Successful ERP
Migration to the Cloud: That's what really makes it

ERP Migration to the Cloud - for a Wide Variety of Reasons

There are many different reasons why companies decide to move their ERP solution to the cloud. The most common reasons include cost savings and ensuring continuous innovation through fully automated updates. But you, your employees and, above all, your customers will also benefit from these improvements. Provided you approach the project skillfully. Are you prepared to deviate from the traditional approach and use a new, perhaps slightly more unconventional method?

The Right Preparation as a Decisive Success Factor

Even the preparation of your project is an important factor for your success. What you should not do is simply implement the new cloud solution based on your current business processes, reports, data and mindset. Then you could be in for a disappointment. Because this approach is a recipe for old wine in new bottles. Your migration project needs much more thorough preparation, so where do you start?

Step 1: Analyze the Market Side in Detail

A good start for your migration project is to explicitly not start with the technology aspect. Instead, it is much more sensible and effective to start on the market side with your customers.

First check how satisfied your customers are with your company and your products and services. Analyze what they are complaining about or why they pay late if they do. Or why they don’t want to pay at all. Study the trends in customer expectations and buying behavior. Take time to observe your strongest competitors. And observe how they react to these trends. Conduct final discussions with customers who have left your company. And learn where and how you can improve.

Step 2: Renewing the Mindset and Inner DNA

The results of these analyses will certainly provide you with many insights. And hopefully this will boost your motivation and that of your team. Then it’s time to modernize your business processes. Update your KPIs, reports and scorecards. Renew your inner DNA and mindset.

Step 3: Define Strong, Specific Project Goals

After these initial phases comes the crucial step where you translate these observations and findings into concrete objectives for your project. Define strong and, most importantly, very specific project goals! During the process, you will find out what modern customers expect from you and which aspects are most important to them. You will also find out how you can make your customers’ customers happier.

It may be useful to involve your marketing team in this discussion. After all, you might set yourself the goal of becoming “the most customer-centric company in the industry”. Who knows?

Defining the ERP Project Goals What your Project Success
has to do with the 1969
Moon Landing

“Unconventional” Approach - more Time-consuming, but Effective if you want to achieve a lot

This type of preparation is actually very different from the traditional approach. And not only that: you will need to mobilize colleagues, departments and skills to clarify the points and questions mentioned. But this will help you to define really ambitious project goals and it will also help you to involve departments that would otherwise not be directly involved in the project at an early stage.

So how will you start preparing to migrate your ERP solution to the cloud? Are you prepared to invest a little more time and effort to analyze your environment in detail and ultimately achieve more ambitious goals than your competitors?