Implementing a new ERP system is a massive undertaking.
By the time you’re ready to go live, it can feel like you’re at the end of a long, arduous journey.
But in reality, Go Live is just the beginning – and what you do in the weeks and months afterward determines whether or not your new system becomes an asset to help your business grow and thrive…
Or a liability that drains your time and resources.
In this article, we’ll explore the 6 steps you can take after go-live to make sure you and your teams are getting maximum value from your new system.
We’ll explain what to do, but we will also explain why.
On day one, your team will not have real-life experience using the system yet.
Despite being part of a user acceptance testing or training program for the new system, their habits will still revolve around “the way we used to do things” and entire workflows will have to change. Confusion and frustration are not uncommon.
To make matters worse, the keepers of the ERP on your team, those who will keep it up and running for years to come, may be different from the team that built the new system.
If your team doesn’t understand the logic and vision that went into each element of the system, how will they be able to maintain the system?
And how will they service and upgrade it in the future.
If you stick to these 6 action items, you will put these concerns to rest – and your ERP will become a reliable, powerful extension of your entire team.
You implemented a new ERP to make things efficient and easier for your team. But before everyone can get these benefits from the system, every single department needs to know how to use it.
It’s going to take more than just one all-hands meeting where you tour through the system with everyone. People need to build new habits through practice and repetition.
This means thorough documentation isn’t just a formality, but a requirement to help train your team.
Document every critical procedure that makes the system work. For every team member, identify their individual role within the ERP and walk step by step through their responsibilities and tasks.
Keep this in a central, accessible place. There shouldn’t be one “keeper” of the system who is constantly on standby to answer simple questions that could be answered by a tutorial that’s already been made.
And when a team member is really stuck, resist the urge to complete the task for them, and retrain them on how the task should be done.
Training will take time. Stay hands-on with your approach to training and keep reinforcing how things need to be done.
Clear documentation will support this training and will allow your team to continue practicing as they go through their daily work… without spamming you with questions all the time.
These documents will also be an asset down the line when you need to get a new hire up to speed, as fast as possible. Without them, a team member could leave and take all knowledge of a critical procedure with them.
Even the so-called “simple things” need to be written down.
Don’t take any shortcuts here!
For the ERP to keep running, you need notes about why the ERP was designed the way it was (not just documentation on how everything is done).
Documenting the “why” behind each element of your system is a simple way to make sure the foundation of your ERP is always stable, no matter who is responsible for handling maintenance, changes, or updates.
Before renovating a house, a builder will consult the building’s original plans, so there are no surprises when they take a wall apart. In the same way, if you document everything that happened during implementation, it will be easier to make changes and add integrations in the future.
A lot of the time, the implementation of an ERP is contracted out. The company you worked with may not be around in a year when you want to make a critical upgrade to your system.
Without documentation, you’ll be forced to re-examine every part of your system.
You may even put in work on an integration or upgrade that already exists in the system.
Once you go-live, you have a very short window to make sure you have the backend of your ERP clearly outlined — including every customization, integration, and development.
Your system can only go as far as the documentation that supports it.
Once your new ERP is up and running, it’s tempting to add more to it right away.
Maybe you’re already seeing a spike in productivity, and you want to double down by adding even more processes to the ERP.
Maybe the system’s not working as well as you anticipated, and you want to improve it.
Maybe the changes have garnered a lot of feedback from your team, and you want to incorporate their suggestions.
In any case, making changes within the first 2-3 months after go-live is a fast way to create more problems rather than solve them.
During the 3 months after you go live, your team is still learning how to use the system. They have yet to build habits around the new workflow. Adding more changes will make it harder on them to get comfortable with the system.
Imagine spending a week learning a new process, just to hear that a new upgrade makes EVERYTHING they just learned redundant. Or finally feeling like you have a working understanding of a new system, just to find out even more has been added.
As a business owner, it’s impossible to make informed decisions about what changes are needed in the first months with a new ERP. Many of the problems that “need fixing” will be solved by themselves, as your team starts using the system more effectively. The measurable results that are coming from the system are not indicative of how the ERP will perform once everyone settles into it.
So for 30 - 90 days, sit tight and focus on full user adoption.
Make sure that your team has the training and support to be comfortable using the system daily.
Don’t worry, the opportunity to improve will come sooner than you think.
After go-live, one thing is certain:
Your team will have A LOT to say about the new ERP.
They will report bugs, make suggestions, ask questions, and note almost EVERY minor inconvenience they experience.
To keep all of this organized and centralized, put a ticketing system in place.
