ERP Consulting Skills

ERP consulting represents a confluence of technical skills and business skills. Any successful ERP consultant has a deep business understanding of his business domain and has the ability to translate business understanding to ERP functionality.  Your success as an ERP Consultant and your growth in ERP Career depends on how well you understand the importance of all these required skill-sets.

How you are able to learn the new KSA’s as you move up in your career ladder. In this article we will try to explain some of the key consulting skills that the industry expects from the ERP Consultants and we will explore these skills further to provide you with the avenues to acquire these skills or improve upon your competencies and expertise levels. The consultants should focus towards results-oriented consulting where they are developing themselves each passing day to become more competent to deliver value to the customer, and till the time you are able to provide value for your cost, there can be no barrier to your growth. We hope that the following discussion will be valuable to both the early starters as well as experienced TechnoFuncs looking for growth in their career.

Business Domain Skills in ERP:

Each industry has its unique business drivers to which ERP implementations need to be tailored in order to ensure that the potential of ERP implementations is exploited to its maximum and business is able to derive cost benefits out of its ERP implementations.  A successful consultant keeps himself updated on the business drivers within an industry and is able to tailor the implementation to suit these ever changing and evolving business requirements. For instance, the FMCG industry works on the stock and sell model and depends on efficient and responsive procurement systems to enable constant flow. In this distribution-driven business, manufacturing and supply chain operations have to be in complete sync with sales to ensure that the inventory is stocked with the right product mix and business is able to optimize inventory at all times. Consultants who are able to understand and correlate business drivers and able to provide business with corresponding ERP functionality are generally extremely successful and sought after.

ERP Modular Expertise V/s Wing to Wing Knowledge:

You generally start your ERP career by acquiring “modular” skills where you are focused on a specific module of your ERP Package like Oracle or SAP.  Initially your efforts to build depth in the specific module helps you to gain confidence and expertise in that area, as you grow in your career demand for wing to wing expertise also starts increasing. Our TechnoFunc industry demands consultants who have grown both horizontally and vertically and are able to see the problem holistically and provide solutions that integrate well with the organization as a whole. As you gear up to take more leadership and management roles, it is the breadth of knowledge across business functions – also called “integration” skills or wing to wing expertise that takes more importance. The more you are able to see a solution holistically and provide analysis on the potential problems to the complete solution as a whole; more you are respected and valued as a Consultant by the client and your organization as well.

If you are in the beginning of your career, take this as a career opportunity that there is a huge shortage of consultants who can be considered experts in the integration between different modules encompassing different functions like sales, manufacturing, procurement and associated accounting and costing. The earlier you bring your focus on building this cross modular expertise the better placed you will be.

ERP Business Skills & Abilities:

Given below are skills that are essential for your overall growth as an ERP Consultant. We are expanding these skills to help you understand the role each one of them plays and how you can acquire them and keep your learning going. To know in detail about any skill set – click on the skill to drill-down!

1. Functional /Technical Skills
2. Organizational Skills
3. Teamwork Skills
4. Communication Skills
5. Interpersonal Skills
6. Problem Solving Skills
7. Analytical Skills
8. Time Management Skills
9. Multi-Tasking Skills
10. Project / Process Management Skills
11. Influencing Skills
12. Negotiation Skills
13. Planning Skills
14. Direction Skills
15. Delegation Skills
16. Coaching Skills
17. Language Skills
18. Cross Cultural Communication
19. Managing Conflict
20. Resourcefulness
21. Initiative / Action Oriented
22. Creativity
23. Flexibility
24. Adaptability
25. Decisiveness
26. Peer Relationships
27. Customer Focus
28. Business Acumen
29. Leadership
30. Vision & Purpose – Looking at the big Picture
31. Approachability
32. Developing Others
33. Integrity
34. Stress Management
35. Timely Delivery
36. Execution
37. Program Management
38. Interviewing Skills
39. Change Management Skills
40. Learning and Teaching Skills