Tuğrul Tamtürk, General Manager of Enfotek A.Ş., talked about "Unfinished ERP Projects and Their Costs to Businesses".
Tuğrul Tamtürk, General Manager of Enfotek A.Ş., which develops domestic ERP and Software Solutions in Dokuz Eylül University Technology Development Zone (DEPARK), talked about "Unfinished ERP Projects and Their Costs to Businesses". Emphasizing that choosing the right ERP is vital especially for businesses, Tamtürk said, “Informatics companies do not control how the software sold affects the performance, human resources management, financial control and quality of the company, and they do not take responsibility. As such, the companies that buy ERP are thinking 'Then I can write my own software' because they feel all the responsibility on them," he said.
TO BE YOUR OWN SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
“Today, many companies have attempted to create an ERP system from scratch with software developers on software platforms that are not full of content and specialized in ERP. Tuğrul Tamtürk said, "This is a very current issue, especially for 10 years," and explained the issue as follows: "The main reason for this is; The failure of the IT sector in Turkey to be multidisciplinary. There is a tendency to sell software to companies by evaluating ERP only with the software side. The issue is considered commercial and seen as software sales. When you look at it only in terms of software, IT companies do not control how the software sold affects the performance, human resources management, financial control and quality of the company, and they do not take responsibility in this regard. This responsibility is placed on the back of the company where the ERP is established. Of course, companies also say: “If I take all the responsibility, if I'm telling you what should happen, why I should pay lots of money? Let me sit down and write the software myself for free.”
THEY THINK THERE IS NO EXPERT SOFTWARE
Stating that companies missed a point here, Tamtürk said, "Since the ERP corporate software business in the Turkish IT sector has not been handled with the right perspective, no product has actually been created in this regard." Tamtürk said, “ERP companies could not provide this convenience to their customers. If they had determined the business rules of the company with a little effort and started with a software infrastructure compatible with the dynamics there, many projects would have achieved results in 1 year (40-50 user companies). The main reason why companies sacrifice 3-5 years and incur the cost of writing software from scratch is because they think that there is no expert software. Whether it is a domestic or foreign company, they cannot offer this product due to their inadequacy in customizing products specific to the company. When there are customer-based customization requests, the software company asks its customers to employ software developers,” he said.
ERP BUSINESS IS RE-ENGINEERING
Tamtürk continued as follows: “The IT firm may have settled the accounting and personnel. Stock, purchasing modules may also be settled. But after that, the company is left alone due to the lack of necessary automation software, whether it is integration and production management, planning, cost management, designs according to the needs of some special departments, sample, design departments, special needs of production. With this reflex, the company assumes the role of we hire our own software developer and continue. An important point that is overlooked here is that the ERP business is a re-engineering business. If the firm sees ERP as just writing software, it misses most of the work. Again, companies need to ask themselves questions such as, "What are the processes I really need, what are my processes that add value, are there processes that I can eliminate, are there parts with high costs?" Re-engineering is done by experts from outside the company, providing faster and higher quality results.”
THERE MAY EVEN LOSS OF PRESTIGE
Stating that they are aware of the fact that companies need to purify and simplify all these processes and then transform them into digital processes, Tamtürk said, “Based on my 25 years of experience, I am an engineer who has witnessed small-scale or million-dollar projects and met with company managers and been involved in these projects from the beginning to the end. I get feedback about these processes, I talk to the managers. In addition, as the time lengthens, with the project costs reaching an astronomical point, the developments stall, and the mistakes that the users experience in the real-life application (following all the data) in the newly developed prototypes, and problems that disconnect the user from the system. During the system installation, in a company whose manager is more result-oriented, the point reached in 4 months, in a company whose manager is uninterested and waiting for everything, even expert ERP is forced. The duration can be extended up to 8-12 months. 3-4 years have passed and there are still discussions, the lean process work within the company has not been completed, the employees of the company whose compliance has not been achieved remain in chaos, demoralized and cannot do their job properly. In these conditions, the reason for not being able to do his job is the system that doesn't fit, companies pay huge bills in this job they enter because it is cheap. There is even a risk of losing their prestige.” he said.
IT IS AN EXTRA LOAD TO THE EMPLOYEE
Tuğrul Tamtürk, General Manager of Enfotek A.Ş. also gave information about why companies gave up on the ERP programs they invested in and drew attention to the circulation in the companies and the potential of the managements to take responsibility.
Tamtürk concluded his words as follows: “There is a constant staff circulation in the companies. Let's say that the expectation in the job description of an employee who enters a company in the machinery sector will be that he has experience in that position, has a diploma and performs the duties expected from him. The employee does not expect a workload much higher than this. Naturally, if that company is a company that produces machinery parts, the work of the employees there is also the services that support the machinery part production system. It is management, purchasing, planning, production. However, if the management decides to produce software from scratch, all employees are burdened with a workload that they cannot handle. They are expected to be included in the ERP system by giving the majority of their work every day. However, this is not the employee's problem. The obligation to establish a new system is the problem of company management. By working with experts who will take responsibility for the company management, the staff will focus on their work.
Will the employee go into software design meetings, or will it do its job? If personnel circulation is added to this, business processes are disrupted because the newcomers do not have the knowledge and experience on ERP. No matter how much the management expects from the employees about ERP, when the negative feedback from the employees, when they can't get performance, when the ERP development stops, that system actually stopped, in other words, it died. It has an admissions process. Sometimes the administrations insist on not returning from their mistakes even though they make mistakes, they do not accept it. The system is not developing, they cannot say let's change it immediately. This costs an extra 6-12 months. Sometimes, the management can be changed, assuming that the management cannot work. Large-scale personnel changes, up to management changes, put the company in great distress and can reduce the quality of its productivity. The initial “thought of having a simple and inexpensive software system” puts the company in financial problems that are very difficult to calculate. For this reason, this issue should be seen as a serious investment item and the development of domestic and national expert software should be supported.”