``Survival of the fittest is not the law of the jungle, but it is also thelaw of the marketplace,'' said Venugopal. Commenting on the harrowingexperience of a large number of ERP clients who faced problems like time andmoney budget overruns, he said many operating managers do not fullycomprehend IT and are not in a position to decipher `ITese' used by vendorsand are, therefore, dependent on consultants for translation.

Given the fact that a mid-range ERP could cost upwards of Rs 10 crore toimplement over a five-year timeframe, would management settle for a successrate of less than 50 per cent on ERP projects? Certainly not, but, warnsVenugopal: ``It's generally a lack of understanding of what an ERP can andcannot do, improper handling of consultants and inadequate deployment ofresources that lead to ERP debacles. An ERP is only a robust transactionprocessing system and is not a substitute for sound management.''

Giving tips on making ERP meaningful, Venkataraman stressed the need tomaintain the focus on organisational objectives and to steer away from thebuffet approach. ``Sometimes it's easier not to have a system than one thatis too complex to operate. While implementing ERP, related initiatives likeTQM, cost reductions etc must go hand in hand,'' said she.

Citing a survey which revealed that 80 per cent of ERP clients hadundertaken 7 out of 12 management fads in the last six months, she saidorganisations need to experiment and try new practices.

Venkataraman also emphasised the need to enhance communication internally aswell as externally, empower the organisation at all levels, teach people touse information powerfully and give lots of freedom with required controls.Even after the implementation of ERP, the work continues: to act on theinformation available; establish new matrics; regroup more often in responseto market stimuli; change strategy if required; and align organisation andpeople with new directions. ``An ERP can do wonders for qualityorganisation,'' she said. ``Huge rewards await the ERP-enabled organisation,but only if done right.''

Before embarking on an ERP project organisations need to accept realities:

-- ERPs take an enormous amount of resources to implement: For completeimplementation in a medium-sized company, it takes a project team of 10 to15 internal resources for full-time and 10 to 12 consultant resources for 12to 18 months. Add to this, a mandatory monthly structured reviews; and anupgradation of hardware resources, which can range upwards of Rs 50 lakh.

-- The benefits of ERP begins flowing only after all the key managementprocesses of the enterprise like marketing, manufacturing, materials,costing, financial accounting are implemented, which could take about 3-5years.

Cautions Venugopal: ``An ERP should not be used to merely do the same rottenthings electronically -- it would just lead to online inefficiency.''

The planning phase of ERP entails the setting up of detailed linkage betweenthe business goals, information flow and data support. For instance, if acustomer wants a 24 hour on-time delivery commitment but the existing systemof production planning does the planning on a seven-day bucket, the planninghas to address it.

After the plan is laid out, the ERP implementation passes through the dophase (where the organisation needs to adopt new ways of doing business);the check phase (a top management responsibility, which can't be delegated);and finally, the act phase, which extensively documents the earlier phasesand generates a complete operational manual for the business.

And if delivery doesn't match expectations, HR Gupta suggests, ``Ask fivetimes what's the objective behind implementing ERP and then go to the rootof the issue.''