Every company is looking to increase its market value. For, this they are re-looking into the factors which affect the company’s productivity and management. Every company is looking to use their resources effectively so that their business is done more effectively and efficiently. Most of the companies decides to use software which could manage their whole enterprise and the information should be available with the enterprise.

With this need, enterprise resource planning came into picture. Enterprise resource planning is a software based system which helps in managing every functionality and operation of the company. It ensures that there is proper and reliable data communication between various parts of the business units. This helped many businesses to increase their productivity and cut costs on management related funds.

Usage of enterprise resource planning software have helped many companies in analyst and optimize their business process, enhancing the supply chain management, efficient control of inventory, enhanced decision making by providing precise reports, integrating various business units and developing transparency all over the business.

In a typical corporation which implemented ERP successfully , the customer sales department can get access to the purchase department, inventory department data can be viewed by the sales department and the top management can see the overall structure and the work flow of the company with a single click. This is what a comprehensive enterprise resource planning software is capable of.

The impact of the enterprise resource planning can be seen evident with the company even before 12 months of implementation. With proper planning and successful implementation ERP can provide a strong platform for better productivity. The implementation of ERP helped many companies in increasing the value chain in the market. It also created confidence among its customers. Share holders also bought shares of these companies with confidence.

In previous stage before ERP comes into practice, companies used separate software for each service. Separate tools were used for sales tracking, financial management and for human resource management. Lots of employees were employed for managing separate software. This resulted in redundant technology, service was poor and the staffs found it very difficult to integrate data from these services and create a report out of it.

Critical information could be extracted from such independent software. But, with the advent of enterprise resource planning software, managing all the resources under a single system was made much easier. Also, lots of manual work involved in resource management was cut down to a large amount.

Compared to the big industries, small and medium sized industries used the ERP efficiently. In general enterprise resource planning can be used to introduce standard industry process, implementing integration across various inter related business units within the company, real time access to the information and creating analytical report with a single click.

Whereas some organizations can see this as an unwelcome intrusion into the normal working day, the project manager has a role to play to get people to buy into the IT project and use their collegiate working protocols to ensure that all the targets are met.

Some approaches take the view that team building exercises have to be independently planned and implemented to ensure consistency and monitoring. However team building at its best is derived from the willingness of colleagues to resolve a problem by using their different skills and experiences.

The first task is always to make people feel valued. A person will never be able to fully participate in any team work unless they feel that they are genuinely valued and that their contribution makes a significant difference to the outcome of that task. When managing InfoTech projects, there is often a tendency to invite external consultants who will not know a lot about the employees they are expected to work with.

Apart from the normal introductions and the basic orientation, they will move straight to the work. Some of their tasks may involve asking people questions which can be intimidating. Sometimes they will also ask people to change the way that they are working and this can increase the level of resentment across the board.

The frustrations of trying to get people to buy into the project will further increase its lifespan thus creating a culture of skepticism and disbelief. Where managers are not directly involved in the implementation of the project the consultants will struggle to get any cooperation and will often make mistakes.

How then can team work develop from such a scenario ? The first challenge is always to ensure that different workers are given the opportunity to take ownership of the project by contributing to the key performance indicators and also marking the milestones of each piece of work.

It is not enough to be aware what you need from a member of a team, you also need to understand that they will have their own view about the value of their work and how it can be progressed. Personalities are the drivers of any team building exercise. Therefore it is advisable to only select people who are able to work within a team. This is more difficult than it actually sounds. No matter how well trained or skilled an IT technician is, if they cannot effectively communicate with the people in the organization, then all their work will be lost.

Business IT projects should be seen as an opportune moment to foster joint partnerships between different employees and different departments. Once ownership is established it is then much easier for people to buy into the project and contribute ideas. Managers who implement new business IT projects are then tasked with valuing each person’s contribution.