I came into a project where there was a business analyst firmly in place. He was a very "detailed oriented” person. During the ERP implementation, he had created tons of excel spreadsheets to “control” every minute detail of the company. The Excel spreadsheets allowed the managers to micromanage little incidents and not see the big picture. The company was headed towards a disaster but the margins were good, he kept saying. Purchasing and replenishment were disastrous because, the analyst, was trying to figure out how to optimize the system BEFORE listening to the VAR experts and implementing the software in the recommended fashion. The micromanager who hired him was very pleased, but not the CEO. This is where I was called in.
To add insult to injury, it took him 40 hours a week to create these reports, so his job was now permanent. He was a full time report generator. My IT team spent 2 months automating the reports so that they would be generated automatically. Of course, seeing the writing on the wall he became very uncooperative. I thought everyone knows that you automate reports. We knew this in the eighties. Apparently it’s not something they teach in school, yet.
I’m pretty sure ERP stand for Excel Replacement Program...
Keywords: Misguided ERP Strategies, Manual Reporting Pitfalls, Business Process Overcontrol, Inefficient Analysis Techniques, Workplace Automation Resistance
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