Reading the ERP deck of Cards (Part 2 – ERP Team, The Implementer)

Most teams are some percentage internal and external people. If the implementer is the only external person, and that’s your role, you better have all the technical skills and contacts to carry this implementation off on your own. I refer to this as ‘training on the cheap’.

‘Training on the Cheap’: The company expects you to train their employees who have no background in ERP or the current ERP generation. They are going to flounder, delay, wrong priorities, etc. The future of your hair is uncertain, if you do not look good bald, reconsider this project.


Yes, the implementer is part of the team and can in fact have some problem characteristics to watch out for.

OFF TOPIC PLEA: Please do not pay millions for infrastructure and software to turn it over to someone that makes such a trivial amount of money! In a free market the demand on a good implementer’s time forces them to increase rates to help determine what projects to take.

There are a couple of implementers in the industry like myself, who know the routines so well, that we manage multiple huge implementations simultaneously and without missing a goal. It is also one of the ways we make our time affordable. In future blogs I will explain how to pick an implementer, for now let us worry about what to avoid in one.

The Troubled Implementer

Here are the problem personality traits you want to avoid when hiring an ERP Implementer:

‘Pansy’: They cannot stop the scope growth. Implementers have to have a "brass set" so they can set the cutoff and call the next revisions version 2. The Pansy tries to give the client everything they ask for but take no responsibility for what can go wrong.

Identification Test: Tell them you want to add a whole new external feed to the implementation and it must be the same timeframe.


‘Pure Project Manager’: No real technical product knowledge, worries about pretty spreadsheets and reports of progress more than they worry about progress. They have some great ways of showing how hurdles are not met in multi-color slideshows. PM is important but it is part of the goal not the whole goal. Jettison this person and they can graph their way out the door.

Identification Test: Did they show up with the Sales Person? Did the vendor just assign someone? Are they suggesting UAT in a remote location?

A good implementer understands and appreciates project management. The PM philosophy, whether it be the Vendor’s paradigm or some other methodology, I find is not as important what methodology you subscribe too as long as you subscribe to one.

‘Beam me up’: These implementers talk in technical jargon, most of which they do not even understand. This person is going to get you in real trouble!
Good implementers do have significant technical backgrounds and a professional diary of past problems worth killing for, what they do not have is a memory for technical trivia. Real implementers have seen problems before and it becomes a matter of looking them up, not regurgitating some obscure vendor document.

Identification Test: Can you picture this person in Star Trek pajamas? Does the term ‘socially retarded’ come to mind?


‘Mr. Big Picture’: This implementer lives in the big picture, and only in the big picture. This implementer is oblivious to the conscious state of man... they do not know the day to day tasks nor do they want to. If you have a problem, shouldn’t your implementer be in there with the technical and functional folks talking on their level?

Identification Test: Person says ‘I am a big picture guy’ way too often.


Good Qualities to look for in an Implementer

First off, the good technical consultants know they are technical consultants and do not try to jump to implementer prematurely. Though I will introduce you to the technical consulting personalities that think they can do your job as we progress through the blog.

Are you an Implementer (Test):

As an implementer, if the team is mostly the software vendors’ people and you are not in the key decision role, flee the situation! If you’re an outside technical consultant (not someone with the software vendor) you will probably be just fine -- I will explain the software vendor consultant training in a later blog.

If you think you’re an implementer and reading this, you have to be saying: Oh, that’s easy for you to say ‘flee’, turn down a project and pay the mortgage how? (I know I said that when I first heard it many years ago.) If that is your response – you’re not an implementer.

An implementer’s technical skills encompass the average consultant’s and then much more. The salary a proven implementer demands for guaranteed success allows them three to four months down time between projects. That takes us back to what I said in my first blog ‘that you do not get implementers or functional leads for $45 an hour’. That is to say, not if you want to be successful. At $45 an hour you could not cover the needed insurance policies on a multi-million company.

A good implementer is a social person, a once technical consultant with an understanding of how to move people and objectives to meet the goals. A good implementer will make the tough call like, "When it is time to depart with a team member".

How do you know they will make a tough call? They will tell you their team member philosophy upfront before you ask.

Great implementers layout a strategy to engage the team and the company, they execute continuous wins because they outline what wins are needed first and how to publicize them. Great implementers look at the challenge as well as the money -- they chose projects on a host of criteria.

Great implementers know one another… Right-- one turns down a job and recommends the others. Often times, great implementers are former CIOs with a roll up their sleeve attitude.

