the organization chart of a typical implementation team. At the top of the chart is the Executive Committee headed by the cia or COO (or somebody from the top management). Then there is the Project Management Team and the Technical and Administrative Support Personnel followed by Work team. We will see the functions of the each team in some detail.

Executive Committee

Project Management

Technical Support Team

Administrative Support Team

Work Team

The executive committee is made up of the company's top management and is headed by the person who is in-charge of the ER~ project implementation - a person in whom the company places its highest confidence, someone who is being considered as a leader and someone who has the necessary authority and carries enough clout within the company. The committee should alsp include the consultant teams liaison officer - the person who has been designated by the consulting firm to report to the executive committe. A similar person from the package vendor should also be part of the committee. The executive committee is responsible for monitoring and evaluating of the project and its progress. The committee is the body, which approves budgets and initiatives corrective actions when things are not going according to plan. The committee should establish a reporting and monitoring mechanism by which it will know how everything is progressing. The monitoring mechanism should have facilities to alert the committee about impending disasters and delays well in advance so that corrective and preventive measures can be taken. The committee should meet at least once a week with a provision for holding emergency meetings if so required.

.:. Project Management teams

The project management team is comprised of the technical leader (leader of the consultants team) and the executive committee head. The team can also have a senior representative from the vendor's team. These people are responsible for conductina the scheduled work, administering the project, communicating with thein-house team and the consultants, and reporting to the executive committee. The executive committee head (the company's man who heads the ERP implementation project) should monitor the implementation team's progress, assess the amount and quality of the contribution of the team members - both in¬house and consultants - and discuss the issue with the consulting team's head. This person should also ensure that the company personnel and the consultants are working together as a team and there is full cooperation between the two groups. The same person is responsible for ensuring that the consultants are transferring their knowledge to the in-house team and that all the documentation is being done properly. He/she should make sure that even after the consultants leave, the system should be able to run smoothly.

.:. Work Team

The work team is composed of people who will actually perform the tasks set forth in the project plan. These task range from extracting information about the
current system from users to monitoring -the start-up of the new system. The people of this team should be the best in the company and should dedicate their entire time and attention to the ERP implementation project. The team's job requires team spirit, a cooperative attitude, good communication skills, patience, persistence and self-confidence. The work team normally includes the hired consultants and the in-house team. These consultants should have a good understanding of the software that is being implemented. That is why they have been hired, in the first place. These consultants most certainly must have participated in the implementation of similar project before. The company's in¬house team is the people with the knowledge of how the company works. They are the people who are going to use and run the system in the future. They and the consultants together, decide how the system should work. The in-house team members will be the first people to receive training on how to operate the software. They must know how the system works in order to evaluate the impact of the software on company's current business processes. They will also discuss with the consultants and the package vendors, the level of customization that the product will require in order to function properly in the company. The work will do the testing of the system, once the system is customized and configured. The work team will also participate in the training of the end-users of the system. The in-house team will contain people from the company's IS/IT/EDP departments. These people will know the existing systems well and can prove valuable in bridging the gap between the business experts (in-house team) and the functional experts (the consultants). Since these people are familiar with the software packages and also with the business processes of the company, they