Sometimes other costs slip in for odd reasons. Scott Price, COO at Interactive Apparel, a company that offers website design and development to the apparel industry, said his company was stung by an obscure but necessary detail during its rapid implementation of SAP R/3. His company had to pay extra for forms to print customers’ logos. Price found that the cost overruns that larger companies absorb during more open-ended implementations can hurt a smaller company that expects to pay only the agreed-on amount. "That’s not real inexpensive," he says. "In the contract, it said that we had agreed to the basic forms. When you get down that path, sometimes you forget about some of these details."

Know Thy System

Another regular speed bump involves integrating existing systems. There are often surprises lurking in legacy systems and processes. McCullough says his team had to rethink its process for offering gift certificates. The team had assumed the previous system was handling the process efficiently. "We thought we understood how that worked in Pandesic, but when we really got down to it, we found it wasn’t like we thought," he says. "It caught us by surprise. We had to rethink how to do it in SAP."

Generally speaking, surprises aren’t good. They’re even more shocking for a company trying to contain costs and schedules. Just as in setting up a contract, planning is paramount. Replacing systems that automate the way a company does business is rarely easy, but it can be more complicated for a company trying to move from simple tools to sophisticated ERP applications. Often, that move is accompanied by growth that sparks the need for an upgrade. A smaller company that begins an implementation without sophisticated systems or processes needs to ensure the selected package works for a company of its size. Price says his company worked with SAP to create a demonstration of the new system. Using that demo, he pinpointed a process change requiring some software customization, but it saved Price from having to rectify the problem after the system was up and running.

Remember The Power Of People

Technology gets a lot of attention during a fast-track implementation, but it ends up being only as effective as the willingness of the people who use it to do their jobs. Ultimately, employees, IT staff and even customers will determine a project’s success. The time to start communicating is as soon as the project begins. Managing its scope is often a hidden difficulty. On one hand, some employees will be reluctant to use a new system and will have trouble thinking outside the constraints under which they already work. On the other hand, some employees might expect too much from new technology. Those expectations might lead to requests to add more functionality?which can ultimately defeat the purpose of installing a plain vanilla, template-based, fixed-price or fixed-time package. Fast-track ERP packages offer full functionality, but additional features cost money, and determining how much is necessary is one of the most important steps in planning an implementation.