6 Essential Components of Your ERP Project Team
ERP implementation team members should come from disciplines across the company. ERP is enterprise-wide and you do not want this seen as an IT or accounting project only. Many ERP team members will be change-oriented and eager to learn. They should also be respected as persons who can make choices that others will accept. Most of the implementation team members will become super users and will help train people within their departments. In addition to specific roles in the ERP project, these are also representatives of all the users who are important customers of the ERP system.
ERP Project Manager
You will need a project manager. This person is one of the most important individuals on any ERP team. Managing a large project and coordinating all the events is a skill itself and might be more critical than specific ERP system expertise. Ideally there is someone already with the right resume. Maybe there is someone you want to develop as a project manager. Maybe you will want to hire someone for this project only.
ERP Executive Champion
Your executive champion is possibly the next most important person. There will be pulls on all the ERP team members to work away from the implementation. This is the person who can enforce rules needed to keep people and resources on side and when or if to use them for any other demands which will arise. The executive champion will also serve on the steering committee which is an outside group keeping watch over the forest when other team members might only see trees.
Training Department
Trainers will often come from the implementation team but could also be training specialists. The ERP training project phase will come about toward the end of the project shortly ahead of go-live.
Data Conversion Team
Data conversion people are needed too. These could be internal or external experts on the legacy ERP. Much of their work is early in the project, however there will be data needs discovered during testing that were overlooked. Often these data conversion needs exist in external files unknown to IT people but valuable to certain users.
Vendor Representatives
Vendor representatives will be part of your ERP team too – your salesman, ERP consultants, knowledge experts, hardware expert all could be needed. Your vendor has probably done implementations many times and you will only do in once. Use the knowledge they have gained. Just remember your business has some unique factors so be your own judge too.
IT Staff
This is not just an IT project. But your IT staff are important to the project. The software you chose has hardware and network requirements to keep it running at its best. If you need to purchase anything, get it early in the project so it is tested along with your processes.
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