11 Dec 2009

ERP pain 'can be avoided'

Firms could avoid the pain of enterprise resource planning (ERP) by being organised and thinking ahead, it has been argued.

Michael Dean, director of advisory services at non-profit IT organisation the National Computing Centre (NCC), said ERP systems can add flexibility to business models, but only if sufficient forethought is there to ensure planning is carried out on a regular basis.

He commented: "Because of the complexity of ERP solutions, the more thorough your planning, the less likelihood of an implementation going wrong and hence cost going up."

According to a recent survey by the NCC, in 24 per cent of organisations, all future ERP and enterprise software projects are on hold and 41 per cent are seeing projects being postponed.

However, this compares to 29 per cent of companies who are not experiencing any cutbacks and six per cent who are increasing their investment in enterprise applications.