As an important part of information application system, ERP has been applied in China for more than 20 years, but the success rate has not been high. For many years, Chinese academic and business circles have been analyzing and discussing the reasons for its failure, seeking solutions to the problems, and put forward many solutions and schemes from management consulting and business process reengineering (BPR), but for various reasons, the effect is not ideal.
ERP engineering is different from architectural engineering, and has obvious personalized characteristics. In order to give full play to the role of ERP project supervision and solve the problem of low success rate of ERP, we must first fully understand the difference between ERP project and construction project, and establish the corresponding supervision mechanism and implementation mode according to the characteristics of ERP project. Only in this way can we really play the positive role of ERP project supervision and ensure the smooth realization of ERP project. This paper attempts to analyze the characteristics of ERP project and discuss the related problems of ERP project supervision.
Characteristics of ERP project supervision
Characteristics of ERP project
1) the invisibility of objects
The objects of construction projects are generally tangible material forms, such as buildings, factories, equipment, production lines or office equipment. After a period of installation and debugging, civil engineering or equipment can form the use or production capacity and bring into play the benefits.
The particularity of ERP project is that it is a management application system. Although it relies on physical hardware platforms such as computers and networks, its implementation targets are mainly non-physical forms such as people and business processes. It is necessary to reconstruct the business model and management model of enterprises and introduce advanced management ideas and management models into people's behavior norms and business processes imperceptibly.
2) the complexity of the project
Building construction is mainly the process of design, implementation, acceptance and other operations, and its scope, personnel and process are relatively solidified and relatively single; Although ERP projects also have workflow such as design, implementation and acceptance, the implementation process is extremely complicated, mainly as follows:
-Complexity of scope. It not only involves all aspects of production, supply, sales, personnel and finance management of various departments, subsidiaries and branches within the enterprise, but also needs to bring external resources such as suppliers, customers, distributors and transporters into the supply chain management system of the enterprise.
-Complexity of personnel. Enterprises involve computer personnel, managers, workshop operators and senior leaders. Management consultants and implementation consultants involved in software vendors, software and hardware engineers, management consulting institutions or technical support units outside the enterprise. In this complex personnel structure, it is necessary for the relevant personnel inside and outside the enterprise to coordinate and actively cooperate with each other to form an effective implementation team chain.
-Complexity of the process. The construction process of ERP project mainly includes four stages: preliminary work, implementation preparation, project implementation and system improvement. Each implementation stage includes a series of implementation steps. The whole implementation process has strict implementation specifications and key technologies.
-Complexity of technology. ERP project is a complex information system, involving many disciplines, technologies and fields. Organizing the implementation of ERP system requires the comprehensive application of computer software and hardware, system engineering, management theory, project management, industrial process control and other technologies and knowledge, and the implementers need to have good comprehensive technical quality and project implementation experience.
3) The project risk is high.
As far as ERP software itself is concerned, it only provides a general management mode, but it has great risks in the face of different application industries, different production methods and different personalized management methods. As far as the implementation of ERP projects is concerned, there are different degrees of risks in the whole implementation process. Such as: unreasonable project planning and design, inappropriate software selection, lack of consulting or implementation strength and industry experience; The implementation process is not strictly controlled, and the stage results are not up to standard; The lack of effective control links in process design will lead to the interruption or failure of project implementation.
4) The implementation time span is long.
A complete ERP project will take at least two to three years. After the system goes online, it does not mean that the project has been fully implemented successfully, because the new system has changed the previous management mode and operation mode, so it still needs a long process of running-in, adjustment and improvement.
5) It is difficult to quantify goals and achievements.
The main reasons are as follows: ① Before the implementation of the project, the project owners generally lacked a set of feasible and quantitative application target system, and during the implementation, the demand will change with the continuous improvement of understanding, resulting in a large deviation between the actual demand and the contract requirements; ② The improvement of enterprise's economic benefit depends on many factors, which influence and restrict each other, so it is difficult to directly and quantitatively evaluate the effect of ERP project.
Characteristics of ERP project supervision
The characteristics of ERP project supervision are determined by the characteristics of ERP projects, and its main features are as follows:
1) the whole process characteristics of supervision
According to the implementation characteristics of ERP project, the scope of ERP project supervision should cover the whole process of project design, project implementation and system improvement. It is necessary to supervise and manage the quality, progress and cost of each implementation stage and step, control deviation, coordinate disputes, and ensure that the project and resource investment can reach the expected implementation goal and implementation plan of the constructor.
2) the duality of supervision
Because ERP project is an application system for the builder to change its own management, it makes the builder have the dual identity of both the owner and the core subject of the project, and a large part of the workload of the project must be completed by the builder himself. In order to ensure that the project is under control, ERP project supervision should not only monitor the contractor, but also monitor the contractor's related implementation behavior. Supervision has a dual nature.
3) Preventive nature of supervision
ERP project is a high-risk system engineering. Therefore, ERP project supervision should be able to find the potential risk problems that have occurred in time or give early warning. For the risk problems that have occurred, we should be able to analyze the reasons, distinguish responsibilities, handle disputes and correct deviations; For potential risk problems, preventive measures should be formulated in advance to reduce project risks.
4) the consultative characteristics of supervision
Foreign enterprises attach great importance to the role of management consulting when implementing ERP projects. Third-party management consulting organizations provide consulting services for project design and implementation, which are generally separate. However, many builders in China don't know enough about the role of management consulting, and the design and implementation of projects are generally provided by software vendors. Without the participation of management consulting agencies, it is more necessary for supervision agencies to provide contractors with full-process and all-round consulting services and provide valuable suggestions or guidance. Even for ERP projects involving management consulting agencies, supervision agencies still need to stand on the side of the third party, identify deviations in the implementation process, disputes arising from arbitration, and provide supervision services including consulting.
5) Dynamic characteristics of the target
The fuzziness of builder's demand target and the variability of demand in the implementation process make the implementation process of ERP project often a process of continuous adjustment and change of implementation target, which requires ERP project supervision to adapt to the dynamic management of project demand target.