What Does An ERP Functional Consultant Do - Role of ERP Consultants

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and an ERP functional consultant has many responsibilities. The consultant has to match the requirements of the client while implementing the modules. The ERP functional consultant should be able to improve the business process instead of customizing the ERP system to the existing business process. An ERP functional consultant is required to know about the business environment and process. He should be able to study the existing business process and design current business flow diagrams. The consultant needs to use the predefined templates to categorize and document everything. He will be needed to produce an AS IS document and a TO BE document. The TO BE document is a result of mapping and gap analysis which has to be done for every module. The ERDs and DFDs have to be done prior to starting the configuration of the future business in SAP. Testing has to be done like system integration testing, unit testing, user acceptance testing, performance testing, etc.

Apart from all these responsibilities, an ERP financial consultant is required to make a document of the settings done by him or her. The consultant also needs to prepare a user training manual and provide for end user training. An update of the status of the project has to be provided to the leader or project manager.

The ERP financial consultant will be interacting with the end users, other consultants, implementing team members, project manager, core team members and technical consultant. He should possess good communication skills to be able to communicate and interact with all of them. Good writing skills should be present to be able to generate reports, documents and mails. Convincing capabilities is must as the consultant is required to explain and convince the customer. The ERP consultant should be quick to grasp the requirements of the customer and be able to provide solution for the problems in the business process. He will have to be familiar with the latest business intelligence tools. The consultant needs to ensure that the system works as required by the customer and it also follows the standards and constraints.

The ERP functional consultant should be aware of the business models such as Customer Relationship Management, Production, Manufacturing, Human Resources Management, Supply Management, Finance, Product Lifecycle Management, Inventory, Purchase, etc. This job needs the consultant to design the business process and set up the rules, regulations and standards. High communication skills are needed to interact with the people involved. He needs to aid the technical team to design the test cases for functional analysis and provide training to the user about the functionalities of the system. An ERP functional consultant should be used properly to save time and money while implementing a trouble free system. The knowledge of the consultant should be used to the optimum and the knowledge should be transferred to the staff properly. The staff needs to get familiar and self sufficient with the help of the consultant. An important role of the ERP functional consultant is to act as an adviser.

Read about Disadvantages of ERP Software.