Specialization 

Design and implementation of the Informational ERP-system (designed for enterprises) represent a complicated and resource-intensive process. The basis for emerging of such ideas is the situation that concerns processes of conduction within a Company. The more branches a Company has, the more actual is the matter of simplifying the processes of management and relationships with top-managers by means of special devices.

The basic thing that the owners of a company pay attention to (while considering the possibilities of investing such project) is the payback and rationality (both technical and economical) of the project.

In spite of the fact that nowadays it is very difficult to estimate exactly the economical value and effectiveness of a data project (due to some economical and vital factors which are typical for Russian Federation), there are some criteria which determine the decision.

Some criteria are objective and well-known. Some of them have economical character. For example:

• The estimation of the amount of non-liquid inventories, as a result – blocked financial instruments, the problem of controlling such situation and a well-timed suppression of the growth of such assets;
• The growth of accounts receivable, the absence of instruments that stimulates well-timed payments, as a result – the possible deficiency of liquidity;
• The estimation of the goods stock turnover, the problem of lowering the goods stock in general, the problem of turnover increase with respect to the most liquid goods, the problem of excluding the non-liquid goods from the turnover;
• The estimation of the cost of a turnover unit (a unit of inventories) in comparison with the same estimation of the branch in general;
• The estimation of the effective use of private financial instruments and financial instruments being outsourced. The problems of financial planning, lowering of the amount of credit resources outsourced, etc.

Other types of criteria are subjective, but they are of the same material significance:

• The optimization of the processes of extra cost forming, the problem of decreasing the duration of the process, excluding the unnecessary sections from a process, as a result – lowering of the process’ cost – thus, in general, the competitive capacity of a company increases;
• The problem of searching and determining the “persons who are to blame” in case of essential losses or nonoptimal management activities which occur in flow of standard business activities of the company. There are many persons who are to blame, but it is impossible to find the real one…;
• The problem of tracing the mistakes in the flow of the organized process as soon as these mistakes appear. These mistakes may result in significant material losses;
• The problem of dealing with possible violations of the normal functioning of business process, in controversy with the determined rules.

Subjective or objective estimation (at least, partial) of the given factors from the point of view of annual losses in value terms may form a reference point of the amount of investments in the data system. The aim and purpose of this system is the exclusion of losses (tangible and estimated) in terms of every-day activity of the company.

A competent organization of the data system in terms of the architecture of coverage of all business processes and their participants allows to create a wide variety of criteria that can serve as a universal language, both on the level of managers and on the level of simple executives, estimating the activity of each participant and the whole process as well.

In other words, the automation of any process within a company, together with the reconsideration of the optimality of the process flow, require the development of the criteria that allow to estimate the effectiveness of the process. At the same time the closer these criteria are to the very process (or its participant) and the less the labor-intensiveness of fixing these criteria within a system is – the higher is the effectiveness of the functioning of these criteria (process KPI).

The accessibility of the results of estimation of the processes’ KPI to all its participants (from executives to top managers), the responsibility for the given KPI being fixed, is able to form the general understanding of the process’ effectiveness and to determine a problem or ”a person who is to blame”. At the same time, due to the data system, it is able to discover any deviations from the normal flow of a given process. It allows to react to such situations in a corresponding way and excludes neglecting of a problem.

The additional and, perhaps, the most decisive factor is the guarantee that the project will be completed successfully and the data system will be used productively without any negative consequences for company business.

The projective experience of Teamldea Company shows that only the two following factors are the basic guarantees for successful project:

• The high level of involving top managers and owners of the company into the development of data system;
• The proficiency of the project participants from the side of a consulting company.

Only the maximum of cooperation on the projective stage will allow to avoid forming of any illusions (from one side) and to perform adequate estimation of both the possibilities of the system and possible necessary corrections of the usual business processes within a company (from the other side).

The members of Teamldea Company are ready to share their experience in developing the projects of implementation the ERP scale on the basis of SAP products line. We are ready to discuss the existing presuppositions, to answer honestly the most acute questions, to organize presentations concerning the most interesting matters of the possible project, to introduce the estimation of the time constraints and costs based on the discussed feature set of a project.

In view of the experience and branch-wise specification (Distribution and Retail), we can guarantee the successful completion of the ERP project in this very branch. In this respect the Teamldea Company has its own branch-wise decisions and groundworks which will harmoniously support the functional deficiency of system standards.