One more little aside that is an URBAN LEGEND: Small companies (you define that) cannot afford a great implementer. Not true. It is the smaller companies that need these people the most and where the most dollars should be allocated in their projects.

Next time, Reading the ERP deck of Cards (Part 3 – ERP Team, The Important Players)

I hope you find my take on ERP teams interesting. I would love to hear your take. Drop me a line. ( I never said I was infallible.)

ERP: The Deck of Cards (Part 1 – Assessing the At Risk CIO)

(I certainly am not the 'end all be all' in identifying CIOs in an the 'At Risk Position' but the following is based on my experience over the years.)

Implementers devise methods to determine the personalities involved with an ERP implementation. Some time ago, I created my own outline of players’ personalities so I could adopt my personality to fill in the missing pieces quickly if need be.

Every implementer must have the ability to assess the overall situation. I am going to write a several part blog in which I describe the ‘Problem Situations” and the holes good consultants can fill. After 20 years of implementing this is my way and I hope you find some useful information.

CIO in the Risk Position

I did my stint as a Fortune 100 CIO, so I recognize ‘At Risk CIOs’ and their motivations.

In my experience, there are either good CIOs or ‘At Risk CIOs’. (There's a stroke of intellect.)

It is the 'At Risk CIO' surrounding ERP implementations we need to identify quickly. There are four types of ‘At Risk CIOs’; ‘The Virgin’, ‘The Replacement’, ‘The Trial’ and ‘The Evil Stepfather’. When looking at a project, if you do not encounter one of these four type of CIOs, you have a properly placed CIO -- sign on the dotted line as fast as possible. If you don't I will.

‘The Virgin’ is the existing CIO that proposes a company wide implementation to increase their own self-importance to the company (no other motivation required). This CIO most likely was ‘The Replacement’ at their last job or they graduated from being ‘The Trial’. Their life will never be the same after this moment. Identification: gadgets hanging from their belt, a notebook always in hand and the inability to look you in the eye. Expect this to be a ‘Yes Man’.

The second is ‘the replacement’. This person takes over after the first CIO (or first several) have been canned. Identification: Team meetings to outline career progression (career progression of a team that could not get the job done before this CIO came in????), fast and furious cost cutting, short stints in previous jobs.

Between ‘The Virgin’ and ‘The Replacement’, one is not necessarily better than the other, either is a potential powder keg.

Not all new CIOs however should be classified as ‘the replacement’, some are the right hire to carry the ball. Many times the new CIO is an upgrade from the last.

When dealing with ‘the replacement’ know this project is getting ready for serious budget cuts and the hour of desperation is looming large. Expect requests for cost concessions or worse long drawn out pay cycles. Only noticeable progress will work for ‘the replacement’.

Why immediate wins you ask? ‘The replacements’ e-mail inbox is full of innuendo from the company executive team who already started the count down to his expiration date. In the more savage arena of the executive team meetings, the CEO and the CFO are vultures picking at each issue and dreaming each night of new glorious methods of torture.

This brings us to the third type of 'At Risk CIO', the ‘Trial CIO’. Through some misfortune this poor soul was successful in one minor project and now finds they are in charge of a daunting quagmire of issues. Though a diamond in the rough occasionally surfaces, most times we have a single dimension IT person that will become a corporate punching bag for all woes. Start the unemployment application. Identification: a trip to disney after getting the job.

If the project champion is someone other than the CIO (or head IT person), expect sleepless nights. I refer to this as this as the ‘Evil Stepfather Syndrome’. As an implementer, it is your job to find a way to relate to this person. I keep my Accounting credentials up to date because often times this person comes from the Finance world.

Hey, after all, a company wide system implementation encompassing all the complex business aspects are not any different from hitting recalc on that ‘super-sophisticated’ Excel spreadsheet at month end, is it?

No matter what type of ‘At Risk CIO’ your dealing with, the job of the implementer is to neutralize the Champion’s flaws. If you cannot fill in the Champion’s holes, pass the project up. The right implementer is out there for this situation. (Or come back when the next CIO takes over)

Now that you understand CIOs who are 'At Risk', you need to know when their fuse is lit. I have four stages of personality warning signs I use as a gauge with an ‘At Risk CIO’; ‘Bravado Period’, ‘Desperate’, ‘Inexperienced’ and ‘Disengaged’.

