The preliminary analysis: preparing for your ERP project

Anyone working with digitalising and automating finance support processes knows how fast things move.

This is why a preliminary analysis works as a kind of insurance. It gives you both a plan and a validation of that plan.

In practical terms, it provides you with:

• Clarity on what comes as standard, for instance when implementing Business Central

• Help to get the most out of your ERP system and its functionality

• Visibility on benefit realisation across the ERP project

• Insight to do more than a simple "lift and shift" of your current setup

• A realistic estimate of the time and resources a successful ERP project requires

• Where needed, a requirements specification

• An opportunity to revisit the long-term strategic direction of the transformation.

Regardless of which ERP system you are moving to, the analysis should not focus solely on the technical side. It needs to take a holistic view of what the transformation requires to succeed, looking at all three foundations: processes, systems, and organisation, to keep the business perspective front and centre.

Preliminary analyses can look very different, and the questions are many. The character of the analysis depends on your company's risk appetite and chosen project methodology, which can be more or less agile. While some prefer the classic waterfall model, with its well-known pitfalls, others benefit more from a model-based approach.

For example, if you are an established company moving away from a large, sprawling legacy system, your ERP project will be technically heavier. A more comprehensive preliminary analysis with a detailed requirements specification, run according to the waterfall method, makes good sense in that scenario. Your need to pin down the requirements for the new ERP system is significant, since it must handle the same complexity as the old one.

If, on the other hand, you are a scale-up, there is good reason not to spend all your resources on a preliminary analysis. The analysis does not need to be grand to be good, which is why it makes sense to do one rather than jumping straight to a standard solution.

There are real differences in what a preliminary analysis should cover to meet your needs. The approach can and should be scaled and weighted differently from one company to the next.

As mentioned, the analysis for a mature company will often lean towards a requirements specification and technical ERP implementation, while a meaningful analysis for a scale-up will typically be more of a roadmap that lays out where the company needs to go in incremental steps.

When we work with preliminary analyses, we have learned that the core of your value chain is what needs the most attention. Our approach typically follows these five steps to make sure the solution lives up to your ambitions:

1. Interviews with key employees to build insight and business understanding

2. High-level process evaluation to identify and discuss pain points

3. Gap analysis with balanced focus on as-is and to-be to see where gaps in processes, systems, and the organisation are holding back your ambitions

4. Roadmap mapping, including prioritisation, phases, and rollout strategy, accounting for internal dependencies between sub-projects across your company

5. Definition of any special requirements for the upcoming ERP solution

Our approach is designed so the preliminary analysis does not demand excessive time from your company. Most often, involvement can be limited to five four-hour workshops with the relevant people to build understanding of existing and potential new processes.

If you are looking to implement Business Central, these six questions will be central to our approach:

1. What could the future IT system landscape look like?

2. Which ERP system should we choose, and is Business Central the right fit for us?

3. Which add-on modules and surrounding systems should we consider?

4. What optimisation or business projects are coming up in the next couple of years?

5. How should those projects be prioritised?

6. What specific needs will a Business Central implementation have?

These six questions help clarify the gaps between as-is and to-be, so you can build a roadmap for getting to where you want to be. That is often essential to the success of the ERP project ahead.

What you get out of a preliminary analysis will naturally vary depending on the angle we take. But in general, it can deliver one or more of the following, all aimed at making sure the ERP implementation creates the greatest business value:

• Input on which ERP system fits your needs, what we call software selection

• A second opinion on your choice of standard system and input on whether standard functionality is enough

• Insight into any needs that go beyond the standard solution

• One or more elements of as-is, to-be, gap, and roadmap, potentially focused on just one or more specific issues, such as only the Order-to-Cash process, if that is where you feel the most pain.