Reimplemented an Underutilized ERP System

Industry:
International Electronics Manufacturing Company

Size of company:
$50M

Project Duration:
3 months

“What do you mean you’re using spreadsheets instead of the new system?”

Executives in the U.S.-based corporate office were stunned to learn that the new ERP system implemented at their China facility six months prior was not being utilized. The staff had been fully trained
on the system, so as far as the corporate team knew, it was in use. The moment the U.S. executives discovered that they were not using the system it was noted as a serious concern — and a huge obstacle
to their upcoming plan for acquiring and rolling in new entities.

VENN Strategy Group was engaged to work with the staff in China to establish trust with the new ERP system, reimplement it, and retrain employees.

Our Findings

Through discovery and interviews, we learned why the staff in China was not using the new ERP system and the challenges the company was experiencing because of it. They explained that they did not trust the new system, nor did they understand how to use it. They were also afraid to tell the corporate team that they were not using it.

As a result, here’s what was happening in the facility in China:

• For the previous six months, employees had been creating time-consuming workarounds to manage materials, inventory, and production schedules
• Valuable resources were dedicating two days each week to creating a much-needed report
• There was no clear path to monitor cost calculations between the system in China and the U.S. system, which led to financial discrepancies

How We Helped

With the VSG team’s systematic, collaborative approach, we built trust and facilitated the reimplementation of the new system. Our specific accomplishments included:

• Learning the facility’s offline data structure and spreadsheet reporting process
• Identifying gaps in data, processes and the neglected, underutilized system
• Extracting, cleaning up, validating and reloading system data
• Collaborating with the staff to map the current processes while establishing data and processing standards
• Establishing ownership of information across all business units
• Training the staff in China on all new procedures
• Working with the staff in China facility, both on site and remotely, to navigate the change management shift
• Providing the staff in China with reports similar to what they had previous used to reduce the stress of change

Results

Our work put the company in a much better position operationally. They were able to increase their efficiency and use of valuable internal resources; reduce the time they spent generating daily, weekly and monthly reports from days to minutes (per week); use a single point of entry within the system for sales orders/purchase orders/production errors; and eliminate errors that had been made based on their manual data entry processes. In addition, we established an unprecedented system of checks and balances around cost management and inventory.