Tips to minimize Enterprise Resource planning costs

Take Baby Steps

During ERP selection and implementation, it’s easy to get excited over the many features and products available. In addition, you may even be considering a few software customizations to make the solution fit your business needs. While these may be beneficial initiatives, it goes without saying that there’s a cost involved in pursuing them.

To save money, consider only implementing the functionality you currently need or anticipate needing in the foreseeable future. This gives you a chance to use the system for a while and determine if you really need to implement all the functionality at once and gives you time and resources to research on future feasibility of scaling. If the answer is “yes,” you can budget accordingly and plan for the additional investment.

Compare your costs

ERP software is similar to any other major business investment in that it requires careful thought and consideration. Rather than pursuing the first vendor and solution that you come across, it pays to do your due diligence.

We recommend getting more consultations with ERP experts to help you compare the costs of various ERP vendors and negotiate on your behalf for the best terms.

Maximize ERP Consultant Expertise

Do you plan to hire an ERP consultant to help manage your ERP implementation? To get the most benefit from your investment, it’s important to use the consultant’s time wisely. Ultimately, you want to ensure you’re maximizing every second of support that they offer.

One way to make the most of ERP consultants is to rely on them for not only technical expertise but also business expertise. This might mean asking for assistance with success factors, such as business process reengineering or organizational change management. Integral has helped WA local businesses over 30 years and could help you with your industry specifics.

Another tip for making the most of ERP consultants is to ensure your project team focuses on pre-implementation planning and building strong organizational alignment. Integral’s approach on implementation are milestone basis, which you will be able to see results and the cost will be by sections completion

Utilize the ERP System’s Best Practices

As mentioned, ERP software customizations can be costly and may not be mission critical. To avoid running over budget, try to keep any such adjustments to a minimum.

Instead, learn as much as you can about the ERP system’s best practices that are already built into the platform. Many solutions, such as ERP for small business such as Microsoft Business Central, are designed to help certain industries perform routine business activities. In many cases, you will find that these functions are enough to support your business requirements.

Focus on Minimizing Long-term Costs

In your quest to complete an ERP project that’s as budget friendly as possible. While this solution might be ideal for your company, it’s still best to do your research and understand the other available options and get a few opinions from the ERP market. We suggest for you to go with a local vendor, to help you during implementation and after, whom will give you support even after the system is implemented.

This also applies to the way you approach the comprehensive ERP project. Sure, you could just implement a solution and force employees to adopt it, but it’s unlikely to reach its full potential. Instead, we recommend focusing on organizational change management. This involves employee communication, system training, process training, resistance management and more.

Change management is a short-term cost that can reduce your long-term costs. When your workforce is empowered and on-board with the change, you can maximize ERP business benefits. Otherwise, you’ll spend time and money working through roadblocks while your system sits unused.