Core Team Expectations for Your ERP Project

Your Core Team will either drive your project productively along the road to ERP modernization or drag it into the weeds. I’ll take a great leap here and assume that you would prefer the former result.

In case you are just tuning in, our past few posts have discussed different internal roles that you should clarify, plan, and establish when preparing for your ERP initiative. This post will focus on the Core Team and Functional Managers.

The Core Team

Overall, the Core Team serves as the management decision-making body for issues that are beyond an individual functional team’s ability to solve.

Georgia Regents University has developed a fairly comprehensive list of responsibilities by project role that I’ve organized into topical groupings. So, let’s look at some of the responsibilities needed within the Core Team:

1. Approves strategies, implementation plan, project scope, and milestones.

• • Holds regular meetings to provide input and direction on the overall strategy and implementation of the project and the completion of the project deliverables.
  • Ensures that the project stays within scope, meets the specific time frames set, and that plans are developed and adhered to during implementation.
    
    

2. Resolves strategic and policy issues.

• Provides leadership in making and resolving implementation decisions that impact multiple functional areas.

• • Identifies and resolves critical issues or escalates to the project sponsor.

  • Reviews and oversees the tactical decisions necessary for the ongoing management of the project.

3. Prioritizes project goals with other ongoing projects and tracks project progress.

• • Conducts a regular review of project status, in terms of the timeline, to understand dependencies among functional areas and to make adjustments as needed.

  • Reviews project status in terms of individual functional areas and/or milestones.

  • Receives regular updates and provides input as needed.

4. Drives and manages change throughout the organization.

• • Participates in the development of the change management plan.

  • Identifies change agents in the organization.

  • Monitors change management activities.

5. Communicates with other key organizational representatives.

• • Ensures the development and implementation of the project communications plan.

  • Reviews the communications plan to ensure that project progress is appropriately communicated to the institution community and to identify any internal communications concerns.

These 5 key points are all vital to the success of the ERP project, ERP modernization, or business transformation. Your Core Team will be a tremendous asset if they are all clear on the project vision and are willing to do the work and dedicate the necessary time.  The Functional Managers are often also the Core Team members, so next week I’ll discuss that role and also the time commitment for both roles as a combined expectation (spoiler alert: plan for 15-20% of your time to be dedicated to this initiative if you are/will be a Core Team member). Following that, we will wrap up the series of internal resources with some tips on your internal Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).