Category

Home » ERP Tips & Tricks (best practices) » Integration & Implementation

Parkinson’s Law and The Hidden Value of ERP

04/23/2012 at 3:45 pm

Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian and author of numerous books (1). He developed a famous adage for a 1955 article in the magazine, The Economist: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” which came to be known as Parkinson’s Law (2). While Parkinson’s original intent was to…

More >>

Getting Unstuck from Your Legacy System

04/12/2012 at 11:33 am

Avoiding change may be an inherent characteristic of us all. While individuals may be creatures of habit, organizations large and small also cherish the status quo. Change can be as minor as a new printer or as significant as a site move. For most companies, implementing an ERP system is more like the latter than…

More >>

Why Auditors Like Enterprise Resource Planning Systems – Part 2

04/06/2012 at 8:30 am

In Part 1 of this post, we discussed the role of auditors in protecting the interests of outside parties. We also looked at the first two of four internal control objectives: centralized administration of master files and segregation of duties. Safeguarding of Assets While it is true that no ERP system can fully protect cash, customer…

More >>

ERP – The Brain Behind the Business

03/26/2012 at 5:15 pm

A retail client of mine had an older point-of-sale system which updated store inventories in a nightly batch job. The vendor referred to this process as “the brain.” Unfortunately, the system’s behavior changed and for many products it would not decrement the quantity on hand based on the day’s sales. For example, if the store had 50…

More >>

The Chief Information Officer – The New Business Leader

03/22/2012 at 7:00 am

Prior to 1995, many corporations had centralized applications that ran on a mainframe or minicomputer. Processors, storage devices and printers often resided in a data center called a “glass room” with special air conditioning and limited access. Users in those days were not empowered. Screens were not WYSIWYG, print jobs had to be picked up…

More >>

A Number by Itself Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

03/14/2012 at 8:00 am

If I told you that a small business had $2M in gross sales last month, what would your reaction be? That fact alone is not enough for an outsider to make any kind of judgment about how well that business is doing. Similarly, a number by itself cannot help business owners manage their organization more…

More >>

The ABC’s of Performance Improvement Solutions ROI Calculations. TCO, TVO, and PMO. Got it? Good!

03/13/2012 at 6:21 am

In my previous posts, I wrote about how to calculate TCO , TVO and my love of the cartoon Penguins of Madagascar. Today, I am going to focus on one of my nemesis, instead of my loves. Project Management. Oh how you haunt me! The devil is in the details, and I am so not…