ERP´s... Just like doctors prescriptions...

Companies need to be structured, they need order, they need information and most of all they need to improve performance while dealing with resources. As you can see from the definition of Wikipedia, the ERP helps a company to manage its internal and external resources.

I am going to give an example of an ERP implementation I was involved with, while working in the procurement department of a mayor bank in Mexico. I worked at the procurement department for little over a year, and I was fairly new to the function, compared to all employees in that department, and mostly the people that worked for me with an average of 15 years in their positions (I don´t know, maybe that is why I was assigned temporarily to that department to bring fresh blood to the function).

My through the implementation was pretty much in the ninth circle of Dante´s Inferno… Really… At first I could not understand why People where so reluctant to adapting the new system, I like to make the analogy of a doctor’s prescription, where you know that it is for your best interest to follow the exact instructions, and if you follow the prescription and take your medicines you will get cured, but many times people just don’t follow them, they immediately start questioning the doctor´s recommendations (because deep down, many people have a frustrated doctor within… like my wife who loves to give prescriptions from her empirical knowledge rather than studying for more than 8 years of medical school, but who´s counting right... ) for example, the doctor says “take the medicine for two weeks” and immediately people think “ It´s too much, I´ve taken the pills for a week and I already feel fine, so I don´t think I need to take the extra 5 days, you know how doctors love to exaggerate”.

Well, change management for an implementation of an ERP is much the same… I´ve heard comments of people saying “This system is not going to teach me how to do my job”, or “This F*&%$&%+* system knows about procurement as much as my two years old”.

They had the system, they had consultant and product people coming to explain them the advantages and the functionality, and they would just not care.....

Not until we understood and gave them a deadline, where we told them that either they filed all their stuff through the ERP system by XX date or they would have to find a job elsewhere... I know this is not the best way to go, and please don´t tell my OB teacher, but after six months of waiting for them to understand with absolutely no result and even some attempts of sabotage (yeah you heard right, sabotage!!!!), we gave the ultimatum and in less than two months they were working with the tool.

At first they were very reluctant and they would commit their heart and souls to find even the tiniest of mistakes just to prove that the system didn´t work, but with firm hand and by resolving most of the “suggestions” they made, now they use it as a given, in fact after a few years I was commenting about this with some of them and they can´t imagine their lives without the tool, and the new guys just have it from start so they don´t have an option. I believe that there is a natural reluctance to change, specially when they see an automated system that is going to be implemented. I don´t know,but of them immediately feel that they will lose their jobs… And for the most cases of those who where suffering, they where right… But I can say that those who survived where the ones who got smart, embraced the tool, became savvy users, and then they where not required because of their functions, but they where appreciated because of the expertise of the tool, and that is what saved them….

No tool is perfect, and most implementations in big companies are hell, specially because things used to be a mess and you need to fix a lot of stuff (if you implement a tool on a mess you will only have an automated mess je je je), but at the end look at it as using MS Excell... Can you imagine your life without excell???

You can´t stop evolution…. Evolve or die…. ;)

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