My Boss Asked Me to Select a New ERP System—What Do I Do?
You have been requested to select a new ERP system for your organization—congratulations, now you can:
• Panic
• Take a deep breath
• Then embrace an extraordinary opportunity

Part One: Requirements Definition for a Software Selection Project
The management team has faith in you and your abilities, otherwise they would not have asked you to lead this challenge.

This project, a Software Selection Project, will enable you, as the selected leader, to understand what is needed to operate your organization—as it functions today. In addition, you will have access to the senior management team and have the potential to understand the direction they want to take the organization in the future. Your challenge will be to determine what information you will need to extract from current operations and what information the organization will need in the future. Sometimes the management team may not know this information; your job will be to help them develop it.

There are two principal activities that need to be accomplished when selecting a new ERP system.
1. Development of current and future organizational requirements (what you need the software system to do) – aka Requirements Definition.
2. Managing the software evaluation process – aka Evaluation & Selection Process.
Once these two activities are accomplished, the follow-on budget development and procurement processes can begin in order to support the implementation of the desired system.

Requirements Definition
This process is best accomplished by interviewing key individuals in each of the functional areas of the organization. What information does each of the functional areas need to perform their duties? Avoid any discussion on what their current system does—focus on what data/information they need to do their job. Typical functional areas in an organization include but are not limited to:
• Sales/Customer Service
• Material/Production Planning/Purchasing
• Operations
• Quality
• Warehousing/Distribution/Shipping & Receiving
• After Sales Service
• Finance/Accounting

Each organization may have different functional units depending on the industry, size, customers, supply chain, etc. Just be sure to identify them and do not leave any of them out of the interview process. It will be the functional unit that you overlook that will be the Achilles Heel of both the selection project and almost certainly during implementation of the system.

Once the interviews are completed you can begin to extract the requirements and document them. This is the foundation of the whole project. Once documented, call a meeting to review the requirements, make modifications as necessary and obtain management approval.

This agreement and approval process is very important-do not skip it. This will create the necessary buy-in from the management team. Secure management’s written approval of the functional requirements for the system by having them sign the document containing the requirements. Too often during the final stages of a selection project or during implementation, the requirements will begin to change. The approved requirements document is your contract with the organization that these are the needs of the organization going forward. All your activities during the selection and the follow-on implementation efforts will be in support of this contract.

Now the fun begins. Congratulations on completing this first phase. Enjoy your accomplishments and be sure and read Part Two – Evaluation & Selection Process to understand the remaining activities in a Software Selection Project.