Thursday, October 12, 2006

Oct. 5th, 2006. ERP Life Cycle.

This class talked was about ERP life cycle. An ERP life cycle has six steps:
Initiation: origin of a business case, based on four rationales (Technology, Business process, Strategy, Competition)

Planning: Consists of formulating the team, its goals, and objectives. Teams take care of implementations as well as maintenance.

Analysis and Design : Analysis is done on the basis of “As Is”, “To Be” and “Gap” methods. For extensive reengineering “As Is” is not important, but for minimal reengineering “As Is” plays a very important role. The “To Be” model is Technology/ERP Driven.
Going straight to the “To Be” model is the way consultants are working these days.

Realization: Gather resources, customize the process and test it.

Transition: Implement the system with total change or through a gradual switch over.

Operations: Monitor ongoing performance and tune up the system.


There are various tools available for project management.
1) Critical Path method: Mathematics based chart used for scheduling tasks.
2) Gantt chart: Bar chart used to show project schedule. It shows overlapping activities very neatly.

While choosing an ERP system the most important factors that should be considered are:
Rank of the Software, its match with the proposed strategy, cost analysis, ease of use, and analysis of processes that would be critical to the organization.