ERP Update
Following the announcement that we will be upgrading our ERP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, the Project Team have been laying the groundwork for our new system. the Project Team have been laying the groundwork for our new system. Regrettably, it’s not simply a case of saying “let’s have that one” ; a lot of prep work must go in! We are working with our existing suppliers “The Nav People”, who will start fieldwork in late January.
Our initial requirement from the Nav people is to provide flowcharts of business activity. This covers everything from the point where a customer approaches us to buy a box of clips or a large machine, right through from processing the order, sourcing the parts and labour, processing expense claims and overtime, collecting the cash and paying suppliers, and perhaps subsequently a part refund for unused parts and sending the part back to our suppliers… It’s not really possible to convey the size of the task in one sentence, but we are expecting a lot of flowcharts!
Knowing the complexity of our business and the need to engage everyone, Jono came up with the brilliant idea of “The Brown Paper” exercise. I won’t bore you with the origins of the phrase (you have Google for that). In short, it is an exercise where members of a team get together and draw pictures and charts of internal processes and documents that they currently use; and, where applicable, put in improvements, in preparation to flowchart the main processes.
We had our first Finance brown paper exercise on Tuesday 24th November, covering most of the process around machine sales and related purchases. It was a great day that got everybody thinking about why we do things in a certain way, and whether we can do them any better, as well as providing the required outputs for the ERP exercise. Working together like this was an empowering exercise, giving us insight into each other’s jobs; it also gave us the opportunity to share best practice and think about our roles and processes more critically. Another key takeaway was that every process that Finance undertakes relies on strong and proactive relationships with other departments and that we can all work to together to drive process improvements and ensure our new system is set up to do everything we want it to. On that note, all of the project team would love to have as much input from everyone around the business as possible in the new system implementation, so if you have any thoughts or ideas do please share these with your team leader, Alec, Dave, Jim, Jono, Mark or Liz.
