Burger Consulting Group (BCG) recently had the opportunity to work with a large specialty contractor with multiple locations across the country. At the time we were engaged, our client was in the final stages of deciding between two different ERP solutions to replace an older ERP.
The scope of our services included three main areas of focus:
- Due diligence services in the license agreement review, reference calling, and final negotiations with the selected vendor.
- Project management services and mentoring in preparation for the upcoming implementation.
- Best practice process design services, which includes working with the client team to build workflows that reflect how the client would like their processes to work within the new ERP solution.
Oftentimes we work with clients that have limited experience in reviewing software vendor license agreements and negotiating with software vendors simply because this is an activity they rarely encounter, while we see these situations on a regular basis. As part of the due diligence services, we reviewed the proposed license agreement and master services agreement (MSA) and provided the client with suggested revisions to these documents that made them much more favorable to the client. We were also successful in structuring the pricing in a way that better fit the implementation plan for each location.
This particular client had a good team in place to manage the upcoming implementation. However, their internal team did not have much actual implementation experience, so we were able to provide a degree of mentoring for that team to prepare them for the upcoming implementation by providing a structured process through which project activities are tracked, prioritized, and completed; identifying project risks that we have seen in the past to mitigate early; and ensuring the team works as efficiently as possible. The client implementation team was able to leverage these sessions to better prepare and communicate out the implementation plan to their individual location presidents’.
Finally, we were able to work with the client teams to create a set of ‘future state’ process workflows that incorporate industry best practices. We were able to accomplish this by focusing on not only understanding what is currently being done in various applications, but also pushing the envelope and introducing potentially better ways to do things. Upon completion of these sessions, we had very clean and succinct documentation of how the client would like their day-to-day activities performed once the implementation is complete. This documentation is extremely valuable not only for the client internally, but also for the ERP vendor to rely on when configuring the new solution.