TOP 11 keys to adopting your ERP

ERPs are great management tools that make your life easier and save you time!

However, there are still challenges with ERP that can affect the productivity of teams when using it.

For example, by 2025, 70% of organisations will use digital adoption solutions such as digital adoption platforms to overcome adoption and user experience challenges on applications (1).

Tempted by adoption but wondering how to get started?

Don’t panic, we’ve got you covered. If you follow these 11 tips, your ERP adoption will be a smooth ride.

1) Finding the right shoe

First and foremost, it is important to choose the right ERP to suit your company’s needs.

And this is no small task!

It is important to assess your company’s needs and identify the functionalities to manage business processes and data efficiently.

In order to ensure consistency between the need and reality, it is necessary to involve the stakeholders on the business side.

Once you have chosen your ERP system, you need to establish a budget for its acquisition, installation, training and maintenance.

2) Plan the change management upstream

Even if it seems obvious, 57% of companies try to deploy a new ERP without a change management plan (2). However, the rule is well known: without an appropriate change management and an upstream implementation, no project will be successful.

In order to minimise service disruptions and costs, it is essential to carefully plan the implementation of your ERP. The mismatch between the needs and the chosen tools can lead to rejection and bad practices of the users.

It is therefore necessary to train users in a personalised manner in order to anticipate any problems they may encounter. By customising the training, you can save time and productivity and get users on board with the adoption of your ERP.

3) Involving stakeholders

It is important to get employees on board and to turn them into real players in the project. It is also important to develop a culture of feedback as much as possible and to collect their opinions. They are the ones who will use the tool, so they must feel involved and listened to so that they become your allies in the adoption process. By involving the various departments that will use your ERP from the start, you identify their needs and concerns. For example, you can set up working groups.

Ask them questions that will give your project direction:

what are the problems to be solved?
Will the tool’s functionalities meet them?
What user scope is concerned?
What change management methodology should be put in place?
What ROI is expected?
what impact on processes?
…

In addition, the support and involvement of senior management makes it possible to drive the deployment of the digital strategy to all of the company’s stakeholders, which is a key factor in the success of the implementation of financial process digitalisation projects according to 70% of CFOs (3).

If stakeholders are not on board, the digitisation project is bound to fail, or the tools will not be used to their full potential, and the investment will be unjustified.

4) Receive your tool

Before deploying your tool to your users, it is necessary to receive it in your own context.

This means making sure that the functionalities are well adapted to your needs and removing the obstacles to its adoption.

To do this, it is necessary to analyse in real time the use of the tool and the blocking elements: which processes pose problems in terms of handling, which fields are confusing in data entry, etc.

This way, you can create the right help content accordingly, and avoid overloading your user support.

The more you test your use cases, the better prepared you will be.

5) Communicate at all stages of the project

Internal communication on the digital transformation plan and the dissemination of clear explanations of the benefits to employees are considered as one of the three main levers of ownership according to the Finance and Purchasing functions.

Employees must be listened to but also spoken to. To explain the project, its purpose, the changes involved…

In this way, you will encourage support before deployment, reduce their resistance and make them adhere to the project.

6) Setting up user support

The Finance and Purchasing functions agree on this point: support for change is a key success factor in the implementation of process digitalisation projects, according to 60% of CFOs (4).

41% of CFOs even consider that for the appropriation of technological solutions, it is essential to put in place real support for users.

This is why digital adoption platforms such as Shortways have been created to provide day-to-day support for these tools and to ensure that the knowledge acquired is maintained.

The implementation of a digital assistant will improve the user experience.

Indeed, users will be accompanied to the right place, at the right time in the tool, in a contextual and personalised way according to their profile.

More autonomous and efficient on their tools, users will be more inclined to use it in the best possible way, reinforcing the success of deployment projects.

7) Train users in all possible ways

According to 53% of Purchasing Managers, training in tools and processes is one of the 3 main drivers of adoption (5). And the lack of training is a problem in 30% of ERP adoption projects (2).

