Build ERP Career – Advice to Students who want to Start Career in ERP

Enterprise resource planning is an integrated platform to help organizations run their operations by usage of IT to have an integrated view of the enterprise and is being used extensively by modern day organizations for doing their day to day operations. These tasks entail managing a single view of organization and flow of business processes like keeping track of all the sales orders, managing and controlling the levels of inventory, handling payroll and tax returns to complex statutory and management reporting and business intelligence.

Given below are some high paying career opportunities in the field of ERP:

Project Manager 

Any project whether it’s a new ERP Implementation, or ERP Upgrade or ERP Support or a rollout of a Global ERP Design, needs project management to smoothly manage the implementation and expectations. The ERP project manager is part of the larger IT or ERP project team and is entrusted with the responsibility of managing and coordinating a specific ERP global rollout or implementation project. He is responsible for the project management of the entire ERP implementation life cycle and ensures that the project is completed on time, within budget and scope and to the satisfaction of customer.

His main duties are to define Project Objectives, manage and address needs of Business Users, guide, motivate and lead the project, and manage day to day tasks and communications and identify and mitigate any interim project changes and risks. He is responsible for review of strategies and methodologies and project artifacts developed by team members and manage preparation of presentations and reports and communication with the stakeholders and management.

In simpler words, the project manager is responsible for overall team performance in any project. He has to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction. For this, the project manager must have a thorough knowledge and expertise in underlying ERP software, along with people management experience, inclusiveness, collaboration and project management experience and expertise. He must have professional qualifications with good communication skills and leadership abilities.

ERP Consultant

ERP is an integrated System. It has various modules or various business processes integrated into one big software platform. It is highly unlikely that one person is able to solution the entire business processes or a big global organization all by himself. A large number of resources are required to understand the business processes across modules, identify integration points and solution complex business requirements.  The role of an ERP consultant is to execute initial implementation of the ERP system as a whole. He must ensure that the developed system is able to deliver as per the defined requirements. The ends with training the employees of the organization about the benefits of the system and enabling them to use the system as intended. This way, change management is cultivated for the purpose of effective functioning in tandem with business goals. He must solution, guide and provide the best standard business solutions for an effective business environment without unnecessarily customizing the base ERP package.

The ERP consultant must have the required educational qualifications that help him in gaining the required domain knowledge along with functional experience in the relevant domain. Prior experience in fields such as information technology, computer programming, sales, marketing, logistics, human resources and supply chain management would be an added advantage. Any aspiring ERP professional must have excellent communication and presentation skills. Internship with an ERP consultancy or any organization which has a good ERP system would also be an added advantage. He must also have product configuration knowledge, for example if we wants to work as Oracle Financials Consultant, he must have good knowledge of Oracle General Ledger, Oracle Receivables and Payables and Cash Management and Fixed Assets. This can be acquired through either training or on the job practice.

ERP Developer

The role of an ERP developer is to help customizing the ERP Package to solution business requirements that cannot be catered by out of box ERP functionalities. He should follow strict documented guidelines issued by the ERP Vendor and the Client to ensure consistency and re-usability of code being developed. He should also suggest improvements in the present plans, policies and procedures of the organization. Developers must possess strong coding and development skills in the underlying ERP Technology and must have organizational qualities such as team leadership, team training and case resolution along with in-depth knowledge of related system configuration, processes and sub-processes. He must have the ability to make sound decisions under strict deadlines besides having the required educational qualifications.