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The Missing Link to ERP Excellence

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is probably the most prolific concept ever generated by industrial strength application vendors. The insatiable appetite for corporate executives to harness critical information from disparate platforms has, undoubtedly become an overwhelming task. In fact, many companies are willing to bet their businesses on the promise that enterprise-wide systems will translate into enhanced corporate value, particularly within decentralized companies that compete globally.

Within the past 2 decades ERP has completely reversed how executives view large-scale application purchases. Michael Lindsay, Managing Consultant for Lucent Technologies, remarks, "Companies were sold best-of-breed solutions that gave functional departments specific-use applications and platforms. Unfortunately, it's come back to haunt many companies that now need integrated access to those same systems that were never designed to integrate with anything. Hence the problem."

Many executives believe that removing phantom walls between corporate and field organizations is best served by unleashing the flow of information throughout the entire enterprise. As logical as this seems, the resources and expenditures required to accomplish this task can be astronomical. Worse yet, the success-rate implementing these all-encompassing integrated applications is at best - dubious.

The Yankee group has noted that, "The majority of IT leaders are less than satisfied with the overall experience and results of their ERP implementation." Regardless, the effort associated with turning-off decades of custom applications for new enterprise solutions has become a daunting challenge, yet to be mastered.

"If you're looking for an ROI with ERP, forget it!
ERP is a new way of conducting your business." CIO Magazine

Reasons why companies embark on such tenuous endeavors are widespread. In general, the issues listed have become so problematic for most executives that many will go to any length, or expense, to improve their capabilities:

1. Reducing disparate systems and support
2. Enhancing communications to external partners
3. Dynamic business environment
4. Enhancing workforce productivity
5. Better visibility into remote operations
6. Improving Return on Capital and Inventory Turns
7. Alleviating Y2K problems

For better or worse, ERP has attracted the attention of IT professionals at the application level because that's where the major benefits are derived. However, a closer look at our benefits list reveals that fundamental communication amongst diverse corporate groups is the main driver - Little of which is derived by the application alone.

Enter Network Management

When your network crashes how much does it cost your company? Clearly, network performance plays a compelling role when describing the benefits associated with an ERP implementation. However, many executives are perplexed when asked the question, "What is the value of your network?" In general, network outages are often associated with lost productivity, salaries and time - But a deeper study shows that there is much more at stake? Depending on your industry any one of the following issues may be at risk when your corporate network is not running optimally:

1. Workforce engaging in costly counter-productive tasks (toll calls, leaving early etc.)
2. Conflicting resolution between network managers, system analysts and application developers
3. Reduced quality of work
4. Costs associated with a disgruntled or lost customer
5. Negative perception of IT group, IT staff turnover
6. Low employee morale, more turnover
7. Expensive rush to judgement solutions
8. Delayed product-to-market-time

Albeit, implementing an ERP solution can not guarantee elimination of the above list, but its effects can be greatly diminished. By deploying the proper networking strategy, including Focused Network Consulting, Network Application Readiness, and enhanced Network Management Tools, for the first time companies implementing large complex applications can now be accompanied by an integrated network-compliant solution.

Focused Network Consulting

Considering the enormity of most ERP implementations, it's hard to believe that any one consulting firm, yet alone an IS department, can mitigate all the risk. As a potential solution firms are safeguarding their investments by bulletproofing their corporate infrastructure. Not only is it important to create business rules and streamline your business operations, it's also important to optimize your network's bandwidth, communication protocols and networking components. Keep in mind, no matter how sophisticated or costly your applications, if the network is down their effective utilization, in addition to your corporate productivity, is zero.

Having networking experts review your planned ERP strategy can save your company thousands, if not millions of dollars during your implementation. The need to implement a robust network architecture to support your enterprise-wide solution is no longer a luxury, but a corporate imperative. Consulting firms that provide strategic networking solutions can manage to specific service level agreements (SLA's), based on your company's industry and business operations.

Network Application Readiness (NAR)

If we could look into our digital future the world would be a better place or at least continue with fewer glitches. To that end, networking monitoring tools have become so sophisticated that they can actually provide predictive insight about your application performance prior to implementation. Through precision-based complex simulation schemas and advanced data modeling techniques, high-end networking companies can actually emulate, plan and optimize your network architecture in support of deploying large-scale implementations. Even better, such predictive measures can take place well before the go live date, which may represent a significant cost savings.

No matter how sophisticated or costly the application, if your network is down the effective utilization along with your company's productivity is zero.

Network Application Readiness provides that extra layer of insight companies need to better plan their network architecture, bandwidth requirements and performance needs, before betting the business. Adequately planning your network prior to rolling out ERP applications is analogous to resolving manufacturing defects prior to undergoing full production. Furthermore, depending on the size, scope and risks involved, the savings associated with deploying a multi-million dollar application can be staggering. For a modest 10 million dollar ERP solution, if you only realize 10% efficiency gain or cost avoidance, by implementing these tools, you're still well ahead of the game!

Monitoring Tool

Another key area to cover is assessing the performance of the network itself. The fact that your critical applications are running consistently over the network does not mean that they are running optimally. IT and help desk personnel are so enamored with daily fires that they rarely have time to proactively monitor the same networks they're managing. Within an ERP environment, particularly within a widely decentralized organization, the ability to manage, monitor, and control the network from a central location is vital. The days of flying a network or application expert to remote locations to resolve performance issues has become a thing of the past. Today's monitoring tools can give remote network manager or help desk personnel the ability to observe the network from the enduser's perspective, for every user on the network.

Products such as VitalAnalysis (an INS network monitoring tool) minimize traditional costs that have historically plagued network management. These powerful tools can enable your help desk representative to analyze, troubleshoot, and potentially resolve network/application performance issues from a remote country without speaking to the enduser yet alone their language. Not only do these capabilities minimize infrastructure support cost, but they also optimize performance and availability. Overall, networking Monitoring Tools, Application Readiness and Focused Network Consulting services can make the difference between surviving and thriving.

Concluding Remarks

It's surprising to see how many companies throw hardware at nearly every problem related to corporate communications. Considering the billions of dollars spent on ERP applications annually, your best investment may be in the form of a small insurance policy. In most cases, spending less than 2% or of your planned integration costs that may resolve 50% of your future ERP problems, may be the best investment your company can make.

The missing link to ERP excellence may be found by looking at the underlining infrastructure that supports everything your company does, your network

In practice, IT professionals support the concept that complex problems require complex solutions. If nothing else, this way of thinking has preempted the need for every hardware, software and consulting company in business. However, before you succumb to the next quantum leap of computing expenditures, remember that eliminating the root cause of your corporate communications problems is the optimal strategy. In short, the missing link to ERP excellence may be found by up rooting and pampering the communications infrastructure that supports everything your company does, your network.

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