In an era where data governance policies are everywhere, IT departments are on the front line. They’re responsible for ensuring data quality across the organization: managing infrastructure, raising awareness in the business, and reporting to management. They already have a wide range of tasks, and their responsibilities will grow even further with the arrival of the GDPR. How can you effectively manage a data management policy when schedules are often overloaded? One part of the solution lies in standardizing your IT systems. How? By integrating an agile, modern ERP solution like Odoo.
Start with the basics
An ERP project is a major step for any business, even with the simplicity that is inherent in Odoo. It fundamentally changes existing processes and employees’ working habits.
Obviously, this is not a project to be taken lightly. The problem is that, very often, there’s a lot of hype when new management applications are rolled out: business leaders may want to do everything at once. Big mistake! Major changes can trigger negative reactions from some employees, and low adoption rates would run completely counter to the desired standardization. A gradual approach is therefore the key to success.
To start, we recommend that you deploy only those Odoo modules that are essential to the customer life cycle: CRM, sales administration, customer accounting (invoicing and payment), logistics and procurement. This is already a major project that will lead to significantly smoother processes and substantial productivity gains. In addition, employees will get used to working with the new ERP solution and you will be able to manage the change more effectively. Finally, by getting to grips with the ERP software, you will identify the working methods that need to be redesigned. Following the deployment of Odoo, you will be starting from a solid baseline.
Extend the scope of your ERP gradually
Once this first stage has been "accepted" by all stakeholders (lines of business, management, IT, and the integrator, etc.) you can confidently consider the next stage of the deployment. Other departments, such as HR, marketing, and communications will then be able to take full advantage of the features that Odoo supports. Modules (or apps as Odoo it refers to them) dedicated to managing the website, blogging, recruiting, and managing employees, etc. are genuine sources of additional productivity for employees and the IT department alike.
Indeed, these modules allow you to go even further in standardizing your IT by centralizing the majority of internal business processes. Data passes through a single software application; this makes things flow better thanks to the drastic reduction in the number of interfaces required and duplication of effort becomes a distant memory. In other words, these are significant benefits for the IT department and the business that cannot be overlooked.
Eradicate Shadow IT
Odoo ERP is now the primary work tool for the vast majority of the company’s employees. Nevertheless, a few applications and Excel files will continue to operate in the background within various departments, whether due to resistance to change or because a highly specific feature has not yet been incorporated into Odoo, there are still reasons to keep this shadow IT in place. This phenomenon-which is defined as the use of applications without the IT department’s approval, and therefore without connecting them to the main IT system-is currently a problem for many companies. Fortunately, Odoo makes it both simple and realistic to combat shadow IT very.
One of the distinctive features of this ERP solution is its open-source nature, which means that if none of the 10,000 applications meets a specific need, it is entirely possible to undertake custom development. With the support of a good integrator, it is possible to connect almost any application and to meet 99% of the company’s needs. Employees will, therefore, no longer have any valid reasons to bypass official processes. With Odoo, sprawling IT systems have never been further away!