Maximizing Return on Investment Using ERP Applications

PROVIDING BUSINESS VALUE TO AN ENTERPRISE

The steps to providing business value to an enterprise include the following:

1. Identify improvement opportunities.

2. Identify current Return on Investment projects/programs.

3. Identify ownership issues.

4. Identify probable causes.

5. Design new business processes.

6. Identify areas of conflict between functional areas.

7. Build a believable return on investment case.

8. Establish a governance process at the executive level.

Identify Improvement Opportunities

Identifying improvement opportunities were discussed briefly in Chapter 2. The point is that in virtually every organization, the areas in which organizations know they have an opportunity for improvement are well known. In many cases, these opportunities may not be articulated for political reasons, but they are known. In others, the opportunities are articulated incessantly. Yet these opportunities are never discussed with the intent to build programs for which leaders will be held accountable.

There are many reasons for this that have evolved over the years, and the results are predictable. There is a principle in the industrial safety field that states: workers will always live up to minimum expectations, which means, for example, if the penalty for not wearing safety glasses is to be told to put them on, then the expectation is not that workers will wear them, but that they will put them on every time they are told. The same principle applies to developing, committing ...