Top Five Mistakes to avoid during GST upgrade in ERP

As government is not in a mood to extend the date of the GST due to multiple reasons such as festive season, financial qtr etc.., India Inc is in hurry to comply with GST. In the same process, it is important to upgrade your ERP software platforms from GST compliance. We have tried to collect following mistakes which should be avoided:

• Implementation Partner as GST consultant: Your business in unique in nature and their might be compliance related to the GST regime. There might be substantial impact on your business model which you might not be aware hence avoid considering your ERP implementation partner as the best person to guide you on the GST compliance. You should be hiring a specialized business consultant for the impact analysis on your business and same shall be shared with the implementation partner. This will help in better modelling of the business and you will be able to look in to your business priorities.
• Do not Custom your own GST solution:  It is highly recommended to go with OEM patch for your ERP. Please ensure that you are applying & implementing the standard Patch supplied by your ERP OEM. The reason for same is:

1. In initial phase of implementation there will be lot of changes, you should not waste time in building logics.
2. OEM will be working for all the customers; hence a standard solution support will be provided.
3. In case your implementation partner is developing the solution, how will you ensure the future upgrades.

• Do not try to many projects or upgrades: It is an opportunity to upgrade & resolve lot of pending issues along with GST upgrade. However it is recommended that you should not go live on all the projects at same time. It should be in phases such as:

1. Phase 1: Upgrade
2. Phase 2: Functionality Enhancement
3. Phase 3: GST Migration

The reason for same is the bandwidth of your end users & IT team. Too many things can lead to confusion & poor testing.

• Avoid saving Hardware cost: Ensure your IT team is not trying to save on hardware cost for the above project by putting the present production environment or testing environment at risk. Now a day’s lot of good options are available in the cloud for temporary arrangements. It is highly recommended to hire some cloud machines for this project, which will help in minimizing impact on the production environment and quick go live.
• End User Hardware not considered in UAT: It has been seen that some time User Acceptance Testing is done by selected users in the conference room, rather at the end user location. For the large population of end users, the desktop/laptop hardware/software might be a mismatch for your upgrade/migrated version. To avoid such risk please ensure a UAT at the selected actual end users end users machines.

GST migration for your ERP such as Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), Microsoft Dynamics Navision, Axapta, SAP, Ramco etc, is a major initiative. All such ERP OEM have released patch on their latest version & predecessor. Please look out to GST blogs of your respective ERP OEM.

We all are lucky to be part of this change which will rewrite the business methods in India. Lets adopt best practices and wish for a smooth migration to new tax regime.