"We have just spent an enormous amount of money on a new enterprise-wide system but each department operates differently and they can't seem to get the new system to work properly. My users just don't understand the system."

Enterprise-wide systems require an integrated approach by multiple departments with different business objectives and priorities. In many cases, one or more departments are "downstream" of another.


In one instance, our client had purchased an order entry and fulfillment system designed to support multiple products and departments that heretofore had had their own stand-alone systems. As a consequence, each user department not only had different business objectives and processes, but their terminology and even their interpretation of the system's functionality differed. This was true even though all the departments were interacting with the same clients.


Our solution was to work with all of the departments together to first define a common set of terms and data standards. We then identified each department's primary business objectives and their critical information and communication flows. As a result, we were able to define a standard set of procedures that leveraged the new system's capabilities to each department's best advantage and that created a process and information flow that met each department's needs.