O Do I Need ERP!

We’re in the process of wrapping up the results for an employee opinion survey we administered for a client last year. It’s been a long drawn-out project, beginning last August with the development of the survey, the setup of the administration (online and paper) and now the analysis of about 1300 on responses, 800 written comments, and creation of 70 manager reports. This survey is quite a bit longer than many of the other surveys we do, consisting of 79 questions, 2 open text boxes for comments, and background and demographic information of the respondent. Currently, we use SPSS to crunch the numbers, ACCESS to transcribe and produce the comment reports, and EXCEL to generate the summary reports (includes graphs, tables, charts, and text). The reports include descriptive statistics, historical information from previous administrations, and highlighting of significant differences.

After our readings and discussions on ERP (and CRM), I’m convinced more than ever that my process is completely out-of-date, time consuming, and prone for error (if you have not already guessed). None of our systems are integrated or even partly integrated. Information has to be constantly saved and imported manually from one system to the next, with a lot of checking and rechecking of data on the back end. Surprisingly (and thankfully), we’ve never released information that has been in error, but we spend a lot of long hours reviewing and validating the results before delivering them to the client. You get the picture!

I realize that I’m going to have to figure out a way to simply this “monster” by either buying or developing a system that can house the data in preferably one place, and be easily retrievable to analyze findings and produce reports. I recognize that the customization and flexibility we give clients to tailor the results to their specific taste may need to change, but the potential cost savings, speed and potential quality, and accuracy may increase. After I finish up this job in the next couple of weeks, I will take a short breather and then begin exploring what current technology is available to make my job a whole lot easier.