 WebProWorld Marketing Forum |
Google
not indexing new pages
I'm sure this is a common gripe, but I'm perplexed as I recently revamped a website for a client. Only 3 of their pages had been indexed by Google. We took down their old site and put up a holding page as he was rebranding and didn't want the old site there any more. The holding page was indexed...
Teaching
a community ed class on web marketing
This fall I am going to teach a class through our local community education program
on "Getting your website noticed". I do have a lot of information from this forum.
I have been doing a search on google, but it seems like every site I go to is
just a link to other sites...
|
|
08.03.05
ERP Implementation: Success Factors
 By Andrew Karasev
As seeing large number of implementations - in our case these are Microsoft Business Solutions Products: Great Plains, MS CRM, Navision - we would like to give you our opinion on what should you consider to do to secure implementation success.
These principles should work as for large corporation as well as for midsize and
even small business. We will not be talking about old-wisdom, which you know from
the college classes or business school about management and staff involvement
into the decision making, brainstorming, etc. - we'll be ERP specific .
· In-house Technical Expertise. Well, complication of computer
networking and its security, plus the fact that SQL is now standard for the database
platform (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, etc.), plus internet connection line
and its support make it inevitable to have IT expertise in the company - this
might be the whole department or just coming or part time networking consultant.
Our experience indicates that the lack of internal or always available onsite
specialist decreases the chances of success dramatically. And the explanation
should be simple to this fact. Nowadays ERP system requires minor or major customization,
integration and reporting and all these steps in turn require patient coding and
testing in the test environment or on the sample dataset/database.
Write 10,000 lines of code in 10 minutes!
Iron Speed Designer – Free Evaluation |
|
· Dedicated ERP Administrator. This is true that users could
be trained and would know how to use the system. However typical ERP has its own
life and somebody should assign new users, setup security roles for them, modify
reports and makes custom reports available for the users, setup printers, try
first to resolve the issue by looking at the techknowledge database, and so on.
ERP Administrator doesn't have to be IT guru - she/he needs to be trained on how
to administer the program and how to deal with technical support. Image for a
moment that if you take out manager from the company - even if all the employees
have excellent training and used to work for the company numerous years - you
will still expect performance degradation. The same should be said about ERP system.
· Expect Certain Number of Issues. IT industry is not yet mature
and it is probably sad, but the reality, that even very experienced consultant,
developer, programmer makes errors - or your software environment has something
that make the custom piece malfunction. When you see the consultant being persistent
in resolving your issues - please be patient and try to help him or just don not
make him nervous.
· Trust Your Consultant. When you decide on somebody to implement
the system, you need from this moment on to trust him and let him have high security
access to the ERP hosting server. Complex security makes consultant suffer from
getting connected, installing the patches or custom pieces. So many times we were
spinning our wheels in trying to test new custom business logic, when, say Windows
or MS SQL Server security was restricting us to do the actions we needed.
· Do Not Overnegotiate. This is from the sales cycle. When you
purchase the system - you should purchase the software and implementation from
the same company - otherwise your partner will place you on the second priority
list. We saw numerous examples, when client purchases Microsoft CRM licenses from
nation-wide distributor, and then is trying to find somebody to implement the
system. Also if you are cutting software prices - you may see your consulting
company rescheduling the work for you in favor of somebody else.
About the Author:
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA
nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based
in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida and having locations
in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com),
he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. |
