Do you have an ERP system in place and don’t know how to maintain it? In this article, we’ve put together some things to consider for the maintenance of your ERP system. Without your ERP system functioning, it can affect the day-to-day running of your business, and no manager or business owner wants that. Hence, this makes it important for you to know about maintaining your ERP system.
In my previous article, I wrote about 3 Reasons to Have an ERP Software Maintenance Plan, but I didn’t talk about the things to know, so let’s get right into it.
HERE ARE THE 6 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ERP SYSTEM MAINTENANCE
1. Know Your ERP System
The first step is for you to know the type (name, functions, etc.) of ERP software your business is using. You also need to know the limitations and configuration, be it cloud-hosted or on-premise.
This will let you know the scale of the technology your business is using.
2. Evaluate Your Intrinsic Abilities.
What I mean by this is, you need to determine if your business has the personnel within the organization that can maintain the ERP system.
If you don’t have one, you need to get the personnel that can handle it. In most cases, it is the software vendor that deployed the system for your business.
HINT: Before deploying the software, you need to choose a software vendor that can handle post-implementation support.
3. Understand the Financial Implications
Yes, having a maintenance plan for your ERP system is important. However, the cost implications should be weighed up, so you don’t go overboard. You also need to consider the long-term, and short-term costs of maintaining the software, so that you can decide when to go for an upgrade or consider another ERP software.
Also, the maintenance plan provided by the ERP software should also be weighed against the technology plans of the company.
The payment terms (monthly, quarterly, or annually) also need to be agreed on.
4. Having a Legal Document
The legal document can either be Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) if you’re using a third party (software vendor), and all the policies should be clearly understood by both parties.
When agreeing on the policies, talk about the level of urgency regarding issues from the ERP software. This will help eliminate confusion and disappointments from your communications.
5. Security
I’ve been itching to write about this point when I started this article. Securing your ERP system cannot be over-emphasized enough. After all, we’ve been in business since 1997 and have had our fair share of data loss to system crashes, and cyber-attacks.
From experience, we advise you to do the following.
·· Always perform regular backups (to protect against system crash or unintended formatting).
·· Never use a non-secured platform or ERP (protection against cyber-attacks).
·· Make sure the Non-Disclosure policy is signed with your ERP vendor (to avoid data breach).
·· Make sure your ERP system of choice has strong security features.
6. Assessment
The system assessment should be done periodically to ensure its functionality and address any issues that may hinder its performance.
The assessments also present areas for improvement.
Conclusively, by following the above guidelines, your ERP system will function properly, and all stakeholders will be on the same page with a clear end goal.
REFERENCE: CIO
Leave a Comment