Balancing the costs of human resources on an ERP project

• ERP projects cannot be completed without consulting support, which could be reduced if internal resources are sufficiently trained.
• The study focuses on the relationship between the capabilities of a project team, training strategy and resource-cost management.
• It offers a decision model that allows a manager to assess the impact of a training strategy on the accumulative weekly cash outflows.
• The model allows to forecast the performance and track the progress of a new system implementation, of a system upgrade or extension.
• It also supports the calculations of the amount and experience level of the consulting support required to reduce the duration of a project.

ERP projects cannot be completed without external consulting support due to insufficient expertise of internal resources. The need for external consulting during project execution could be reduced if the capabilities of internal resources are improved through team training that is provided before the commencement of a project. Previous studies demonstrate that the most cost-effective approach to ERP implementation is to balance formal initial team training with external consulting support. This paper expands previous research by adding a decision model that allows a manager to: (1) assess the impact of a training strategy on the accumulative weekly cash outflows, (2) forecast the performance and track the progress of an ERP implementation, and (3) calculate the amount and experience level of the consulting support required to reduce the duration of a project. Feedback from practitioners suggests that this type of tool would be welcomed by the project management community.