What We Learned at ERP Boot Camp

Check out the SparkFun process maps we created after our trip to ERP Boot Camp.

A little over six months ago, five members of the SFE team spent three days at ERP Boot camp offered by Panorama Consulting located here in Colorado. For those who have never heard of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) it is software that allows all of the operations of a company to function on one platform and for information to be shared and commingled on that platform from multiple areas of the company.

While the five of us walked away with differing opinions on the value of an ERP system one thing we did agree on was the value of walking through an exercise where we outlined our present internal processes on butcher paper. The exercise was suggested at the boot camp as a way of identifying our inefficiencies, bottlenecks and needs in an ERP system should we decide to move forward.

The processes ranged from fairly simple to very complex

Some processes were limited to input from one department

Most involved more than one department

A few involved numerous departments

The next step to this process will be to outline through a similar method how we would like the process to work, the information we would like available to us and the influence the final outcome will have on our work, department and SparkFun.