Page 167 - DCAP302_ENTERPRISE_RESOURCE_PLANNING

Unit 8: ERP Implementation Lifecycle

training plan strategy notes

1. Identify different users who require training
2. Conduct training needs assessment and skill gap analysis

3. Document requirements for the training team
(a) Training development schedule

Task “Organizations with higher proportions of new employees may find ERP
implementation easier.” Why?

8.5 maintaining erp

ERP maintenance is defined as post-implementation activities undertaken from the time the
system goes live until it is retired from production.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) maintenance and upgrade activities are receiving much
attention in ERP-using organizations. Annual maintenance costs approximate 25% of initial ERP
implementation costs, and upgrade costs as much as 25-33% of the initial ERP implementation.
Still, the area of ERP maintenance and upgrade is relatively new and understudied as compared to
ERP implementation issues. Many organizations lack experience and expertise in managing ERP
maintenance and upgrade effectively. This situation is not helped by the lack of a standard ERP
maintenance model that could provide practitioners with guidelines on planning, implementing
and upgrading an ERP.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is integrated packaged software, which addresses most
fundamental business processing functionality across different functional areas and business
units, in a single software system, with single database and accessible through a unified interface
and channel of communication. ERP is distinct from traditional in-house software, in several
ways. For example: it is bought from a vendor versus built in-house; helpdesk and maintenance
support available from the vendor versus entirely internally-supported maintenance activities;
installed version replaced by choosing from readily available versions versus reengineering
or rewriting the whole system internally. These differences make clear that the organization,
management, control and execution of ERP maintenance and upgrade, are not purely internal
issues nor are they driven entirely by internal users and internal IT-staff (as is the case with in-
house software where software is built, subcontracted and/or bought from a vendor and 100%
maintained in-house). However, neither is ERP maintenance nor upgrade a 100% external matter
controlled entirely by the vendor or a third-party outsourcer, although the ERP software vendor
has significant influence on ERP-client maintenance and upgrade activities. The vendor plays
an important role in maintenance support, and thus maintenance management and upgrade
decisions and processes have become more complex as a result.
However, the area of ERP maintenance and upgrade is still relatively new and understudied as
compared to ERP implementation. Many organizations still lack experience and expertise in this
area. There are no proper guidelines or standards for ERP maintenance and upgrade preparation
- no step-by-step procedure for conducting these activities and no upgrade processes to assist
practitioners in this area (as yet).
With in-house software, in order to capture and reflect an organization’s software maintenance
procedures and management issues, a maintenance model is usually defined and used. The main
advantages of a maintenance model are that it helps to define, plan and manage maintenance
activities; improving maintenance processes, and facilitating modification of the software. It

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