ERP Implementations and House Building – Phase 8: Moving Day

In this multi-part blog series, Alan Lyczkowski discusses the many surprising parallels that can be drawn between an ERP implementation and the process of building a house. NOTE: If you’re just joining us for the series, you can read the first installments here: Introduction, Phase 1: Analysis, Phase 2: Shopping, Phase 3: Choosing a Partner, Phase 4: Decisions, Phase 5: Planning and Preparation, Phase 6: Moving Day Preparations, and Phase 7: Walk-through.

Moving day is finally here! Hurray!

After all of the hard work and effort, it is finally time to move in to your new home.

• All of the boxes are packed and labeled.
• The movers know where you are moving from …
• …and moving to.
• You have driven the route a few times, so you know how long it should take.
• You have prepared the utilities… and cable… and phone…and Internet provider and…
• You have donuts and coffee in the morning…
• … and pizza and other beverages (ahem) to end the day with

This is so exciting!

But keep in mind, no matter how well you plan, things can still go wrong. Be prepared for a catastrophic event to occur. Highly unlikely, but possible.

Also be prepared after you move that you won’t remember where you packed the essentials. (Tooth brush, bottle opener…)

After you move you still have a lot of work to do:

• Assemble the beds
• Hook up television, stereo, and other electronics
• Start unpacking and figure out where everything goes (if I move that sofa to the other end of the room, it will look much better)

In an ERP implementation, “Go live day” is just like “Moving day:”

• You have planned what data needs to be moved and when to move it.
• You have planned the steps it will take to balance the new system to the legacy system.
• You have processes to establish open balances and open transactions.
• Fall back points are in place in case of a catastrophe.
• Everyone is aware of their tasks and how long each should take.

… And no matter how things go, YOU WILL SURVIVE! Users will struggle at first just like I struggled to find the box with the bottle opener. But they will eventually get it.

And after all of the testing, analysis, training, and setup it took, you will now be using your new ERP. The work and effort that went into building our new house was completely outweighed by the joy and comfort that our home brings. This will be just like the benefits that your new ERP system will bring for many years to come.

I hope that you enjoyed this series and learned something from it. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read it, and I hope that the efforts and preparation for your new ERP system will make it a successful implementation.

If you have any questions about implementations, please feel free to reach out to the ArcherPoint team, and leave your comments for Alan in the Comments section below.