Enterprise Systems Selection Project

A Minnesota-based Digital Business Consulting company was constrained by its enterprise business systems portfolio, restricting its business growth. The $50M professional services business relied heavily on aging applications and custom development to meet its complex needs.  The business was growing, and with projects becoming more complex, the company found it necessary to look for new application solutions to operate and grow their business.

Turning Point Consulting was referred to them as partners who can assess their business needs and help align processes and applications to meet their short and long-term business goals. Ironically as a company that enables the transformation of their customer’s businesses, previous attempts to transform their business processes and applications had stalled. Their realization of “We don’t do this well” led to the decision to seek outside help to move this strategic project forward.  

Challenges

Our client faced several challenges:

1. Operating on disparate home-grown applications was constraining the growth of the organization.
2. Spreadsheet reporting was predominant for managing critical business operations. Lack of project, time, and expense data was preventing timely and sound decision making.
3. Managing a workforce with a limited HR application; inhibited recruiting, onboarding, and retention of employees.
4. Lack of standard processes complicated project and resource management.
5. The culture was not accomodating of change. While numerous changes would be needed to improve customer delivery and internal operations, transforming would be very difficult for both employees and management.
6. Current and future state processes were not mapped.

Solutions

Our team utilized the Turning Point System Selection and Implementation Methodology℠, a comprehensive selection and deployment approach to finding the best-fit solutions to match clients’ needs.

For application selection, this project involved four areas of focus – back office, resource management, time and expense, and human resources. A single application suite excelling at all four within budget constraints was a challenge for this company. This challenge led them to investigate multiple applications with tight integration capabilities. Demonstrations had to be coordinated among the options to see the complete business flow from onboarding a resource through project completion and cash received.

Mapping current and future state processes were critical to understanding “Their Way” of doing business and developing comprehensive requirements for the new applications. The process mapping exercise also future-proofed the investments to be made, ensuring the company could grow with the applications selected.    

Anticipating cultural adoption challenges, our team developed a comprehensive change management plan working in concert with the implementation efforts to help acclimate the workforce and management to the new operations processes, applications and drive adoption.   

End Result

Turning Point guided the client through multiple application selections, with full integrations mapped out. The client selected the following applications:

• NetSuite ERP for finance, accounting, and purchasing
• NetSuite OpenAir PSA for project and resource management
• UltiPro from Ultimate Software for human capital management, including HR, payroll, and talent management
• NetSuite CRM for sales opportunities and contacts

Turning Point also provided the following to assist in the deployments of the applications with execution planned using internal resources:

• Change Management program with policy guidelines
• Software implementation plan with a prioritized roadmap
• Comprehensive current and future state value stream mapping of the entire organization

The project management plan, including governance, structure, communication, and tools