What is the price of making bad decisions when constructing an ERP team? And what can you do to improve the chances of making effective choices?
Explained below is a framework which BSM uses both to recruit its own staff and as a recommended approach when constructing ERP teams, involving the use of psychometric (or occupational) assessments.
A psychometric test is defined by the British Psychological Society as “an instrument designed to produce a quantitative assessment of some psychological attribute or attributes or any procedure on the basis of which inferences can be made regarding a person’s capacity, propensity or liability to act, react, experience or to structure or order thought or behaviour in particular ways”. These types of tests seem to be a long way from the usual work associated with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system – so how can they help?
Many ERP practitioners will tell you of staff being taken from their usual roles in the business, often times in line management, and being brought into a project environment – and then not succeeding. The facts are that it is often the case that either different competencies are required in the project role that are not required in a line management role – and the person may not have had to use this competency previously - or there is a much greater emphasis on a competency where a much higher level of performance is required. Either way, the new challenges in a project environment can bring stresses and strains which may not have been identified in advance – with all of the difficulties this can bring.
So, how can psychometric (or occupational) assessment help and how does it work in the context of an ERP project? A best practice approach starts with relevant stakeholders identifying within each role on the project the key characteristics that underpin high performance in that role – and these characteristics are likely to be different for each role. Each proposed team member then completes an assessment (which usually can be taken online) with a follow-on session arranged with a qualified practitioner to verify the results of the assessment.
The assessment provides information on the extent to which an applicant’s natural disposition is suited to the requirements of the role – but also identifies those aspects of his/her personality that would need to be toned down in order to succeed in the role. These assessments can help to identify situations where putting an individual into a project role is unlikely to work owing to the level of adjustment that would be required by the applicant. Alternatively, if there is no other option but to place a given individual in a role, a particular effort can be made by the project management to counteract known competency gaps.
It is often said that the biggest mistakes that you make on projects are the people decisions. Occupational assessment is an effective method to increase the probability of making the right decisions.
This Opinion was written by Tom Conlon, Senior IS Consultant at BSM. If you would like further information on Occupational Assessments in ERP please send an e-mail to Tom Conlon.
Tom Conlon will respond to your query.