10 Questions CEOs need to ask before finalizing their ERP application

Question 2: Does the ERP offer global best practices that may help you not only overcome these challenges in achieving your goals but also improve your overall business operation transparency, streamlining of processes, increase productivity and reduce cost?

Tip: Your company may be running in a particular way till today. It may or may not have been the most organized way – but it may have sufficed the needs till date. However, as you plan to grow, the current way of working may result into inefficiencies, higher cost or customer dissatisfaction or may crumble totally. It’s important that your company follows world class best practices as it embarks on a journey of rapid growth. Not only does it help your company improve its efficiencies but also helps create a positive brand image in the market.

Question 3: Does the ERP vendor have a global proven track record and are they committed to continuous investment and improvements in their ERP product? Does it publish a product road map for next few years?

Tip: A positive answer to this question would be re-assuring since it reflects the product vendor’s past performance and its commitment towards it customers – both existing and new ones.

Question 4: Does the ERP application run on latest technology?

Tip: Changes in technology are happening at a rapid pace today more than ever. Not only is it important that your ERP runs on a contemporary technology, but its equally important that the ERP vendor has the capability and willing ness to keep upgrading its product with changing technology to ensure you keep getting business benefits of the same.

Question 5: Can the ERP product be used in “Cloud” model and “On premise” model both?

Tip: Both capabilities are essential since changing business environment may force the company to move from one model to another in future.

Question 6: Is the solution scalable? In other words, will it support your company operations even if you grow multi folds in next few years?

Tip: A positive response to this question indicates that your investment in the solution will be for long term, thus giving you much higher returns spread over years to come.

Question 7: Is the ERP flexible so that it can be easily configured/customised if needed?

Tip: Flexibility is essential since the dynamics of business may change rapidly. If making small changes is a time consuming and expensive process then the ERP application would be quite difficult to maintain and in fact may render itself useless eventually.

Question 8: Is the ERP application easy to use and quick to implement?

Tip: It’s the end users that ultimately decide the fate of the new ERP product. If they find it complicated to use, they may either reject it outright or may take inordinately long to accept the solution, with reluctance, thus ridding the company of any business advantages anticipated post the investment in ERP.

Question 9: Can the ERP product be integrated with other applications easily?

Tip: In todays’ world, its important that your ERP system has the capability to operate in a collaborative solution footprint. In fact, it should become the back-bone system for peripheral systems meant for niche processes which otherwise run independently but remain tightly integrated with the ERP solution.

Question 10: Does the ERP product have a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)?

Tip: TCO includes cost of ERP software, cost towards implementation, cost towards maintaining the solution & its environment over years.

We hope that you find these questions relevant and useful in your decision-making process. We wish you the very best! Feel free to contact us if you need any other help.