Atko Global Pty Ltd in Gosford, New South Wales | Software company

Atko Global Pty Ltd

Locality: Gosford, New South Wales

Phone: +61 411 530 306

Address: PO Box 1627 2250 Gosford, NSW, Australia

Website: http://atkoglobal.net.au

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25.01.2022 ERP Wisdom in Hindsight Many companies embark on an ERP project believing they have all the bases covered and their IT people know what they are doing. Internal projects, steering committees and executives champions are all in place and the project proceeds.... Very few problems emerge in the early days of projects as it is really a preparation stage of gathering data, migrating data, training, software configuration, process review and procedures. Somewhere down the line when the nitty gritty of what the software does and how an organisation can use it issues start to arise. Data that is not available in the form required needs to be obtained, data is not in an acceptable form and needs to be changed and cleaned-up, training is proving to be inadequate and more is required, changes to software and scope creep start to emerge and decisions need to be made, that are resisted by departments, are not made, all add to the ERP environment and potential disaster. Add to these a blow-out in consultant costs, all seemingly legitimate but expensive and you have a recipe for disaster. Thirty five years of experience in integrated MRPII and ERP systems I have seen a repeat of the above over and over and continuing to this day. The amount of money that goes into these projects, and lost, is staggering to the point organisations can be seriously financially and operationally compromised. The blame game starts when the costs begin to hurt the organisation. The finger pointing starts in earnest! The vendor misled us, the company didn’t do what they said they would do, management wouldn’t get involved and make decisions, the software doesn’t work, we were not permitted to make process changes, the consultants were incompetent and lied to us and so on. These are issues that have been around since the early days of MRPIIin the 1970's. Are we really that slow we have learnt nothing? The statistics on failure are there for all to see! As high as 70% of organisations attempting to implement ERP fail to achieve the results expected. Massive cost blow-outs are the norm. Some companies have gone bankrupt attempting to implement ERP. The solution is really quite simple. Do the work up-front pre-software purchase. Identify the issues that will need to be dealt with and design a model for how the software is to work and test the software through that model. Identify the data required and commence cleanup before you buy software etc. If this were a new technology we could understand teething problems in getting it implemented and working. Could you imagine continuing a space program with a failure rate of 70%? I think not! With all of the experience we can draw on you would think that that every implementation should be a success. Experience worth listening to! Ray Atkinson

25.01.2022 ERP Dispute Resolution ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Over the last five years the success rates of ERP implementations have run at somewhere around 30% to 40% and with project costs that can spiral into millions of dollars it is not surprising there is considerable conflict between enterprises (clients) and their ERP suppliers/implementers....Continue reading

20.01.2022 How to Kill your ERP Project Global survey on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has quite clearly shown that software modifications/customisation has the potential for totally derailing an ERP project. Asking for software to be modified/customised during implementation is a major source of project delay and budget blow-outs. Software houses are more than obliging to undertake the modification/customisation........at a cost!... The lack of an effective internal system for logging modification/customisation requests, post purchase, and determining what is essential as opposed to wouldn’t it be nice can very quickly lead to massive changes to the software far beyond the original scope of software requirements. These changes equate to delays and cost blowouts and potentially other parts of the integrated system not functioning correctly. Surveys are showing 60% of ERP projects are undertaking significant modification/customisation or purchasing additional software as it is perceived they cannot do without it. I am not referring to simple configuration of the software but changes that impact functionality or process. With all of these changes going on and the negative impact the changes have on ERP projects the question is Why? The great majority of companies we speak to go to great lengths to define their ERP requirements by engaging users and all stakeholders to ensure they cover all of the business requirements. These requirements are documented and put into a request for quote that is sent to potential vendors for their response. Given the effort that goes into defining the requirements and the fact that 60% of ERP projects undergo significant software customisation/modification and or require additional software, the process for defining requirements must be floored. It has long been known that the best way to implement ERP software is to define clearly, up front, a model and against that model what the requirements are, test the software before purchase against the model and requirements, agree on any changes up-front as part of the contract and implement the software with minimum or no changes beyond the agreed changes negotiated at purchase stage. The changes that organisations are making to ERP software during the implementation stage of the ERP project causes significant cost and schedule blow-outs to the project. In many cases the costs far exceed the budget for the project resulting in shortcuts being made to the project, affecting the systems performance during live running or causing the project to be abandoned or significantly reduced in scope.. The method of defining ERP software requirements needs to be closely examined to ensure the ongoing disasters in ERP failures is not due to poor definition of software requirements. Trusting the software house to look after your needs ignores the fact that they always look after their own interests first....and they are in business to make a profit. Experience Worth Listening to!

