Keeping a close eye on an ERP’s Eco-system !!

By Suren

An ecosystem is generally the biotic components around your immediate surrounding that make up for the atmosphere around you, this could be both living and non-living.

Just as it is with us human beings, it’s the same with systems. A systems ecosystem is everything that links to it, either directly or indirectly. This could be from an integrated link with another system or be a maintenance service on the system hardware. Most often than not, in large scale implementations you would come across the term “Planning the Ecosystem”, this basically is making sure everything around the implementation is working in such a way as to provide either directly or indirectly a beneficial impact on the EPP implementation.

I would say it’s a good thing to always list down the components in an ERP’s Ecosystem to be able to provide to the stakeholders of an ERP Implementation a snap shot of what constitutes the ecosystem and the measures in place to make sure they are administered to act in a positive way around the implementation itself.

Some example of components in an ERP’s Ecosystem:

• Hardware Infrastructure – servers, printers, networks
• Services – maintenance agreements, consulting, process improvements, implementation partners
• Products – software versions, integrating tools & equipment
• Vendors – direct (i.e. consulting partners, hardware vendors) and non-direct (i.e. organisation wide vendors for utilities, other services)
• Training & Support departments
• ERP enhancement  & sustainability development plans (this would more often than not be a part of the PMO’s responsibility itself)
• Competitor
• Customers – end users, management teams and external customer as well.

Generally, the above list will be broken down into an impact matrix with key variables identified in them in terms of impact and controllability, to assess how much of a significant impact it can have on the ERP Implementation, which  need to be addressed and should form part of the risk register. This process could be a lengthy one but if done properly will help minimise risks.

Hope you found this post informative. I can be contact on ssurenlk@msn.com.

Have a nice day!!