Wrong ERP Demise Predictions Have (Only Partly) Created Skills Shortage

As reported on January 9 on VNUnet.com, a leading European IT news portal, e-business and customer relationship management (CRM) may be all the rage, but IT recruiting professionals say the demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP) professionals is hot as well. While the ERP market may still be recuperating from theY2K hangover, the predictions of its demise have been greatly exaggerated, according to organizations trying to conduct staff recruitment in the field.

Mary-Sue Rogers, who heads PriceWaterhouseCoopers' (PWC) UK technical solutions team for the consumer and industrial products sector, confirms: "We have been very busy since March. Post-Y2K, a lot of clients have kicked in with major ERP implementations." While many of these are driven by big business changes such as mergers or de-mergers, she claims that quite a few major corporations are starting their ERP projects from scratch. "A second driver is the e-thing. Everyone wants to be on the web, and we are doing quite a lot of e-enabling legacy systems for clients who do not want to do a complete upgrade." A lot of customers are also adding human resources (HR) and e-procurement modules to their existing systems and integrating them with customer relationship management (CRM)-based ones. "We are seeing it in all three sectors we focus on - SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft," Rogers explains.

Many of the projects being undertaken by PWC are sizeable, she adds, requiring between 50 and 100 staff over an 18- to 24-month period. But she claims that PWC is not the only one bidding for such work, with the traditional ERP vendors themselves also closing big deals.

Mike Milner, a recruitment consultant with ERP specialist MJM Recruitment, adds: "ERP software alone no longer provides competitive advantage. The real advantage, as far as the user is concerned, derives from order fulfillment." While he still sees demand for pre- and post-sales staff among the traditional ERP installed base, he also believes that start-ups and pre-flotation companies focusing on the emerging market for order fulfillment applications, are interested in skilled people who can sell and implement them. Fulfillment systems sit on top of the conventional plumbing provided by ERP software. "Such companies are looking for people with a fundamental understanding of ERP and how to sell complex solutions into the enterprise - and explain the corporate benefits," Milner claims.

But Mike Kensington, an executive at recruiter Prism, confirms that ERP vendors and consultancies are chasing a finite population. "They are looking at ERP from a different angle now. They are looking to integrate it with the web, front-office applications and CRM. They want people with experience of using e-modules or integrating these products. Consultancies across the board want ERP skills, with some exposure to new products such as Broadvision, Vantive, Clarify, Siebel and Commerce One. And such people are as scarce as hens' teeth."

PWC's Rogers confirms that the company is looking for staff that can handle all aspects of ERP, but, like other big firms, it has struggled to recruit them over the last six months. "It's a more mature marketplace and we want people who have 'been there and done it'. We are not looking for foundations to build on, but implementation experience of any of the big packages. The market is very hot and it's not easy to find the right sort of people. In more traditional ERP areas we have significant chunks of work that I can't resource without hiring contractors," Rogers adds.

But one of the issues is that the ERP sector is no longer perceived as attractive. "The press and recruiters hyped e-business and tried to build an early grave for the ERP side, but ERP is alive and kicking. If you don't get the ERP right, e-anything is not going to work because it relies on having a solid data model and set of processes to put the next layer on," she claims. But it is quite difficult to find such people. In fact, some customers have delayed implementing systems, not because of a problem with the technology, but because they cannot find qualified, experienced personnel.

Market Impact

ERP's vitality is on the mend, which should be a relief for all involved parties: vendors, enterprises, and consultants/system integrators. This is by no means a surprise for TEC, since we have been noting this trend for awhile (for more information, see ERP Demand Being Re-heated, Will That Wretched ERP Finally Die? Possibly, But Only the Acronym!, ERP Getting a New Breath of Fresh Air in Europe, and Big ERP Players Courting Government Agencies) and have strongly opposed the theory of ERP obsolescence touted by many at that time.

With all the recent attention being paid to e-commerce and CRM, some may feel that ERP is a pass technology. ERP, however, remains as necessary as ever. Nonetheless it does need to evolve to thrive in the Internet age.

The fact remains that the majority of ERP vendors have been taken aback during the last two years by a combined effect of the following major factors:

* The Y2K-caused market slowdown

* The Fortune 500 market saturation

* A bad reputation for exorbitantly expensive and protracted implementations without producing touted benefits

* The market's attention shift to e-business, supply chain management (SCM), client relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), and other extended-ERP applications

We feel that the majority of vendors tackled those difficulties with appropriate, time-and-money-consuming counteractions like:

* Developing more implementation-friendly and industry-tailored products attractive to the untapped small-to-medium market

* Expanding product functionality to cover the above-mentioned hot applications

* Face-lifting (web-enabling) or fundamentally revamping the product architecture to be Internet based

* And More

The recent upbeat quarterly and/or annual results from most of Tier 1 players including even once written off Baan, particularly in terms of license revenue increase despite the general economy slowdown, demonstrate the market is on its way back.

