ERP Evaluation and Selection

Business Problem:

The nation’s largest wholesale distributor of roofing materials and one of the nation’s largest distributors of siding, windows and other select exterior building products had concerns about their current systems supporting future growth plans and evolving customer engagement requirements. With over 470 branch locations, the company also recognized a need to improve operational efficiencies— with possible improvements in inventory management, rebate tracking and reconciliation, customer service and date integrity. The company engaged our team to assess the potential opportunities, costs, and realization timelines of modernizing their enterprise business applications and ERP system, provide solution recommendations, and a mobilization rodemap.

Our Solution:

We conducted a current state assessment by interviewing key stakeholders across the organization, including the executive team, corporate functional owners and branch management. The assessment focused on existing system capabilities and architecture, user pain points/gaps, business strategy and IT alignment, organizational risk tolerance and enterprise data accuracy. Our team then provided the company with three distinct options: implement a new, full-featured ERP system, tactically leverage existing systems with limited application modifications, or strategically upgrade and leverage the modularity of the existing ERP software and invest in core business applications—which was our final recommendation. The recommendation considered impact to current business operations, scalability to meet future growth plans, cost to implement, speed to deploy, organizational willingness to change, and enterprise risk tolerance. To evaluate options, our team conducted an ERP vendor due diligence to understand potential ERP solutions and vendors, estimate the ERP program budget and identify resource needs.

During this evaluation phase, we were able to assist the company in selecting two possible ERP solutions and vendors. After the selection phase, our team provided the company with an ERP implementation roadmap, program time- line, estimate of internal and external resources, and total budget for a full deployment of the ERP solution across all branches. We also emphasized the critical importance of executive team buy-in before proceeding with this type of project. The executive team came to the conclusion that the organization was not yet prepared to own and execute an ERP implementation and instead chose to invest in other foundational business and IT initiatives that we recommended as part of the overall modernization strategy.

Benefits:

During this evaluation phase, The executive team was able to prioritize high value improvement opportunities, vet multiple ERP solutions, understand true cost, time and resource commitments, and receive a high level IT strategy aligned to business drivers. The deferred budget is allowing the company to pursue other critical company initiatives to grow the business, as opposed to investing in a risky ERP implementation without defined and agreed upon business benefits.