‘Bravado Period’ is when our At Risk CIO beats their team for failures and accepts single praise for wins. Team alienation has been long underway. As an implementer, find a way to bolster the team members and revitalize their effort. Failure to revitalize the team means ‘flight of employees’ and loss of tribal knowledge. Usually I find this with ‘The Virgin’ or ‘The Evil Stepfather’ most of the time.

‘Desperate’ has one of two main traits: overspending or unrealistic demands. This personality is desperate for a win. They need to show some form of visible progress. You need to help them do just that, get their confidence and then correct their flaw. Mission one is to find a way to rescue the confidence of the company in the ERP implementation. Most likely you are dealing with ‘The Replacement’.

The 'Inexperienced Period’ can only evolve to the 'Desperate'. In this period the lack of experience means the At Risk CIO does not have enough common sense to be nervous. You can identify this period easily -- 'The At Risk CIO' only asks technical questions they usually found on a vendor site. Sorry this project is destined for failure. ‘The Inexperienced’ are convinced that the implementer should have nothing but technical skills (after all that’s probably the skills they have).

Most great implementers are not getting in the door during ‘the Inexperienced’ period because they have too many people skills. If you’re a team member, take precautions, this implementation is going to have the software vendor running the project soon. I will write later in my blogs about having the inmates run the asylum.

‘The disengaged’ is my favorite time in the project of a problem CIO situation to work an implementation. This personality wants all the credit, no problems, consistent progress and to leave at 5:00. It is also a sign that they have not hit the desperation stages. Unfortunately, this stage only lasts as long as the implementer can carry the ball. An experienced implementer however, is ‘stealth like’ in this situation, picking off almost daily progress. Most often ‘The Replacement’ can only take this attitude for the first 2 months unless they have the right contacts and know how to find an implementer. The right contact takes ‘the Replacement’ out of the jeopardy situation.

In my next blog, I will explain the problem personalities and traits that can be a problem on an ERP team.

If you come up with an ‘At Risk CIO’ position or a personality state I missed, I would love to hear it.

Start of an ERP Blog

I have been working with software since the TRS-80. Some days I miss the 3B2 era but I still have fun today with ERP systems and implementations. I have been a field consultant so long; sometimes I wake up and forget the city I am in or worse, the name of the client. In the end though, it’s all good.

ERP (that stands for Enterprise Resource Planning) is somewhere between the corporate magic bullet and CEO poison nowadays. I have been working with this stuff since its infancy and in recent times I have seen a real degradation in the level of knowledge and commitment to implementation.

Like most people in the field, I work a lot with Oracle products. Really, who doesn’t work with Oracle, they are trying to buy the industry. They now have JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Hyperion… etc. Oh, least we forget their new product Fusion (or conFusion). Unlike some of my colleagues, I see the job of an implementer extremely different.

What is an Implementer? Well, why the average outsource firm would have you believe it is someone that had a hand somewhere in installing a product (maybe a mandatory of 3 times); it is a far cry from that.

I am not bashing outsource or employment agencies, they serve their purpose -- they fill the ticket outlined by the client. I blame the clients who think this is shrink wrap software and managing the corporate change impact to 10,000 + employees is a 20 minute meeting.

What does the average client want? Superman (or superwoman) at $45 an hour. Good luck with that.

Let’s see how discount superhero has been working out for them.

Picking up the Wall Street Journal we see CEO after CEO threatening suite of Oracle over lost millions in revenue not to mention the cost of the product. I have run several “re-implementations” coming in after they hit the Wall Street Journal and I normally find that the person in-charge (or should I say who should be ‘charged’) is a either a glorified keyboard jockey with a project management program that only looks up to tell you how far off schedule the project is, or a code developer that prayed they would not have been charged with the task since it now has reduced their career life expectancy to 15 minutes.

In my opinion, an ERP Implementation has to have the following skills: Project Management, People Skills, Technical knowledge of networks, Ability to develop or write code and a whole arsenal of troubleshooting skills.

Over the series of this blog, I am going to show you some technical opportunities, ways to manage the “dynamic people needs” and much more….

If this blog catches on, there probably will be some people sweating these postings. Traditionally, the company I work for was always paid to keep a low profile and deliver results. Many people took advantage of that to put our developments into their papers and professional presentations.

Recently we have decided to see what happens in the competitive market, so much of that information and developments will be represented here with its original context and solutions.

Hope you will enjoy this blog over time, if you have some special topics or technical questions, let me know. You can also post technical questions to our company site which as of Dec. 7, 2007 now has an open to the public discussion board. Visit us at http://www.harvarderp.com