OVERVIEW

There is no longer any such thing as an IT project. Every projectwe re involved in is about business change.

Bob Lewis ^[67]

In Chapter 1, we discussed the fact that it is the information and communication technologiesof today that make modern planning conceivable, that make it possible for us to get our arms aroundbig parts of the supply chain and plan them rationally. In this book, we have chosen to emphasizeplanning processes as the core issue for improved planning, in part to redress an economicimbalance: To promote software, there are powerful marketing machines financed by softwareproviders and fed by the information technology analyst community; to encourage good practice andeffective processes, there are only the professional societies and educators. We also, of course,strongly believe that understanding how an enterprise should plan ideally must come beforedecisions about software to avoid attempts to plan product flow in inappropriate ways but withexpertise and awareness of what kinds of planning approaches are technically possible.

Information systems for planning are a critical part of how to improve planning. Every one ofthe case studies in Chapter 7 involved new software. Good planning in medium and larger enterprisesdepends critically on using good planning tools. In this chapter, we will address softwareselection and implementation issues head on. We will attempt to arm the reader with insight andguidelines to help with the systems side of planning improvement. We will take you through themajor steps of software implementation and then into some of the more esoteric issues.