20.01.2022 The Proven ERP Implementation Path Myth I find in my email inbox endless articles on how to ensure successful ERP projects! The focus of these articles is always around selecting an ERP package with vague comments about asking different areas of the business on what their requirements are and about having these requirements demonstrated in some way by potential software suppliers. This advice by consultants and software suppliers is couched under headings such as Proven Path...Continue reading

19.01.2022 Some great advice from LTA of the US

14.01.2022 Damaging your Business with a Failed ERP System For many organisations the decision to embark on an ERP venture is driven by wishing to improve the business and benefit from the potential the technology has to offer. Too often the level of understanding on what is involved is not adequately understood from the people who make the decision to proceed! It is a simple matter to see an ERP project as a technology project and apart from making decisions on approving expenditure an...Continue reading

14.01.2022 Conference Room Pilots Most ERP implementation plans include a conference room pilot whereby data sets are transacted through the system to give everyone confidence that the ERP system actually works. Successful conference room pilots are the basis for the go-live decision to turn the system on in the real live operational environment of the business. As the conference room pilot was a success there is a high level of confidence in turning the system on .. only to find that ...there are massive problems with the system producing incorrect information, creating chaos. So what has gone wrong? The system was tested with some real data sets that we chose for the pilot and the system worked during the pilot! The conference room pilot was conducted in a lab type setting with limited amount of carefully selected data. Let’s go back a bit! Given the huge cost over-runs experienced in the majority of ERP implementations a conscious decision was made to take shortcuts. These shortcuts may well have been in the area of data clean-up and migration, or structure of bills of materials, or not quite getting the inventory accuracy issues sorted out. There is no impact immediately in making the shortcut decision as no processing is taking place during the implementation stage of the project. Now that the system is turned on the implications of these shortcuts become immediately obvious! The system is processing numbers that are incomplete, wrong or simply not there because the decision was made to clean it up later. The costs you thought you were saving by making the shortcuts has now come back to bite you and the impact on the business operations, that are now relying on the system for numbers, can be quite dramatic and cost you millions in losses and confusion. We visit many companies that complain that the conference room pilot was a success but when the system was turned on it didn’t work. The system is actually working but the data that it is processing was not cleaned up and the errors are now blocking effective use of the system. The conference room pilot may give you confidence the system works but this does not guarantee a successful outcome if you haven’t cleaned up the data during the implementation preparation stage. If you have this situation there is no option but to clean-up the data and this could be very disruptive and costly post-live running of the ERP system.

09.01.2022 Reinvigorating Manufacturing in Australia A Bold Path to Prosperity Preamble The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a large amount of discussion on our local Australian manufacturing, and our vulnerability on foreign supply chains, for critical materials and products. Ideological and political differences between countries can also leave us vulnerable to withholding of supply of these materials and products, and to the imposition of punitive sanctions, due to disagreements...Continue reading

06.01.2022 How does the cloud help ERP? http://atkoglobal.net.au/will_cloud_make_erp_implementation

02.01.2022 IT Failures are Common Another year and we have the same old stories of ERP disasters with vendors, integrators and customers all blaming each other for the problems experienced in trying to implement ERP systems. Each ERP project starts out with such optimism that usually ends up in some form of disappointment for the implementing company....Continue reading