Selling cloud manufacturing ERP internally

However, treating each individual executive with power over important decisions as a single entity will likely not help your case. Instead, it is vital that you address each of the parties as different, but equally important divisions who will all likely benefit from ERP.

Overall, it is important to remember that each member of the business will likely reap different advantages offered by ERP, and so you need to be able to position each of these to the relevant people in order to gain support. Outlined below is exactly how to do this.

Remember, before approaching any of these key players in your business, you should come armed with a cost benefit analysis, which will add credibility to your argument.

Gaining support of the CEO/ business owner

Gaining buy-in from the CEO or owner of the business is likely to be one of the trickiest tasks. However, having a strong ERP product that is well suited to their business will certainly benefit this executive in many ways.

Specifically, ERP allows CEOs to make better decisions by offering real-time organisational; information, giving them the opportunity to visualise profitability and manage costs in real time. Having access to up-to-the-minute figures will improve revenue predictability with visibility into critical margin-based costing reports. Overall, access to this data will align the organisation with process efficiency, offering a single approach for accurate business data.

ERP will also help to empower the workforce by providing the technology they need to support business strategies, which is an issue of great importance to the CEO.

Chief financial officer

The key advantage of ERP for your business's CFO is the system's ability to accurately measure ROI for the organisation. The CFO is the individual who likely holds the purse strings for your business, and it is therefore specifically important that you are able to confidently speak about how ERP can benefit them in particular.

Using ERP, CFOs can gain visibility into profitability, while managing costs in real time. In addition, they can identify areas of targeted cost reductions, as well as setting and maintaining margins. In addition, with the rising popularity of flexible and remote working, and the busy schedules of CFOs, ERP gives them the chance to gain access to sales reports and expected revenue at any time, from any location on any device.

Chief information officer

Generally responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals, the chief information officer - or CIO - is one of the employees who will likely benefit the most from the rolling out of ERP. With the system, they are able to connect business strategy with technology seamlessly and in real time.

ERP will allow them to mitigate risks by implementing technology backed by data security providers who specialise in the latest security trends. In addition, ERP provides the ability to connect business processes with technology, while giving the responsibility of software maintenance to the provider.

Chief technology officer

As the person responsible for implementing new software, it's vital to get support from the business's chief technology officer. In many cases, this person may be the individual who wants to implement ERP, but it is best to have some figures handy to demonstrate the ease of transition.

In summary, gaining buy-in from key figures within your business is just as important as selecting a suitable ERP system for your own specific set of requirements. By taking the time to break down the information to decision makers, you will highlight the variety of advantages that ERP can bring, while highlighting how it can be adapted across several departments.

Lauri Klaus is the Founder and CEO of KeyedIn Solutions. With 20+ years of ERP software experience, Lauri understands that technology can transform a business. KeyedIn Manufacturing produced a whitepaper called "The Definitive Guide to ERP', which helps businesses that are thinking about implementing ERP or actively pursuing a system. It can be downloaded for free here.