long time ago.
I recently upgraded my cell phone (or mobile phone, for some people). I used to have a feature phone, but the opportunity arose for me to change to a new phone that runs the Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) operating system. Getting used to the physical phone, from one with real keys to one with a keyboard display, wasn’t the biggest adjustment – but getting used to the new way of doing things, actually doing everything, was an enormous challenge for me. In tech speak it’s called changing the UX (user experience). The last time I had such a challenge was moving from a DOS-based PC to one running the first version of Windows.
Recently I had several very ordinary (and seemingly unrelated) personal experiences that, in hindsight, had a common theme related to using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) business software system. Can you spot the theme?
When managing an ERP project, the traditional view is to schedule activities and tasks, to create work breakdown structures, to organize meetings, set agendas, complete reports and update budgets. The skill is in the planning and in the control – or is it?
Technology by its very nature is revolutionary. It grows, morphs and progresses our society whether we intend it to or not.
The recent SYSPRO ERP implementation at Mopani Copper Mine in Kitwe, Zambia has been a sterling example of this revolution – from the scale of the implementation and required user training, to the uniqueness of the environment and the additional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) requirements and resulting controls.