E X C E L L E N C E I N E R P A N D B U S I N E S S S O L U T I O N S

MISSION STATEMENT

IDEALIS CONSULTING HELPS YOU MODEL ALL FUNCTIONS AND

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS OF YOUR BUSINESS.

IDEALIS CONSULTING HELPS YOU THEN IMPLEMENT AND SUSTAIN THE BUSINESS

MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE THAT AUTOMATES YOUR ENTERPRISE.

WHY BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE?

A company uses a business management software to do the following: • facilitate the flow of information between all business functions (marketing & sales, finance, human resources, projects, sales, purchasing, inventory, etc.)

• manage relationships with external stakeholders (customers, suppliers & supply chain, partners, etc.)

• integrate the decision-making support tools for transparent, consistent and comprehensive corporate governance, risk management of the business, and management of stakeholder relationships 1

• analyze the business data for the identification of new opportunities and the implementation of a strategy that provides the business with competitive market advantage and long-term stability.

WHY CONSULTING COMPANY TO IMPLEMENT THE ERP SYSTEM?

Business management software is a suite of business applications that is referred to as ERP (“Enterprise Resource Planning”) system 2.

ERP’s scope usually implies changes to staff work processes and practices. Three types of services are available to help implement these changes—consulting, customization, support (including user training) and maintenance.

Implementation time depends on business size, number of modules, customization, the scope of process changes, and the readiness of the customer to take ownership for the project.

Modular ERP systems should be implemented in stages to mitigate the obvious risks of lack of quality and of manage-ment of the “big bang“ (i.e., at once) automation of the functions of the organization.

1 Governance is the combination of processes established and executed by the board of directors that are reflected in the organization’s structure and how it is managed and led toward achieving goals. Risk management is predicting and managing risks that could hinder the organization to achieve its objectives. Compliance with the company’s policies and procedures, laws and regulations, strong and efficient governance is considered key to an organization’s success.

2 Historically, enterprise management software is referred as ERP system (“Enterprise Resource Planning“). In French, we refer to PGI system, «progiciel de gestion intégré», which means “integrated software applications for enterprise management”.

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CONFIGURING ERP SYSTEM

Configuring an ERP system is a matter of balancing the way the organization wants the system to work with the way it was designed to work.

ERP systems include many settings that modify system operations. For example, an organization can select the type of inventory accounting—FIFO or LIFO —to use; whether to recognize revenue by geographical unit, product line, or distribution channel; and whether to pay for shipping costs on customer returns.

ERP systems are based on industry best practices. ERP editors or vendors offer customers configuration options that let organizations incorporate their own business rules, but feature gaps often remain even after configuration is complete.

ERP customers have several options to reconcile feature gaps, each with their own pros / cons.

Technical solutions include rewriting part of the delivered software, writing a homegrown module to work within the ERP system, or interfacing to an external system. These three options constitute varying degrees of system customization — with the first being the most invasive and costly to maintain.

There are non-technical options such as changing business practices or organizational policies to better match the delivered ERP feature set.

IMPLEMENTATION

BUSINESS MODELING AND GAP ANALYSIS – A PREREQUISITE

Implementing ERP requires changes in existing business processes. Poor understanding of needed process changes prior to starting implementation is a main reason for project failure.

It is therefore crucial that organizations thoroughly analyze business processes before they implement ERP software.

Gap analysis, i.e., comparing current performance of business processes with standards, can identify opportunities for process modernization. It also enables an assessment of the alignment of current processes with those provided by the ERP system, i.e., with best practices3. The software reflects the vendor’s or editor’s interpretation of the most effective way to perform each business process.

Companies that implemented industry best practices reduced time–consuming project tasks such as configuration, documentation, testing, and training of the software applications that compose the ERP system. In addition, best practices reduced risk by 71% compared to other software implementations.

Research indicates that risk of business process mismatch is decreased by:

• linking current processes to the organization’s strategy

• analyzing the effectiveness of each process

• understanding existing automated solutions.

ERP implementation is more difficult (and politically charged) in decentralized organizations, because they often have different processes, business rules, data semantics, authorization hierarchies, and decision centers. This may require migrating some business units before others, delaying implementation to work through the necessary changes for each unit, possibly reducing integration or customizing the system to meet specific needs.

CONSULTING

3 The term “best practices“ refers, in a specific business sector, to a set of behaviors that make consensus and most professionals in the field consider essential.

MIGRATING DATA

Data migration is the process of moving, copying, and restructuring data from an existing system to the ERP system.

Migration is critical to implementation success and requires significant planning. Unfortunately, since migration is one of the final activities before the production phase, it often receives insufficient attention.

The following steps can structure migration planning:

• identify data to migrate

• determine migration timing

• generate data templates

• freeze the toolset

• decide on migration-related setups

• define data archiving policies and procedures.

SUPPORT

Key differences between customization and configuration include the following:

• customization is always optional, whereas the software must always be configured before use (e.g., setting up cost / profit center structures, organizational trees, purchase approval rules, etc.)

• the software is designed to handle various configurations, and behaves predictably in any allowed configuration

• the effect of configuration changes on system behavior and performance is predictable. The effect of customization is less predictable. It is the customer’s or system integrator’s responsibility, and increases testing activities.

• configuration changes survive upgrades to new software versions. Some customizations (e.g., code that uses pre–defined “hooks” that are called before / after displaying data screens) survive upgrades, though they require retesting. Other customizations (e.g., those involving changes to fundamental data structures) are overwritten during upgrades and must be re-implemented.

Customization advantages include the following:

• improve user acceptance

• offer the potential to obtain competitive advantage vis-à-vis companies using only standard features.

Customization disadvantages include the following:

• increase time and resources required to implement and to maintain

• inhibit seamless communication between suppliers and customers who use the same ERP system un-customized

• can create over reliance on customization, undermining the principles of ERP as a standardizing software platform.

CUSTOMIZATION

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ABOUTIdealis Consulting is a leading Systems Integrator of the Odoo suite of business apps and of SAP solutions: SAP HCM, SAP SCM, SAP WM & SAP EWM. Idealis Consulting has been a Gold partner of Odoo since 2007.

Idealis Consulting specializes in CRM, logistics, human resources & talent management, ERP & e-commerce best practices as well as in accounting & financial management, business intelligence, governance and compliance. This, for all industries and for organizations of all sizes: large, global and international enterprises, SMEs (“Small & Medium Enterprises”).

Idealis Consulting models and implements customized business apps on premise as well as in hosting clouds for enterprises and larger SMEs, in order to help them grow their business, improve operative performance, reduce costs, and align their IT resources with their business strategy.

Idealis Consulting implements best practice solutions for small companies on premise and in hosting clouds, in order to help them re-organize their business processes and boost their performance in a legally compliant framework.

Idealis Consulting hosts the cloud for very small businesses, in order to help them implement e-Commerce and CRM solutions at the lowest TCO.