Maximizing Return on Investment Using ERP Applications

CULTURAL BARRIERS AND ENABLERS

Can you imagine a business without a culture, a political structure, or an organizational concept? These have grown up with the company and are inevitable characteristics of any organization. All human organizations have them, but we tend to see them only when we believe that one of these characteristics is preventing us from achieving our objectives. Once understood, businesses often look for magic bullets to deal with these aspects of the enterprise and focus only on overcoming resistance to change that may be exhibited. This negative-only view helps create a fatalistic view of their impact on program performance.

Rather than working to overcome these, all three should be considered a natural part of any organization, and they can and should be used to facilitate changes and to drive the search for more business value. This, however, requires that leadership acknowledge this complex issue as one that requires thought, design, buy-in, and continuous support to be successful. As a corollary of this, businesses must also consider opportunities to promote education to develop understanding of how they can be used constructively in the company. Too often, instead, businesses look for “Salvation in a Box” and buy into trendy current programs, without putting work into understanding the current cultural, political, and organizational realities, issues (both positive and negative to change), and opportunities to apply the principals involved, rather than ...