Maturity is often used to measure a person’s level of responsibility, to gauge the ripeness of a fruit or the mellowness of a fine wine. In the business world, maturity can be used to measure how capable a management team is or how advanced a manufacturing process has become. Maturity has also been used to measure how calm the overall organization is; measuring the stress levels of the day to day operations.

Business maturity is something that grows over time and is a result of people recognizing those things that work well, and fixing the things that don’t. Unfortunately, not all business processes are easily fixed. There are usually very good reasons why “we have always done it this way.” When picking through the archives of process decisions, those ineffective processes are usually rooted in place for a reason. Process inefficiencies are commonly the result of someone protecting their center of influence or failing to evolve as a result of system integration issues beyond a business manager’s control.

During an ERP implementation, your business will be presented with many opportunities to change. The barriers that have prevented change in the past are removed or even forgotten. Technology and political walls are removed and your business team has been given permission to question the status quo. This is the perfect opportunity to grow a deeper understanding of the business as a whole, to expand your knowledge of the upstream and downstream use of your business data, and become more strategic as an organization.

Your management team will be challenged to stay calm and most importantly to be responsible when making decisions that impact the organizational structure of the business. The ERP system will ensure the technology side of the inefficiency equation is fixed. It will be up to the maturity of your management team to keep the political decisions in check, allowing processes to be refined and ripened into their full potential.

Want to know more about Project Management?  Attend Janet Dahmen’s sessions (418 & 841) at COLLABORATE 15 #C15LV with @IOUG! http://bit.ly/c15lv

Janet Dahmen is Avout’s Delivery Services Partner who focuses on ensuring the overall effectiveness and quality of each engagement. She has over 20 years of project management experience in the IT industry, specializing in Oracle ERP implementations.