More specifically, what’s a retail organisations ERP for?
It’s not simply a need for an IT system. After all, when the organisation was growing up, they didn’t have that much of an IT system problem. And plenty of organisations make it through the growth years without an ERP system. This is a want, not a need.
Few technology purchases trigger more change than an ERP, and in this case, we’ll see different changes for different stakeholders.
For the retail organisation, an ERP enables a change from siloed divisions to integrated processes.
That’s a shift in control, in efficiency, and in power. It’s far bigger than excel spreadsheets.
For the executive, it causes a change from limitations with operations to offering visibility and scale. And it leads to significant discussions about procedures, opportunity, and about control?
What will our customers say? What will we tell ourselves about procedures? About information, opportunity, and management?
All of these changes are at the heart of the ERP decision. When the architect, the business analyst, and the subject matter expert see these changes at work, they provide more value, because they can analyse with these issues in mind.