What is an ERP Blueprint Document?

What is a blueprint Document? How does it look and what does it contain? Let us try to answer these questions.

What is an ERP Blueprint Document?

By definition an ERP blueprint is a declaration of the expectations from an ERP system by using a documented method.  A blue print is maintain through three principles:

• A technical demonstration of the expectations from the ERP system
• A quantitative description of the ERP system
• Other related inputs and information needed to facilitate the project.

What is the Purpose of the ERP Blueprint?

Let us begin from a different angel; an ERP blueprint is a document which will be used to describe your company’s goals and targets regarding the ERP system. This document will also link to required defined and documented steps needed to achieve these goals. The purpose of the ERP blueprint is to guide the planning of the ERP implementation project. It is not the project plan – but it lays the basics and foundations for the plan and answers questions like:

• Which organizational areas are included?
• Which modules are expected?
• Which organizational stakeholders are involved?
• Which systems are included?

In the project Management terms it will be used initiating part:

• It declares the expectations of the stakeholders that commissioned the project
• It defines the basic organizational business process
• It defines which ERP modules are expected
• It defines who are the organizational stakeholders that are involved in the project
• It helps to understand which resources are required

What does the ERP Blueprint determine?

The ERP Blueprint determines and defines which scopes and areas and the organization are included in the project and which will be covered by the ERP system.

Once areas are left outside the scope – I suggest that the blueprint will describe the interface with those areas. For example, if you decided that Human Resource (HR) will not be included in the project – that means that the ERP system will not include a HR module. But the production module will be included. Now, when you are booking operations you enter normally the employee ID (for example for measuring work performance). Will it be the HR ID? Or how will the HR system get the data out of the ERP system? How the ERP system will receive the ID of the employee? Which ERP reports will be submitted to the HR department? And so on.

Who is Responsible for The ERP Blueprint?

Normally a specific function in the organization is responsible for creating and managing such document – the project manager. Now pay attention – I wrote creating and managing – because the function that is creating this document should consult and engage others functions in the organizations; Sales, Purchase, Finance, Planning Logistics and so on. These functions s will use the ERP system and therefore must provide their inputs.