Maslow's Hierachy of ERP Needs

If you have forgotten your basic human psychology course or don't know what I am on about, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applied to us humans refers to the sequence of need satisfaction, where we have to have satisfied one need before we can become interested in another. We didn't bother with cave painting until we had the food and shelter thing sorted out, then when we organised ourselves into farming communities we had time for all sorts of cultural activities - and so on. I have grossly simplified it but I hope you get the idea.

The same can be applied to ERP. If you bring a system in to a disorganised company, the first thing they will worry about is stock accuracy, and try and get it from 80% to 90%. If you went round the corner to a World Class manufacturer with 99.8% stock accuracy and asked him what he was worried about, I bet it would be something like improving customer service levels. Of course inventory accuracy is important, but he's done that and moved his attention on.

My point, eventually, is that there is always something more you can squeeze out of the business and your systems are just waiting to be moved up a gear. Aberdeen Group have a great way of defining Best in Class and Laggards, and there is a huge gap in efficiency between them. I don't believe there is ever a point when "no more can be done". In my experience there is nearly always a lot more, you might need to upgrade the systems or get some outside help in, but where there's a will there's a way.

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