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260 Chapter 9 • Organizational Change and Business Process Reengineering

IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT

Senior management buy-in and support are needed, but these must coincide with a strong
rationale for change. A prime component of a successful implementation is the unwavering
commitment and “will” of senior management and key staff to see the implementation through
to the end. There will be problems and issues to overcome and resistance to change, both open
and passive, so senior management and key staff need to be steadfast in the quest to succeed.
In addition, for change management reasons, each company must develop a logical and strate-
gic reason to implement an ERP system. Bypassing this step will, at best, result in an ERP
system not meeting management expectations and, at worst, in a complete failure even to get
through the implementation.
OPM3 can help to assess the organizational skill set to implement an ERP system
successfully, meeting the goals set out at the beginning of the project. It will help companies to
understand the level of competency and ability to implement an ERP system successfully. The
more skilled companies have a greater chance of implementing ERP systems than do ones
with lesser skills. Following the OPM3 methodology will at a minimum identify skill gaps
within the organization that must be filled before an ERP implementation starts.
As with most ERP implementations, using BPR can create a lot of anxiety in the work-
force. Management involvement, especially in the communications to staff on the business
process changes, will help to reduce staff anxiety. BPR with an ERP implementation will require
crossing organizational boundaries and a more extensive change management process.
Resistance to change will often be high and can be reduced with a significant level of change
management early in the process and often. This resistance to change may be due to a fear of loss
or change in a job and an overall change in the control structure. Over the years BPR has been
equated to downsizing because of the new technology, therefore increasing the anxiety of staff
involved and not involved in an ERP implementation.
BPM can improve success of ERP implementation and institutionalize continuous change
of business process in organization. BPR can be scary to the employees as it involves radical
changes and job loss; also, in today’s competitive business marketplace discrete process change
can make the organization ineffective and inefficient. BPM overcomes these problems as man-
agement, employees, and partners are all aware and used to the small incremental changes in
business processes on an ongoing basis. This can increase the success rate of ERP implementa-
tion and bring down the costs of implementation.

Summary
•There are many tools and a significant •OPM3 will assess the company’s skills and
amount of research in the industry to abilities to implement an ERP successfully.
assist a company in putting together a •BPM will institutionalize small incre-
successful project. Business process mental changes to improve the success of
reengineering and organizational project ERP system.
management maturity model are two such •In addition to using the tools to understand
tools. and communicate the rationale for moving to
•BPR will help develop rationale for an ERP system, the project organization must
moving from a legacy system to an ERP be well understood. This chapter discussed
system. the issues with business process change.