“ERP Projects will get you fired”
This is an actual quote from a CFO in a larger Danish corporation. Indeed, the sourcing for business applications is not a walk in the park.
It requires profound experience to successfully orchestrate the entire process from recognizing the need for a new business application or data-management platform, to when you can actually start reaping the benefits after a successful go-live.
We have that experience and can help you.
The challenge
Many larger and most midsized companies do not have internal resouces with the experience to drive a professional sourcing process for business applications. This includes ensuring solid requirement definitions, down-selecting the technology and implementation partner, securing advantageous commercial terms and the subsequent efficient run of the program. The end-goal is to ensure go-live on time and on budget. It is not easy, but we can help
Expect this
You can expect a business-focused process, that will enable your future platform fits your tactical and strategic priorities and drives business differentiation.
We detest bloated requirement specifications, with numerous irrelevant and quickly outdated criteria that only serves to confuse the vendor and drive up both price and project risk.
Working together, we will instead define your expected strategic targets, what makes you different, and the challenges you may have in supporting your business with IT. Based on this, we will work diligently during the sourcing to ensure the end-product actually supports your goals. In this process we will bring our experience and brutally honest feedback.
Our focus is minimizing risk, boosting your business and ensuring a tangible ROI on your investment.
The process
During a predefined series of workshops and discussions with senior management, key stakeholders and process owners, we will jointly define the strategy and expected outcome from the system to be implemented.
Your Key Business Drivers will be defined and will be the guiding principles that enables us to maintain a razor-sharp focus through the sourcing process (and subsequent project).
We will define the RFP as the basis for a sourcing and drive the sourcing process and vendor dialogue, ensuring the solution reflects and supports the defined strategy through a scoring regime.
Examples of deliverables
- Key business driver definitions
- Business requirement definition and documentation
- IT Strategy and roadmap, to-be definition
- Master Data Strategy
- RFI/RFP development
- Technology down-select
- Implementation partner down-select
- Project costing / business case
- Highlevel project plan
- Commercial negotiations and contracting
- Defining project organizations and organizing the project in relevant tracks
- Program and change management
- Steering committee support
Commercial negotiations and contracting
To ensure the best possible outcome of the sourcing process, commercial discussions and contract negotiations should be integrated throughout the process.
After decades of delivering such systems, we have obtained experience with opportunities and pitfalls. Nirvana is in many cases not a fixed priced contract. But T&M agreements require experience on how tech- and implementation partners work.
We do not provide legal assistance, but we have established partnerships for such services.
