I have been teaching Oracle Applications for quite sometime now and have seen students with varied flavours. Not all have become successful in ERP career. So I thought to address the question on what it would really take to become a successful ERP consultant.
Career in ERP Consulting is quite interesting and rewarding as well. There are lot of people, both experienced and fresh, trying to get into a career in ERP.
Some reasons why people try to get into ERP career
- They are not satisfied with the current job or just need a change and wanting to explore the oppertunities that looks more greener.
- ERP is being implemented in the office that they are working currently . They feel that learning ERP will make them more successful in their current job.
- Students who are fresh from college and are looking to learn ERP application and make a career out of it.
- Passion to be a consultant and meeting people to give solution.
- By chance; they were at the right place at the right time and got into an ERP career.
Who becomes successful?
I have seen people making successful career in ERP who are belonging to each of the above categories. But unfortunately, I have also seen people failing. So what it takes to be successful ? Is ERP applications so difficult to master? Is the application really a monster as perceived to be from outside?
I would say that your effort to figure out what is in application is just 30 percent of your effort. Remaining 70% of your efforts is to understand the concepts and the business processes. So it is very obvious where people fail in an ERP career. Understanding the business language and translating the business requirements into a well defined process(70%) and mapping the same to the ERP application (30%), is the work of an ERP consultant.
To be very honest for the last 5 years of my ERP career, I was more on the 70% bracket and was aware of 10% of the remaining 30%. I used to work with my customers to define their process and even help them re-engineer their exiting processes. My customers used to love me for the solutions that I provided in Oracle ERP. This was not because I was an expert in Oracle ERP, but it was because of my clear understanding of their business processes. If a consultant comes out of a process discussion meeting, by summarizing his understanding of the customers business process correctly, it means he has sealed his position with his customer. If I have to break the 30% further, I would say 10% goes to your knowledge of what can be done and what cannot be done in ERP ( on specific module). Remaining 20% is the details of the module. If you are very good at the first 70% and 10% of the remaining, you would be surely successful in the career.
As a trainer in ERP, I tell all my students to go to 5000 feet level or even 10000 feet level to understand the concept or the process. It is a must for all the consultant to go to this level and look at the broader picture before working on a solution in ERP. You really don't need to be at a ground level, leave that job to consultants working for you or alternatively, you can easily open the application and figure out the configuration or transactions within the ERP application.
So what it takes be part of the failure team in the ERP career?
- People who can not demonstrate their expertise on the first 70%.
- People really working very hard, but are not ready to come out of the reamining 30% bracket.
- People who love to work at the ground level and not ready to take a flight to go to the 5000 feet or 10000 feet level.
There are other below mentioned optional requirements that would help in making a successful ERP consultant, but I would not consider them a must for those who are in the 70% + 10% bracket.
- Communication Skills
- Work experience & subject matter expertise ( though people in 70% bracket will surely will be an SME)
- Excel knowledge
- inter-personnel skill
- Hard Work
- Ready to handle pressure
As a person exploring to becoming an ERP consultant, judge yourself where you stand. If you are good at the first 70%, then do not hesitate, you will surely become successful. Remember 'Figuring out what is in an ERP application is the most simple task and hardly takes anytime'.
Nice article. Good to note that one of us has become a blogger.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the concept that knowledge of the business process is essential to become a successful consultant. Of course, if you are working in a small country where highly compartmentalized expertise is not available, then the proportion of business process knowledge v/s understanding of the underlying capability of the software and the ability to draw workarounds changes dramatically. In these environments, the business processes are, in many cases inflexible, so it is up to the consultant to devise workarounds to either completely achieve the required objective or at least meet it part way. To do this, the consultant needs to know the underlying capability of the software and how it interacts with its ecosystem primarily the database as opposed to mere product knowledge.
As you say, I need to know the business objective and I need to be able to translate it to a technical process (Business process understanding.) Beyond this, I need to be able to get the system to do a few things it was not originally designed to do - this is done mostly by way of workarounds and in some cases customization.
In 10 + Years of ERP implementation, I have never had a project where the customer totally accepted the product as it was. This could be because the geographies I worked in are not the geographies where these products were designed in and so what was viewed as business best practice in the country of origin was not feasible in the country where the product was being actually implemented and so - workarounds and customization.
Having said that, One of the defining factors of a successful implementation is - Management of customer expectation. Sales will set it high in order to close the deal. The implementation team has to manage it and bring it down closer to reality. The real fun is if you are the consultant who has completed the sale and then you are assigned to implement the site. This is when things that you say during the sales process can come back to maul you. I have been there several times and so I pitch my sales quite softly....
Moni, It is wonderful that you have chosen to start a blog and I am really happy. Your points are well presented and well taken. I have written my opinions in the hope of generating some discussion on this.
Su you are right when it comes to workarounds or customizations. An ERP consultant should not just be aware of what the system can do but also be very clear on what the system can not do. Workarounds and customizations are mostly not avoidable, though I was lucky to work on one of the implementations some years back, where the customer went with a policy of zero customization. Imagine the fun that we would have had in such implementation. Convincing the end user was a big challenge.
ReplyDeleteBack to 70 + 30 logic, here again the workaround & customizations etc.. comes at the very end to answer the question of "How?". The 70% still is the question of "What?" and "Why?".
You have well said on the importance of managing the customer expectation. This is a big topic by itself. May be my next topic of the blog will be to discuss specifically on managing the customer expectations and also managing the scope change.
Narayanan
ReplyDeleteCan you tell me which ERP is now doing good in the Market?
Balaji Subramaniam
There are a lot of ERPs catering to their own market very effectively. Currently though SAP has the most market share while Oracle is not very far behind. Especially, with Oracle taking over peoplesoft, BaaN etc..and the coming up with Fusion.
DeleteVery well said. You have provided the most informative and helpful information. I really learned a lot. To implement erp project organization must perform an honest assessment of various business needs.ERP project plan is built using a project management package that permits one to focus on planned activities from various perspectives.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing such a nice blog...
It is 2016 and someone here still finds it helpful. Thanks everyone.
ReplyDeleteIt is 2016 and someone here still finds it helpful. Thanks everyone.
ReplyDeleteThanks IIker to let me know. Really appreciate this. Thanks, Ram
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