Aquila Project Assurance | ERP Consultants

Assuring ERP Project Success

ERP implementation projects are among the biggest challenges that any business can face. Reaching into all aspects of the enterprise's chain of activity from the taking of a customer to the generation of revenue, the risks raised by these projects are potentially immense. Major companies often under-estimate the potential damage that an ERP implementation can do to both short and longer-term profitability. Even with an ERP implementation partner of proven competency things can and will go wrong, but with the wrong partner these adverse events will be greatly more impactive and expensive.

Aquila Project Assurance offers a targeted service for any business considering, involved in or having difficulty with an ERP implementation project, taking an objective view to ensure that the project and the resulting solution are both robust

Whatever stage or state your ERP implementation project has reached, we offer cost effective and customer-oriented advice and services. Our success is rooted knowing how both the business and project teams should be managed and led, and we can ensure that what you don't know doesn't trip you up at each stage of the project.

And our structured Prince2 friendly methods ensure that the foundations for success are easy for industry professionals to adapt to and use.

If you'd like more information on how we operate, please read our case study of how a failing £15m ERP implementation project was turned round to become a success.

Contact us for your free (and no obligation) ERP implementation project assessment, or just to talk about your project.
We're always happy to offer the necessarily limited advice that we can on a remote basis.

Our popular "Classic ERP Implementation Mistakes"
& "Real Client Success" Case Study are now available for download

Get The Documents

What We Do

Aquila Project Assurance offers three levels of ERP Implementation Assurance, with the aim of being the most objective and cost effective assurance partner to assess whether your ERP implementation project is going to succeed, and to advice on course corrections to achieve a safe landing

ERP Implementation Rescue - Review

A fast and objective review of why your ERP implementation is failing. Three to five days to complete including generation of a formal report

A full report is provided detailing the issues uncovered and the recommended courses of action. The consultants involved discuss this report with the client in full detail, ensuring that their findings are clear and that the remedies proposed are understood, both in terms of their detail and likely cost.

No ERP implementation project should operate without an assurance activity entirely independent of the project management team. Where the pressure to deliver to time and budget can often impact on the last leg of the 'project triangle', quality, objective and independent assurance provides the comfort of a neutral assessment of this risk.

Working against pre-defined criteria, the assurance consultant brings another perspective to the project's sponsors, helping them to be clear as whether their project is:

On track in all respects
In need of some improvement
Seriously off track

Our assurance consultants have all delivered ERP implementation projects themselves. This means that whilst they know what to look for in terms of possible issues, they also know how to address these with the project team’s collaboration, rather than simply 'shopping' them to the sponsor.

We've done enough of this to know that assurance doesn't work half as well if it's not seen as authoritative, if the consultant simply regurgitates what the project tells them, or if they're not seen as adding value and being helpful. Our assurance consultants are experts at spotting issues and advising how to go about getting them resolved quickly, effectively and without drama.

ERP Implementation Rescue - Revive

Your failing ERP implementation put back on its track to deliver.

Revive - we follow the Review activity, which forms the basis for this level of engagement, with a further twenty days of consultancy assistance over two/three months. Major points of focus for this ‘up-skill’ of the project are:

Establishment of a methodology
Project organisation for success
Robust governance
Appropriate skills and resourcing
Change management to control solution impacts
Project re-launch and renewed momentum

By the end of a Revive engagement we expect have provided the project with guidance as to the right skills, disciplines and behaviours for the existing or new ERP implementation project management to build on, in order to ensure continued progress on a firm foundation.

ERP Implementation Rescue - Deliver

Your ERP implementation in safe hands. We lead your team to successful delivery.

Deliver - we move seamlessly from the outputs of the Revive activity into management of your ERP implementation project to deliver the desired functionality to an agreed timescale and cost. Where most consultancies will happily advise the client as to what they should do, we're skilled and experienced in the area of ERP implementation project rescue, and happy to join you in taking responsibility to bring the project in to the revised targets. The major points of focus for this delivery activity are:

Management of project team and other dependent deliveries
Participation in the project governance process
Financial management of the project budget to ensure compliance with expenditure targets
Delivery of each stage of the project methodology
Introduction (if necessary) of appropriate Change Management methods and resource to the project.

The resource requirement for Deliver is highly dependent upon what's already been achieved, available resources and skills, and several other factors, but our aim will always be to bring as few external experts to the task as necessary to achieve success, growing your own people to provide you with a long term asset. At a time when the project budget is already likely to be under pressure, we understand the need not to pile on yet more expense without strong justification.

If we agree to take on a Delivery engagement we also commit not to back away from the task until it is completed to mutual satisfaction. In simple terms, once we've accepted an assignment we don't walk away until the job is complete.

Our Method

ERP Implementation Success Factors

Aqulia's record of ERP implementation assurance success depends on a combination of rigorous method and the intelligence to know when to vary it.

We believe that a successful ERP implementation depends on four key success factors. Three of these are (or should be) standard project management practice

Methodology (and associated planning)
Governance
Resourcing

Underlying all of this is the fourth and most essential component for a successful ERP implementation:

Change Management

By this we mean not simply the obvious and more common 'soft' side of change, like communications and assessing Business Readiness, but the 'hard' aspects of such a major change;

Change impact assessment – to understand whose roles will change post live, and how
Stakeholder management - to gain the right support from the right people to sell these changes
Communication – to make clear what’s going to change and why
Business readiness – to measure and manage how ready the business is to make the change
Adoption KPIs - metrics to measure post go-live performance for quick issue spotting

These aspects of change are much less commonly understood, not simply in conceptual terms but also in the project management methods and rigour required for their successful employment. Aquila Project Assurance has hard won experience of how successful change management really works.

Aquila Project Assurance are experts at ensuring that your ERP implementation project plan is based on a proven - and appropriately modified - ERP implementation methodology, governance and resourcing, and underlaid by hard and soft change management skills in order to ensure success.

Classic ERP Implementation Mistakes

With multi-industry and truly international experience, Aquila Project Assurance can deal with an ERP implementation in any industry on any continent.

There are a number of well worn routes to ERP implementation disaster - here's a short presentation to illustrate how Aquila Project Assurance anticipates and avoids these potential pitfalls.

Download the Presentation
Classic ERP Implementation Mistakes

Read Our Case Study
Real client, real success

For more detail on how we manage ERP implementation projects to success, please contact us to arrange a free (and obligation free) ERP implementation project assessment, or just to chat about your project.

Who Are We?

With multi-industry and truly international experience, Aquila Project Assurance can provide ERP implementation assurance in any industry.

If we haven't worked in an industry, we have the proven ability of picking up the basics to a sufficient degree that we're effective very early in the engagement. We also have the capability to work across a range of ERP solutions. We've worked on every major system on the market at one time or another, including Oracle, SAP and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Delivering ERP implementations isn't about system technical skills, it's about the basic principles of ERP implementation project management applied with pragmatic rigour.

We've worked at all levels of ERP implementation project management, from routine project administration up to Programme Director roles for major Global blue chips, so whilst we understand the necessity of smoothing the project's path through the senior organisation, we also know what it's like to operate on the shop floor of a major project when the going gets tough

Aquila Project Assurance
ERP Project Success