ERP projects often exceed budgets and face post-implementation challenges due to unclear business processes, resistance to change, inadequate training, and the need for ongoing updates, but these issues can be mitigated by leveraging agentic AI solutions that automate process discovery, enhance training, streamline user acceptance testing, and improve update testing.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects are notorious for exceeding budgets once the implementation phase begins. Post-implementation, organizations must continuously adapt their ERP to align with evolving market dynamics, regulatory changes, and technological advancements. Failing to do so adversely impacts their return on investment. These challenges, however, can be addressed by leveraging agentic AI.
Bottlenecks during ERP Deployment
Unclear Business Processes
According to a recent ERP survey, 31% of respondents reported their ERP implementation took longer than expected, while 12% stated that their projects experienced significant delays.
One of the reasons cited for implementation delays is unclear business processes. Although ERP systems connect the physical world with digital, it is typical for the business discovery process to be done manually—a time-consuming and error-prone process. IT leaders may rely on interviews with the people involved in executing the process to gather baseline data. A risk that comes with this approach is there’s no way of telling whether a person’s view is objective or fully informed.
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How can AI help?
Using AI in ERP, the entire process discovery lifecycle can be automated. AI models can easily pull-out data from application—ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), business process management (BPM), and enterprise content management (ECM)—that are involved in executing a business process from beginning to end. AI tools can further link together various data and process attributes to develop a virtual twin of existing processes, i.e. baseline business process model.
Opkey’s Solution: Argus AI—Opkey’s purpose-built supplier lifecycle management (SLM) tool for ERP—is trained on knowledge developed over years within the core Opkey platform. Leveraging advanced process mining and observability, Opkey’s Config Agent is a comprehensive ERP configuration solution that effortlessly manages configuration to simplify complex, time-sensitive deployment workstreams, reducing both cost and risk.
Resistance to Change
According to McKinsey, more than 70% of all digital transformation projects fail. One of the biggest reasons for ERP failure is inadequate adoption by end users. Careful planning is required to avoid such overruns.
Effective UAT is considered to be the most effective change management strategy, as it provides business users the chance to operate ERP before going live. However, UAT is time-consuming and performed by business users whose plates are already full. Therefore, testing is often an afterthought and a rushed process rife with errors. This defeats the whole purpose.
How Can AI help?
Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of AI that can be used to generate test cases based on historical data and provide insights into user feedback, ultimately leading to faster testing cycles, improved accuracy in bug detection, and better overall user experience.
Opkey’s Solution: Opkey’s AI-enabled, no-code test automation platform empowers your team to validate software functionality with unparalleled ease and precision. Leveraging Opkey’s AI capabilities, both technical and non-technical folks can create and maintain test scripts. Opkey’s AI agents also help you with a wide variety of tasks including planning and support tickets.
Improper & Inadequate Training
Undoubtedly, ERP software solutions offer numerous advantages, such as eliminating data silos and managing core business processes like supply chain management and inventory management. However, resistance to change is a common challenge, leading to low ERP adoption. One major reason for this is improper and inadequate training.
Training is often viewed as an additional expense rather than a critical investment. Furthermore, when new features, upgrades, or process optimizations are introduced, organizations fail to update users, assuming that employees will figure things out on their own. However, this leads to knowledge gaps, errors, and underutilization of ERP features, which can significantly impact ERP ROI. Therefore, training should not be treated as a one-time event but rather as an ongoing process.
How can AI help?
AI can transform ERP training by making it more efficient, personalized, and engaging. AI analyzes user roles, skill levels, and learning progress to create customized training modules. Employees receive tailored content, ensuring they learn relevant ERP functionalities without information overload.
Opkey’s Solution: Opkey’s Training Agent is an integrated change manager and end-user enablement expert, engineered to maximize end-user adoption. Leveraging end-to-end test case data and generative AI, Opkey’s Training Agent automates the user guide creation to ensure continuous training and readiness. To guide users through unfamiliar or complicated processes, the agent actively monitors user journeys and offers personalized in-app nudges.
Bottlenecks Post ERP Deployment
ERP Updates
As part of their commitment to innovation, ERP vendors regularly release updates to introduce new features and enhancements. However, these updates can be costly as they may disrupt existing customizations and integrations. To ensure business continuity, it is essential to conduct comprehensive testing before implementing any updates.
In a scenario where Oracle rolls out quarterly updates, Salesforce thrice a year, Workday and Dynamics 365 twice a year, testing an ERP for updates can be a challenging task.
How can AI help?
AI agents can be trained to test ERP updates effectively. AI-driven test automation can transform ERP testing by ensuring seamless updates with minimal disruptions of business operations and improved efficiency.
Opkey’s Solution: Opkey’s Testing Agent revolutionizes ERP testing, reducing downtime and disruption for both business-as-usual changes and patch updates. Leveraging process mining, observability, predictive analytics, and built-in intelligence, Opkey’s Testing Agent can sense a business process change and create a risk-based test suite and can execute it autonomously. Moreover, with AI-powered self-configuring test scripts and comprehensive pre-built test scripts, the Testing Agents enable you to continuously test and validate while eliminating costly testing alternatives.
Inadequate Guidance
ERP implementation is not a one-off effort that ends when the new system goes live. It requires regular maintenance such as fixing issues and supporting new requirements as they come up. All this can lead to high bills as businesses often use a software vendor services team or external consultants when internal resources are limited.
How can AI help?
AI-powered support agents are transforming ERP maintenance by automating issue resolution, enhancing system monitoring, and reducing downtime.
Opkey’s Solution: The Opkey Support Agent delivers real-time, intelligent assistance to end users at scale, increasing productivity and reducing costly support load. When a user creates a support request, Opkey’s Support Agent performs a complexity check. Based on the level of complexity, the agent either guides the user toward a solution using in-app prompts or further analyzes the ticket data, examining the incident timeline and detecting any patterns.
