Day3 - Lessons Learned by Basak Tektemur

System solutions options:

1) keep legacy system and just improve the quality
2) best of breed and connect them if you can (it can be part of ERP or not)
3) ERP
4) In-house development

You can do SWOT analysis and define your current situation then you can estimate future state and do SWOT for this estimation you can see the GAP and you can talk about the options that may help us to close the gap in between. Rather than focusing on ERP like doing SWOT pre-ERP and post-ERP, doing just SWOT is better because only since then you can think about options and choose or have the chance to choose among the option.

When you decide ERP is best and you decide to implement ERP you select the provider.
To do that you look at the options and you look at your requirements. You can look at companies like yourself to decide which provider is best for you, you can talk about the systems with people who come to your firm to present their solutions (these are salespeople of vendor).

But salespeople are not implementation people; it is not a good idea to trust them and their knowledge only.

If you are using an ERP system with modules coming from different providers but there will be some problems such as integration problems, upgrading problems, also you need to improve higher in-house abilities since your people must know about more than one system. Also cost is an issue, but it is difficult to say it will be cheaper or more expensive. An advantage may be you may obtain best solutions for each application.

If there is no documentation about business processes there is the probability that the firm did not do their homework and did not define their business processes and define their needs. Then it is extra job for consultant firm to define these things and then build a system accordingly.

There are three reasons for failure in persuade salespeople to enter their sales experience:
* Time consuming
* Do not want to share their valuable info
* The need for evaluation

Learning points

According to the general tendency the hard part is the implementation part, many companies do not think about the organizational change management- it is not a easy process as the companies usually think.
It is important and necessary to learn what can go wrong.
People’s jobs change, there is a gap you should close, and communication is a key concept in change management.
OCM is a series of initiatives to prepare your organization
Welch Allyn – family business that sells diagnostic medical instruments, they have patient monitoring systems
They have 2300 employees world-wide
The company was growing organically and also by mergers and acquisitions but their old IT system was not supporting this growth.

They wanted to implement all the system once at a time.
23 full time project members from Welch Allyn and there are 17 system integrators. The medical industry was highly regulated by food and drug ad. There was six team leads.

Technical issues: blueprinting, configuring, client strategy, transports, testing, code changes

OCM – five initiatives
Training
Business process procedures
Security and role development
Super user development
Communications


Culture eats strategy for breakfast everyday… => values, behaviors, beliefs and norms that permeate the group
Expressed through the words and behaviors of each employee
Company or department leadership sets the overall tone
Often influenced by the customers you serve
Most often revealed in the way companies approach and solve their problems

Entrepreneurial vs. bureaucratic
Team focused vs. independent initiatives
Risk taking vs. conservative
Aggressive vs. not
Loyalty vs. what have you done here lately

View points go hand in hand with culture, people may react to ERP training according to the culture in the company.
Ex: viewpoint => I’ve learned other systems before, I’ll figure this out
Culture => Management under-estimates complexity before Go Live – “ready-fire-aim”

Once we decide to implement ERP system
* We send the functional team to training in order to make them learn the needed functions. (on-site and off-site training)
* Management seminars are important and thereby managers ,CEOs and other executives can decide their roles and can be more supportive
* End user training- is like an implementation project it is like an HR project
o Training needs analysis
§ Survey end users; ask them questions
§ What do they know and what do they need to know?
§ What are the ways they learn best determine courses, cost estimates
o Develop course contents
§ Time schedule
§ The content
§ Course material who will do this
§ How will this be accomplished
§ Resources, funding, review tests and etc.
o Deliver training courses (to end users)
§ Identify and train instructors
§ Locate training rooms
§ Set schedule, manage invitations and attendance processes
o After training – practice before go live
§ Adhoc organized practice sessions, prepare for proficiency tests
§ Administer tests, score them, offer retest opportunities, and postpone security access as required.

Element of Communication plan

What is the content/message?
Who is the audience?
How do we tell them?
What is frequency?
Who will deliver?
Where will it come from?
When are delivery dates?

You use communication first to explain the change process in order to erase the anxiety, chaos and fear. You also keep people at speed what is going on at that specific time of the project.

The impact of SAP must be emphasized in order to show in-house people the importance of the project.
Lunch and Learn sessions are very helpful as a communication channel since there are business people involved in the project with IT people and their attendance to the regular meetings during the process is very important.