Most organizations have strategies and objectives in place to drive competitiveness. Many have made commendable strides in streamlining processes and implementing ERP. Yet every day we all still live or at least witness some amount of workplace dysfunction. Increasingly, it permeates many of our nation’s corporate and government organizations in varying degrees of severity.
Action items assigned in meetings drag on past due dates. Important decisions repeatedly get delayed. Inadequate performance doesn’t have consequences. Departments point fingers at one another instead of effectively communicating. Such ineffectiveness diminishes organizations' ability to harness the true power of their ERP investment. More importantly, it erodes the morale and performance of the strong employees and ultimately profit potential.
Organizational ineffectiveness takes many forms. The good news is that, often times, its root causes—once identified and assessed—can be fixed with specific actions that will have a positive ripple effect on executing the overall strategy. When helping clients scope and correct their inefficiencies, CherryRoad often finds improved discipline in one or more of the following critical areas will have the greatest effect:
For one client, we found that although the ERP system had taken data out of silos, staff members didn’t have a view beyond their own functional area. Even with carefully designed processes in place, purchasing didn’t recognize the value of capturing certain vendor data, creating the need for accounts payable staffers to collect missing information from vendors. General accounting faced a similarly frustrating situation. They spent excessive time recoding on the back end because staff in other departments didn’t realize the importance of referencing proper account codes.
CherryRoad helped finance management define and create highly disciplined Cross Functional Teams that were tasked with solving and averting problems, along with developing metrics to measure their success. The team effectively executed procedural, training, and communications improvements in a variety of interdependent areas that affect their performance—including proper coding and data collection.
Without strong business disciplines in place, implementing ERP and other sophisticated systems could create as many problems as they fix. That’s not much of a return on investment. To learn more about becoming more effective by instilling business discipline, contact us at info@cherryroad.com.