Saturday, July 31, 2010

BilkentMBA2010, Lessons learned, week 4, Nurcan Bozkaya

In the 4rd week we discussed about the strategic ERP implementation types such that;
• The Big Bang Method:
This method requires that doing the implementation one at a time in whole company. It requires relatively shorter time period than phased method of implementation. This generally helps to the long term cost shortages. Doing the implementation shortly also leads to less painful adaptation period. But also since it is a shorter time adaptation, the intensity of the pain might be more. Additionally this method is more risky than phased method and the result is less satisfaction with the crucial system’s abilities. Generally, applying this method can cause extra working costs and opportunity cost of not working since while implementing this method very fast might require most of the employees to have their full concentration to that job.
• Phased Method:
This method is followed slowly relative to Big Bang Method. This method is less risky than Big Bang method since it consists of the steps of implementation in a long term. Thus, if there is a big problem with the project, it allows stopping the project, and with this way the company can avoid from extra cost. On the other hand, making the implementation slowly may cause “change fatigue”, and employees may lose their interests about change.
Moreover we discussed about leadership, “what is leadership and what is leadership different than management?” subjects. And also we talked about the shared leadership concept;
First of all leadership is defined as “influencing others understand and agree about what should have been done, how this can be done effectively, and it is a process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish a shared objective” by Yukl. The difference between leadears and managers are; managers have formal authority but leaders do not, they have the inspire and influential affect on their employees. From the point of Global ERP implementations’ view, in global teams there are issues we should have to deal with. For that reason Self-managing virtual teams (SMV) are becoming more and more common. SMV team members have abilities on work methods, task assignments and schedules and also compensation and feedback.
There are 2 types of leadership behaviours which are:
1. Task-Oriented Leadership: Task-oriented leaders are focused on accomplishments. At this type of leadership the success depends on to the leader’s ability about demonstrating the competence and commitments to the team members.
2. Relationship-Oriented Leadership: Relationship-oriented leaders focus on the relationships among the team's members. At this type of leaders creates an atmosphere which formed by trust, dignity and respect. The leader encourages the members to build constructive relationships with each other also.
The other subject we discussed is about ASAP methodology. ASAP means Accelerated SAP which is proven and successful approach to implement SAP solutions across industries and customer environments.And also ASAP provides content, tools, and expertise from former successful implementations. ASAP methodology has 5 phases:
1. Project preparation:
In this step the objective is to provide initial planning and preparation for the project. At this stage project team trained and the initial hardware is ordered. The output of this stage is the high level project plan and the project team organization.
2. Business blueprint:
This stage is the documentation step which will be used while doing configuration in the realization phase. Blueprint workshops and prototypes are being done at this stage. FRICE (Form, Report, Interface, Conversion & Enhancement) control list and the business process definitions are the outputs of this step.
3. Realization: The purpose of this phase is to implement all the business process requirements based on the previous stages outputs. Unit tests, training the process owners, FRICE developments, integration tests, and data activities are being done at this stage. Final user acceptance is the output of realization.
4. Final preparation: The purpose of this phase is to complete testing, end-user training and finalize the readiness of the company before go live. During this phase, final system rehearsal, help desk support preparation and cutover should have been done.
5. Go Live & Support: At this stage the data is migrated from the legacy systems, the new system is activated, and post-implementation support is provided. During this stage, review system processes and continuos improvement, help desk support and review issue log should have been done.

1 comment:

Cheapermobiles said...

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