Why and How should Prospective ERP Buyers Proactively Participate in ERP Demos?

Julius Rassou
11-Jul-2019 05:53:51

Why and How should Prospective ERP Buyers Proactively Participate in ERP Demos?

The major recipient of the pros or cons of an ERP deployment is its Buyer, while the Vendor gets to bask in the credits of successful implementation or lament trying to put things together in case of a failure. This fact alarmingly increases the responsibility of the buyer in ensuring the implementation success of an ERP, though it is widely believed that it is the duty of the Vendor in all earnestness. So, identifying the most compatible ERP product that is furnished by the most amicable ERP Vendor is pivotal in accomplishing an ERP implementation success.

ERP demos provide the vital ground for companies for assessing and deciding the feasibility of aligning an ERP with its process flow. For a Vendor, ERP demo is a part of the Sales Process, but for the Buyer, it is a preview to finalize a voluminous lifetime investment that would decide the future of the business. Hence, preparing for an ERP demo, if not more important, is at least equally important for the Buyer as the Vendor.

The ERP Buyer is thus obligated to make adequate preparations and muster the relevant team to proactively participate in ERP demos. Doing so shall certainly enlighten the core team of the technical tenacity of the ERP in question and reveal the range to which its architectural versatility could be scaled to digitize the business process as desired.

The following are the three major stipulations for prospective ERP Buyers to make the best out of ERP demos:

Self Evaluation

Companies, before deciding on an ERP product, should conduct a 'realistic' documenting of its internal processes. Here the word 'realistic' is intentionally included because in most cases all the tasks involved in a procedure are not revealed by the stakeholders in fear of losing their position to the technology in prospect. Such resistance might simply wreck the very assessment of any ERP solution.

So, the buyer has to orchestrate a stringent self-evaluation to extract a fool-proof document of the company's business processes. This, in turn, will help them to muster the right questions for the Vendor and ascertain the best ERP software. The document shall also help in the smoother implementation of the ERP at a later stage.

Identify, Assimilate, and Educate the Core Team

Selection of a core team at the buyer's end is a definite requisite for the success of any ERP Implementation. The core team should consist of key stakeholders with hands-on experience and first-hand information from each department of the business. The team, thus mustered, must have clarity on the interactive functions between their department and others and vice versa. Also, the members, by themselves or by virtue of training, should be able to envision and explain the outcome of the ERP implementation in terms of the digital competency desired from the perspective of their functional area.

Design, Agenda, and Evaluation of ERP Demo

An ERP demo from the Vendor's point of view will be to pitch the product's special features on a generic note and augment the same with their best practices, proven performance, and versatility in general. But, these are not the factors that would dictate the ERP implementation success. So, to ensure the compatibility of an ERP with the business process, the Buyer should enlighten the Vendor of their unique business process requirements before the delivery of the product demonstration. This should direct the Vendors of robust ERP software like Roadmap ERP to define the demo presentation along the line of the business-specific blueprint that is drawn in accordance with the Buyer's expectations.

All the ERP demos thus presented have to be evaluated by the core team to ensure the selection of the best-fit ERP solution for the business. This mandates the participation of each and every member of the core team in each and every demo without disrupting the everyday business workflow. Such, strategic scheduling of the demos can be slated to perfection only if it is done by the Buyer. Hence it is only right that the Buyer dictates the schedules for ERP Demos leaving the Vendor to choose between options if provided.

Closing Note

Roadmap ERP understands and believes the necessity of such active participation of its prospective clients in its Demos. We at Roadmap ensure that each one of our ERP Demos is a learned digital framework that is designed to perfectly align with the gap that the respective prospect intends to bridge through the benefit of an ERP. If the prospect were to become a client, the Demo thus designed doubles as a pilot blueprint for the Implementation and Development projects.

Why and How should Prospective ERP Buyers Proactively Participate in ERP Demos?