United States Army Enterprise Resource Planning

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UNITED STATES ARMY

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING (TDEI13)

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QUESTION 2:  What where  the key implementation considerations that were addressed as part of the planning process, especially related to using an integrated ERP and transforming the culture?

As it is stated through the document, a good practice in culture switching it is vital to ERP implementing project success. The organization should be ready for integration, which means being structured in a flexible and functional way so as to make the most of the ERP system,  and every departments or areas must have gained capabilities to share knowledge. As implementing and developing a new ERP system within a company it is not a short-term project, but it is an ongoing process throughout the whole life of the system, in order to enhance it. It runs in parallel with the continuous changes in the organization and all  in-house experience and insight acquired can bring about improvement in the ERP system.  

Holding the ERP system up-to-date to meet organization’s needs it is essential to avoid system obsolescence. But, it would  even more important to realize how the system can be adapted to the association or the degree with which an association can be adapted to the system requirements.

Army organization has a peculiar and deep-rooted traditions, manners and behaviors which makes changes harder than in other associations. Even though isomorphism can be affect the Army, these are less frequent than in other institutions. Army has a fairly rigid  structures and pyramidal information channels where the communication flows are geared. Therefore, the need of a flexible organization when an ERP system is deployed is not fulfilled in that situation.

Other important issue could be how to fit some regulations and constraints. These could be the necessity of reliable computing  security systems and the lack of transparency. Information retrieved from the Army should be confidential and treated with extremely care. Some kind of data could be aimed at a certain level or responsible who makes decisions based on them.

Thus, it is acknowledge that an Army  is an organization prone to stability and the decision making is concentrated on the higher ranks which are not always interested in innovations. Moreover, analyzing results are a typical measure to assess the association throughput which might leads to question its usefulness by reluctant bosses. They usually refuse to spend time, human resources and money in projects like these. These conditions, thereby, make difficult the integration of a ERP system  and consultors could be stuck when determining whether it is better to adapt the institution to ERP system or the other way around.

Changing roles inside such a variable structure as a military institution is really common and could be an obstacle when somebody is needed to rule a long-term project like that. Besides the strong believe in the benefits of deploying such a tedious system, the responsible also needs to persuade its subordinates to the advantages of ERP system, even more when the way of carrying out certain simple activities is altered and employees are not familiar with the system and it can be perceived as a manipulator.

In conclusion, I would suggest breaking down some barriers in order to enable communication among different stakeholders, both intern and extern. As neither any consultant or vendor is not used to cooperate with such as traditional and particular institution nor that institution is not used to deal with innovation and IT projects (prevent situations such as “Understanding ERP system implementation in a hospital by analyzing stakeholders” report), it is essential to stablish close communication. Before taking up it, drilling down stakeholders and mapping out interaction planning to forecast problems and to avoid misunderstandings.  Stablishing a set of general project objectives,  departmental, requirements, benefits and constraints which might lead to technical system specification, determining relevant objections to the project and how to outweigh them, training period and set conferences to convey why the project is developing (embracing  benefits and drawbacks) and how the system works are issues which are needed to go through.