Interesting dynamic in a meeting this week.

For one fairly important project, we’ve spent a lot of time educating the business process owners, as well as the ultimate end-users, that this is not an IT project, even though we are implementing a new ERP system. This has been the message since the beginning, but the project team didn’t quite get this – there was defnitely a learning process to go through.

At this time, we’ve succeeded in making this message clear, so much so that the business-area project managers are insisting that “the system works” – it’s just failings / need for improvement in business process areas that need to be addressed.

Ah, but these are central-office business management folks; the ultimate process owners (“where the rubber hits the road”) are fairly emphatic that certain aspects of “the system” are a tad overkill, too much detail for little business benefit.

It’s quite acceptable to question “the system”, to understand why we are automating, inventorying, accounting, tracking, etc. – to understand the cost / benefit as well as the sustainability of a given process.