12-07-2012, 12:24 PM
ERP Multi-site
ERP_Multi-site_It_can_can_you.pdf (Size: 433.85 KB / Downloads: 31)
The concept of implementing multi-site ERP can seem very attractive but the stumbling blocks in many projects are often to do with company culture, not the software.
Having been involved in many projects that are multi-site, both within and beyond country borders experience has demonstrated that the greatest challenges to a successful ‘genuine’ multi-site implementation is more to do with a change of mindset within the company than the capability of the software.
Technical….
I’ll be brief here. Be very careful with your hardware and network topology. Make sure that the kit that the software is going to run on is up to the job and that the connectivity across your wide area network is fast and large enough. It is likely that if you are going for a single instance for your multi-national implementation then it will sit in a data-centre somewhere and people will connect to it from across the world.
Most vendors and partners will provide sizing guides for their software – also ask for references you can speak to where similar implementations have been carried out. We have seen, and have had to remedy as a company, installations where the UK would be operating just fine until the USA woke up and logged into the business system. At this point it would become unusable as the users saw the movement from field to field in a sales order entry screen take up to 20 seconds – clearly affecting sales.
Culture….
All of the above commentary is, sadly, not the definitive list of things to watch out for when considering a multi-site, multi country ERP implementation. There are, amongst other issues to consider, the availability of country localisations and even language support. However, the main thrust of this paper is to do with the culture of organisations. Sorry you had to wait to the third page before I detailed this but I suspect that the foregoing was useful.
Conclusion….
If you were coming to this document to find definitive answers to your multi-site, multi-country ERP implementation challenges then I am sorry to have very likely disappointed you. It is clearly a complex matter. However, I hope that I have got one message across and it’s this: Yes, many ERP’s can do multi-site and multi-country, but can you?