The basic functionality of ERP and the Internet (and its associated e-commerce technologies) are different. While ERP is an integrated transaction-processing system that handles major information within the four-walls of an enterprise, the Internet is primarily a distribution medium and does not entail a lot of processing. Although the information flow through the Internet is becoming more amenable to transaction-processing all the time, particularly with the advent of new technologies like Java and XML, it is still mostly processed by applications, ERP packages being the best example. The great benefit of ERP is integration- enabling all users to use the same information and business processes and obtain the same results when the system is queried.

While there is a myriad of exciting point-specific applications with a strong Internet orientation, these applications do not currently provide strong information integration among companies. Integration with ERP has never been easily achievable, although it is generally worth the trouble. The integration allows firms to offer services such as available-to-promise (ATP) inventory, which means that customers do not order 'pies in the sky'. If procurement systems are not integrated with sales, manufacturing and logistical systems, ATP is just a teasing hallucination. A lot of e-commerce vendors cannot provide it at this stage, despite their highly Web-enabled applications. Therefore, the merits of ERP will prevail for a long time to come.

Problems Persist

Our belief is that the current shortage of quality ERP consultants is only partly attributable to wrong ERP demise predictions and subsequent (in)voluntary defections of disconcerted ERP consultants into more promising areas like CRM. Some attrition should also be written off to the severe travel requirements and consequent burnout and personal life sacrifices. For that reason, some have opted for internal consulting within a particular enterprise. Others have found a sweet spot as pre-sales consultants for ERP vendors and their channel; it involves much less traveling, while it requires extensive experience and creativity to tackle prospective users' issues on the fly.

The main reason for the skills shortage, however, lies in the higher market awareness and self-education of users before jumping on an ERP implementation journey. Early ERP implementations often proved to be costly and time-consuming, if not with disastrous consequences. Several years ago, one of the main drivers for ERP use was Y2K-compliance. Now clients' focus has shifted to achieving apparent business benefits. Many companies have become disillusioned with multiple-year implementation schedules, budget-breaking costs and promised benefits that never do occur.

A consequent shift in the market is the demand for so-called "ERP plus" projects, as companies are now trying to integrate ERP software with other applications that focus on superior internal coordination, with links both up and down the supply chain. An enterprise which has already implemented an ERP system, may now want information transparency for everybody - its suppliers and/or customers, in sales and/or production planning, product lifecycle management or shared design and research and development departments.

Companies are hoping to resurrect that missing return on investment (ROI) through integrating existing ERP software with other business applications. Finally, a number of companies that grow by acquisitions will have to install ERP systems in newly acquired businesses. ERP systems are being extended to a variety of areas: facilitating supply chain wide employee and business partners self-service, clarifying the details of business changes like mergers and moving beyond corporate headquarters to other business units.

Therefore, while there is still a wealth of opportunities in the ERP space, they require much more comprehensive individual skill sets rather than being an "expert" in a particular application or a narrow field. Those who will succeed will know how to interface/integrate ERP with supply-chain, CRM and e-commerce components - or even how to integrate different ERP modules - both on a program level and at the business process architecture level. Hence, jobs in ERP consulting are increasingly demanding more experience and business sophistication than ever, as the market matures and morphs. Consultants who have particular functional expertise in areas like warehouse management, quality management and procurement, will still fare well. Such knowledge is critical because much of an ERP implementation involves aligning business processes with the software's capabilities.

Consulting and recruiting firms will see a mature but ongoing market for experienced ERP professionals who can work in Web-based environments. Business experience in specific industries and business areas such as finance and human resources (HR) should vouch for even more opportunities. Knowing the fine points of accounting and inventory control or the particular needs of for example, banking or automotive industries, contributes to a well-rounded skill set for IT recruiters in ERP positions as applications developers, software architects, project managers, engineers and marketing specialists. ERP specialists, who possess a variety of strengths, including strong communications and interpersonal skills, will continue to be valuable to their organizations. Given all the above-mentioned profile requirements, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the reasons for existing ERP skills shortage.

SOURCE :http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/wrong-erp-demise-predictions-have-only-partly-created-skills-shortage-16300/

Project Management Communication: Developing a Plan (Part 2 Of 3)

Frequently when project teams convene to discuss post-project reviews, project team members feel that if communication had been better, the project would have gone smoother. The reason communication in project management is crucial is because it can impact a project’s success, and it is very important that project managers use the right types of communication during a project.

