My World and Welcome To It

A Blog for Shirey Consulting Services – Views and Thoughts About Just About Everything

Archive for December, 2011

A Smile Can Definitely Be Annoying

Dec 19

Posted by dshirey in Uncategorized | Comments off

Did you ever notice how the week before Christmas work kind of slows down – and then stops completely for the week between Christmas and New Years?  It’s not that your deadlines go away but rather, like Superman being exposed to Kryptonite, your will to work just slowly seeps out of you.   And this year has been harder on me than normal.

I have a home office, of course, with a desk and a filing cabinet and all that stuff, but it is in the basement and so I generally end up sitting at the kitchen table where I have a nice window to look out.  Even if the weather is awful, I love to be able to see what is going on.  And normally that works out pretty well, unless my neighbor across the street happens to be out washing her jeep.   That doesn’t happen all that often in the winter but I still have a big distraction this year.

For some reason, my wife has decided to stick a ceramic figure of a guy skiing right on the table.  And the way she has positioned it, and given the height of my laptop screen, he actually has his face hanging right over my computer.  The unfortunate part is that his face has the sappiest, dopiest looking grin that I have ever seen.  Do you know how disconcerting it is to start work on a cloudy, rainy day at 8 AM and have some sap with a dorky grin staring you right in the face?

Oh I know what you’re thinking.  Why don’t I just turn him the other way or even take him off the table altogether.  Yeah, I could do that but there’s no way this creep is going to get the better of me.  No sir, I’m not going to be the one to blink.  So day after day we stand there and stare at each other; me scowling and him with this slap happy grin.  What a moron.  Doesn’t he know that his skies are molded together?  He’s not going anywhere.  Besides they look like a couple of 2X4s.  What a jerk.  And it’s definitely breaking my concentration.  But like I said, I’m not going to be the one to blink.  I am, however, looking forward to the end of holiday season.

 

Business Myths 1 – The Importance of Your ERP System – Part 2

Dec 11

Posted by dshirey in ERP | Comments off

 

Ok, it’s not like everyone has been asking for this, but I feel the need to provide some additional clarification to what I said in my last post.  Unless you read it very carefully, it’s possible that you were left with the opinion that I don’t think  the ERP system is very important to your business success.  In fact, nothing (or at least not too much) could be further from the truth.

If your business has reached a certain size (not too small but not too big), you need some sort of business system, and for most types (not all, but most) types of businesses, an MPS/MRP style business system is a good fit.   And the better your ERP system, the better it is for you.

At the same time, many companies today are laboring under the assumption that if they purchase an immensely expensive system that is practically impossible to implement successfully and then spend the first year (or two) after implementation desperately trying to explain to their customer base that everything was / is / will be fine in just a week / month / decade, then everything will be OK.  You will have every feature you ever wanted and, get this, no matter how your business changes, this system will adapt and still be perfect.

If that seems reasonable to you, then you are in line with what many of the top managment in companies across the country are thinking.  If, on the other hand, you think that sounds ridiculous, then you are in agreement with me.   And if you think that sounds ridiculous, then you are normal.  Congratulations.

All I was trying to say was that there is no perfect ERP system that you can purchase.  And the more effort you put into installing an ERP system then the less effort you will have available for servicing your customers today.  I know that companies love to say that they can do what ever needs to be done, no matter how many things are going on simultaneously.  We’ll just do it.  But  some of us believe that’s not how the physical world works.

Want to have an above average ERP system; one that lets you up the level of service you are providing?  Then start with a good ERP system, one that is easy to modify without having to tear it apart.   Then carefully make modifications to that system so that it matches the way you do business.  And when I say carefully, I mean carefully, thoughtfully, flexibly.  It’s too bad that over the years modifications and enhancements have gotten such a bad rap.  Mostly, of course, it’s because they are usually done clumsily, causing more problems than they solve, but it doesn’t have to be that way if it is done properly.

Anyway, bottom line – having the most expensive ERP system is not the goal.  It’s having the ERP system that is easiest to change because your business will do that, and the one that is most closely attuned to how you actually do business.   That’s all.

 

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