In addition, the ergonomics of certain applications sometimes leave something to be desired. They are not always as intuitive as hoped and have certain technical limitations due to the fact that they have been developed for a large number of people.

Training must be at the heart of your concerns to ensure rapid adoption at all stages of your tool’s life. Adoption does not stop at deployment but must be considered on an ongoing basis.

The implementation of DAPs such as Shortways can reduce the time to adoption and training costs for improved productivity and performance.

8) Creating a culture of data quality

Only 6 out of 10 purchasing departments consider the commitment of their teams to data quality to be at a good level. 50% of organisations place data at the heart of decision making (6).

Data is key. It is therefore essential to ensure its reliability, in order to maintain the position of Finance and Purchasing as strategic partners of the company.

A quality database saves time and increases agility for more efficient strategy management and better predictions.

76% of data quality problems originate in user input (7). The challenge is therefore to acculturate the teams to this issue of data quality, from its collection to its exploitation, but especially at the time of its entry.

9) Provide ongoing support

If you have a problem, do you send an email to support or do you go directly to your colleague for the answer?

It is sometimes frustrating to be blocked in the execution of a task on your tool and not be able to move forward. It is therefore normal to want to move as quickly as possible and to choose the second option!

The lack of a guarantee of immediate response from overloaded supports is problematic. Added to this are the unconventional modes of communication that prevent requests from being centralised and processed properly.

This is why it is essential to provide a means for users to contact a support service that is adapted to their needs. But also, for the support to be able to capitalise on requests by creating libraries of responses accessible to users.

Also, elements may have been omitted during the acceptance phase, everyone may not have been trained, may have forgotten how a procedure works, or may have had to report a bug, etc. Support must be provided to employees.

It should not be forgotten that the digital maturity of users differs, and it is not just a question of age. As with training, it is a question of taking into account the difficulties of appropriating the tools, but also the specificities of your company.

10) Asking for feedback

As with everything, questioning is necessary to move forward. And what could be more relevant than the opinion of your users?

Thanks to feedback, you will be sure to hit the nail on the head when developing your tool!

Implementing a feedback culture means that employees feel listened to and involved and are therefore more inclined to adopt changes.

Dedicated work groups, functionality directly available from the tool, dedicated video meetings, etc. There are many ways to collect needs and ensure adoption.

11) Analyse the use of its tool

Communicating and training your users on your digital tool is essential. Analysing their actual behaviour on the tool is even better!

Although you have made a very good choice of ERP thanks to our previous advice and with a well executed recipe, it is possible that unexpected drifts or cases of use occur.

Recurring questions in open support tickets?
A field is incorrectly filled in on a screen?
Users do not complete a process?

Analysing usage statistics allows you to be reactive to anomalies and to create and/or update help content accordingly.

YOU HAVE EARNED A BONUS!!

12) Facilitating continuous change management

And it’s not over!

Projects have a beginning but no end, only stages.

The adoption of a tool does not end with the deployment but must be thought through continuously.

Remember that change management is like your company and its market: constantly evolving.

In this way, it allows you to engage employees in a transformation of habits and practices. You also avoid a post-deployment drop in usage and adoption.

You now have all the keys in hand to adopt your ERP with peace of mind!

To find out more, read all our advice on the subject and the testimonials of professionals in our White Paper👇

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(1) Gartner, étude 2021

(2) InsideBoard, Baromètre Digital Procurement Success, 2021

(3) Talentia et Markess, Digitalisation des processus financiers – Approches & besoins à fin 2022, 2022

(4) Talentia et Markess, Digitalisation des processus financiers – Approches & besoins à fin 2022, 2020

(5) CNA, ADRA et InsideBoard, Baromètre annuel du Succès de la Transformation Digitale des Directions Achats, 2022

(6) Capgemini Research Institute, The data-powered enterprise: Why organizations must strengthen their data mastery, 08/2021

(7) The Warehousing Institute, Quality and the Bottom Line: Achieving Business Success through a Commitment to High Quality Data, Wayne W. Eckerson, 2001