Types of Project Management Communication

The issues project managers (PMs) have to communicate about on a regular basis include

1. buy-in and acceptance of major project decisions and milestones
2. acquiring resources and managing budgets
3. providing status reports on project schedule and deliverables
4. providing classroom training and preparing user guides
5. negotiations with third-party software vendors
6. presentations to project sponsors and stakeholders
7. mapping current processes and validating their findings
8. development of process models and managing project documentation
9. kickoff meetings
10. executive reports
11. presentations
12. financial reports
13. issue logs
14. risk logs
15. change request logs
16. role-responsibility matrix
17. project organization chart

Given the nature of the communication models above, it is clear that listening is of equal importance to asking the correct questions and validating observations. Some of the challenges that project teams face can be attributed to the short-term nature of the projects themselves. These challenges may include working with individuals that the team has never worked with before, or working with individuals from other business units or from other geographic locations, where cultural differences can surface.

Tools and Techniques to Facilitate Communication

To overcome some of the challenges mentioned above, the following unique delivery methods and tools can be established in a short time frame.

1. Establishing a Project Managment Team Web Site

This is where all project-related documentation, including forms and templates, can reside and be accessed by project team members. The type of information to post on the web site includes team members’ names, title, photo, and if possible, a brief bio. Other items to include are the scope of the project, the charter work breakdown schedule (charter WBS), and the various phases of the project life cycle, including deliverables, milestones, and responsible parties. Project templates, an organizational change management plan, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and quality assurance (QA) documents and schedule should also be made available on the web site.

2. Frequency and Types of Meetings

The type of meeting will dictate its frequency as well as the location of key individuals and team members. Meetings that should be held daily include the review meeting, where team members compare results on assigned tasks. This type of meeting should have a scripted agenda and allow enough time for details and round table Q&A. On occasion, individuals can break off into smaller meetings to continue a discussion.

Another type of daily meeting is the updates made to project sponsors, where issues that require escalation (additional resources) can be discussed. More formal meetings with executive management can occur on a weekly or monthly basis. Project team members’ day-to-day work requires a decentralized, less micro-managed approach to permit the flexibility and latitude needed to obtain information that drives issues forward.

3. Additional Examples of Project Management Communication

Internal newsletters help to generate enthusiasm and awareness of a project. Visiting other divisions that have already rolled out projects is another way to build awareness and to plan activities for subsequent rollout locations. Press releases sent to industrial or trade magazines can be a useful way to generate publicity and raise the organization’s profile throughout the industry, thus building awareness ofthe organization’s products and services.

4. Communication Tools

a) E-mails: Ideal for relaying short responses or for alerting team members of a particular issue or a meeting change. Number of e-mails should be kept to a minimum; long, rambling e-mails should be avoided.

b) Telephone: Used for urgent issues, to communicate resolutions or schedule changes, or to obtain clarification on any outstanding item. Do not leave long voice-mail messages.

c) Status reports: These can be produced either daily or weekly, and can be distributed either by e-mail or be posted on the project web site. Status reports should be scripted in a bullet format. They can be used to introduce new team members, or they can serve as reminders about an outstanding issue, indicating the person or groups responsible for resolution of that issue.

d) Virtual meetings: When team members are spread across geographical distances and time zones, holding virtual meetings daily using such tools as MS NetMeeting is an ideal way to move issues forward and to report progress. Schedules can then be updated and distributed. In addition, presenting graphics and documents online is an effective way to keep the goals of the project in focus, and an efficient way to train individuals remotely if need be.

e) MSN Messenger: For team members that need to be reached frequently or on an ad hoc basis, using a messenger service such as MSN Messenger is a convenient way to communicate regularly to resolve issues or discuss concerns.

f) Video conferencing: Organizations that do not have this capability can pay a fee and use external facilities. This conferencing can be useful for delivering executive briefs or providing training. It is more cost- and time-effective than flying individuals to specific locations.

g) Blogs: Useful for delivering informal information or humorous messages to lighten the team’s mood. Blogs can also raise the profiles of individual competencies in the project team to a wider audience.
How Poor Communication Can Derail a Project

If training is performed as an afterthought, then all the hard work done on a project can come to a screeching halt, as tools will not be used properly, which can result in dire consequences for the organization.Other ways projects can lose focus is if valuable resources are unnecessarily tied up in meetings. A project charter—the document that defines the scope of the project and its anticipated outcome—and deliverable that are unclear or not consistent can also lead to negative downstream effects. Most IT projects use standard waterfall methodologies such as Agile. It is important that team members understand this approach.Another way to avoid derailment of a project is to avert scope creep and instead, focus only on the elements agreed upon in the WBS document. A project’s activities are indicated in the WBS. Issues not related to the current tasks—that use up resources for irrelevant activity—can be dealt with in another phase of a project. If an activity is not in the WBS, then resources should not be assigned to it. The PM is responsible for managing the WBS.

SOURCE :http://blog.technologyevaluation.com/blog/2008/04/14/project-management-communication-developing-a-plan-part-2-of-3/