Certain ERP systems have a ticketing system built in. If yours doesn’t have one, a simple solution is to subscribe to a third-party ticketing system like Jira, Helpdesk, or HubSpot.
A robust ticketing system prevents feedback on the ERP from being discussed in emails, meetings, and even around the watercooler…and centralizes all those communications in one easy-to-manage place.
Without a ticketing system in place, team leaders end up wasting a large amount of time dealing with issues and requests “all over the place” rather than gathering these issues inside the ticketing system where they belong.
A solid ticketing system with full employee buy-in is a great asset to help solve any issues that crop up during the crucial period after go-live.
Once your system is in place, there are two kinds of problems to look out for:
Performance and process.
Performance issues relate to the ERP itself. Maybe a bug is causing a process not to work, or the way that system works doesn’t include all the real world steps needed to get a task done. These require technical changes to the system.
Process issues can best be described as “user error,” but you may want a gentler way to put it when discussing with your team. This is when the ERP is working as intended, but people are not using it properly (sometimes due to poor documentation or improper training).
Everything that comes through the ticketing system needs to be categorized. This will help you diagnose where the actual answer to the problem is.
Most of the time, the real problem lies below the particular issue the team member is dealing with.
And — especially in the early days — the ticketing system will be inundated with complaints.
Most of us are resistant to change. Even if the old system was holding the company back, it’s what the team is used to. When introducing new processes, many will want to just stick to “the way things always have been.”
It’s important to take this feedback, but don’t make any sudden redirects based on it (remember back to point #3). The more time people spend getting used to the new system, the more they will recognize how it has made their lives easier.
Document everything that comes up — and if the same issues comes through the ticketing system multiple times, chances are it’s a problem worth investigating.
Once you have a solid ticketing system in place to collect feedback and address problems, the next step is…
Some of the tickets will report “fires” that need your immediate attention. If a problem keeps a person from doing their job, it becomes a priority by default.
Keeping up with the “fires” is an ongoing process — so it can be easy to lose sight of the less pressing tickets.
But that doesn’t mean the “lower priority” tickets shouldn’t be addressed.
This is why it’s a great practice to sit down monthly to look at ALL of the tickets coming in.
Categorize them. See what can be done to make the ERP better across the board.
This is when we can start looking at enhancements to your system.
Maybe a process is working, but it’s performance intensive and your team has to wait a bit for their screen to load. This is a minor convenience, but it still limits efficiency and is painful to work with.
It’s not necessarily broken — and less of a priority compared to another process that doesn’t work at all — but it’s worth enhancing when you have the resources to do so.
Other suggestions for enhancements may come when someone new joins your business. With new people come new requirements, and you may consider adapting the system based on what they have experience with.
You may bring in a new controller, who is used to using OCR to scan invoices, something your ERP doesn’t currently facilitate. Their old company may have used methods far better than yours, making their suggestions invaluable.
Once you’re a few months past go-live, and full user adoption is taken care of, you can start addressing the less urgent tickets and begin making these enhancements to the system: adding new integrations and upgrades that make your ERP even more powerful.
Do all this right and you’ll fall into a continuous feedback loop.
As every team member learns the system inside and out — and the initial bugs are sorted — that’s when you can start deploying new features, integrations, and updates that squeeze more value out of your ERP.
Your team will continue placing tickets. The difference is that these will be more focused on points of improvement, rather than glaring issues that prevent your team from doing their jobs.
If you keep listening for opportunities to enhance, and are strategic about how you roll these updates out (remember to not do too much at once), you will constantly be improving your ERP.
Getting to where you are right now, with a fresh, functional ERP, was a long process. Not making regular updates is likely part of the reason why you needed to do a complete overhaul or migration in the first place — so staying vigilant with updates will give you a much longer life out of your new system.
To recap:
> Document critical processes to train your team the right way
> Document the “why” behind integrations and customizations to make sure you’re building on a solid foundation
> Resist the urge to make changes early on and focus on user adoption
> Implement a ticketing system to centralize any problem-solving
> Categorize and prioritize issues on a monthly basis to stay ahead of the game
> Create a continuous improvement plan to keep your system operating at maximum value
Keep these 6 steps in mind and you’ll dramatically improve your team’s experience with your ERP system as a whole.
And if you’re hiring an ERP consultant or implementation agency, use this article as a guide during your interview process.
Any good service provider should have a similar plan for go-live and beyond.
And if you’re looking for a team to help select, implement, or manage your ERP system — from fresh launches to maintenance and support of your current system — book a free consultation with us here and we’ll solve your problem.
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