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.
When I read a recent SYSPRO blog The Grace of Change, about a Seeker of Value, one customer immediately sprang to mind: Westlands Horticulture. A fast growing business, both organically and through acquisition, they always seem to be involved in one project or another with K3 SYSPRO. Finbarr McNamee, in his role as Group IT Manager is certainly the Seeker of Value within Westlands Horticulture. He engages with the business and gets to grip with the real business need, helping others find new, smarter and more effective ways of doing things. Finbarr drives the change through the organization in several ways.
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?
Part 2: Changing the system as business realities change
Hands up all those who have started implementing an ERP
system and not had to deal with changes as the project progresses. No one? I am not surprised. Has anyone gone live with an ERP project and never had any changes afterwards? The reality of any ERP project is that scope changes occur during the project, and after going live it is guaranteed that there will be more requirement changes.
Part 1: Building a house on a solid foundation
You can hardly miss it these days: questions about why Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects hit problems, or worse, fail, appear on so many websites. I have seen many ERP implementations and thought I had some answers, but it was only after I had been involved in building a house that I could see the similarities between building projects and ERP implementations, and why we don’t see buildings collapsing in the same ways some ERP projects fail.
A long time ago when a man was a man, a woman was a
woman and a horse was, well, a horse there came along a real hero. His name was Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne in the original version of the classic western movie True Grit. Rooster is a tough marshal who decides to help a woman get even for her father’s death. Basically her problem becomes his problem. Ok, I may have simplified the plot somewhat, but I’m not a movie critic and I wouldn’t want to spoil an evening’s viewing entertainment by giving away all the fun.