Advice to a Young ERP Consultant Part 5:

Learning By Doing

My Dear Young ERP Consultant,

It may surprise to you know that when I started as an ERP Consultant - in the olden days of 2015 - I was given a spiral-bound collection of pages. This "book" had printed instructions and screenshots of my ERP. It was a simpler time.

Adding onto our previous post, there are limitless internet resources for you to research the three levels of consulting detail: Wikipedia and business school sites for high level business needs, YouTube videos and feature release notes for medium level sales demo happy path, community sites, consulting blogs, hotfix releases, and technical documentation for low level in the weeds unhappy path expertise. As a consultant, you need to know how to navigate the ecosystem of knowledge pools available around your ERP product.

But what do all of these internet resources have in common with the book I received as new consultant?

You will not learn ERP consulting by reading about it - whether in book or blog-form.

Advice Part 5: Learning By Doing

Have you ever watched a YouTube video on how to juggle?
At the end of the video, did you know how to juggle?

ERP is the same.

Written resources can guide you, but you need your fingers on the keyboard, clicking in the system to learn how your ERP system works.

You should have access to a demo or test version of your ERP. Once you have a high level understanding of some business process, try doing it in your system. Take your own notes and screenshots what works or doesn't. What needs to be setup in advance for success?

Even better: start with an empty environment and create everything from the ground up. Imagine you run a lemonade stand and need to manage the whole business through your empty ERP.

You will get a lot of errors (which we'll cover next) but you will learn a great deal.