ERP? To get started, a holistic understanding of the business system

    I already wrote this topic in the sandbox, only there, unfortunately, no pictures came out, so I repeat)
    Companies today are fragmented, business goals, processes, results are often little related. The business works by inertia, few people think about a high-level understanding of their company. But when the time comes for automation - to implement a CRM or even an ERP system you still need to start from the very top. Automation often acts as an impetus for building an integrated system.
    I offer a checklist for checking the company's readiness for automation :
    1. Strategy
    2. Business model
    3. Social architecture
    4. Business processes
    5. Technical architecture
    6. Results


    So
    1. For a holistic understanding of the business system, first of all, you need to find out the goals of the company and its strategy, how it intends to achieve these goals. Here a situation is possible where the owners and management of a business are different people and each has his own goals, his own “local” tasks, and there is no talk of any strategy. In this case, no ERP system can be discussed either. It is necessary to launch a consulting project for management in order to form a unified vision of the company.
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    2. Next, we look at how the business model of the company is built, namely:
    • Activities
    • Suggested Benefits
    • Customer relationship
    • Customer segments
    • Cash flows
    • Sales channels
    • Core resources
    • Cost structure
    • Main partners

    If on one of the points there is no clear unambiguous understanding - see point one.
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    3. The foundation of any company is people . It is necessary to clearly represent the personnel policy and accepted practice in the team. Social architecture determines the composition of the staff, skills and abilities, habits in work and in relations with customers, suppliers and other partners, feedback between all levels of management and execution.
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    Nowhere without communication! A clear organizational structure should be.
    4. The logical structure of the network of processes and each individual process. Employees must understand the essence of their operations, the relationships and the consequences of their actions on subsequent links in the chain. We need to understand not so much how certain operations are done, it is more important to understand why they are done and why they are made, because in the future information system the answer to the question “How?” may be completely different.
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    5. Prior to starting an automation project, it is important to know the “ technical condition”"object. Electric and telecommunication channels, servers, routers, providers, then we look at the level above - workplace hardware, operating systems, databases, applied infrastructure software, then applied business systems where operations are currently ongoing and, finally, the means of communication, through which employees interact with each other and the outside world
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    6. If at the first stage everything is in order with goals and strategy, then here we should see the result . Well, we are exactly doing what we need, and most importantly, our clients need. From the first stage, KPIs come down here, here we measure according to certain criteria what we received and transmit to all previous levels -To get this we need and enough of the available system at each level?
    If the answer is “ Yes ”, then we do not need any ERP system, we will think about it when we see or predict a real limitation.
    If the answer is “ No ”, we initiate a comprehensive automation project, where the bottleneck is the highest priority, and complex in order to try on all the components of the business system so as not to lose a holistic understanding of the company.
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