Long before the application consultants for your new ERP System walk through the door, you should have your in-house project team ready and on the same page. Your team should consist of an executive sponsor and an employee from each department that will be affected by the new system. The sponsor should be an executive or senior manager of the company with authority over all business processes that will use the new system, ideally the CEO or CFO. He or she should be in a position to make things happen when action is needed or decisions have to be made. The team members from each department should have a good knowledge of the business processes they are working with and be able to communicate well with the rest of the team. Their input will help to determine the initial requirements the company wants fulfilled by the new software and can be used to determine which ERP package will be a good fit.
Your company should at least have a good idea of what the basic needs and processes are and what the final goal of the new system is before the outside consultants are invited to the party and the installation begins. I have seen cases where the in-house team was either not adequate or not in agreement on important issues, resulting in a system that did not meet the needs of the company and had to be changed several times during the ERP installation. This led to a substantial increase in cost and delays that could have been avoided otherwise.
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