Instead of ERP
1- Keep Legacy & Improve
2- Best of Bread
a. Different Applications
3- ERP
4- In house development
There are two main states:
1- Current State
2- Future State
In-between these states there are options and ERP provider selection should be done there.
That means after choosing ERP the next stage is choosing providers.
How?
- Providers come and do their presentations
- Analyses of competitor’s ERP providers
- every type of questions should be asked to the providers
Best of Bread as an alternative solution to ERP has some disadvantages:
May have cost disadvantage, needs different types of consultants, may have upgrade problems
Before implementation companies should complete their homework. Homework is to analyze their system enough to have right choices.
Some of the salesmen do not like ERP applications because they think that their know how; the information about customers are their most important properties. However, when all of the information of customers collected by an ERP system firms can fire a salesman without thinking any loss of customer information, which is very useful for firms. Also taking commissions makes salesman do not want to share their information.
Organization Change Management OCM
An ERP system change the way of doing jobs so this change should be managed as wall as ERP implementation process. The culture of the firm is very important; it can be very easy to change the organization in some companies where it had caused someone to be fired.
Welch Allyn, which is a family business, is a good example for us to see how OCM is done.
There are 2300 employees where 600 are trained and they had implemented SAP at 2004. They are using HR, SD/CS, MM/PP, FI/CO, PLM, and BW Modules.
The organization change management is divided into 5 parts.
Training: Core team training
Management Seminar
End User training
Training needs analysis (how many people to train)
Develop course content
Deliver training courses
After training-practice before go live. (Examinations to see users are ready or not)
Communication: ERP cause fair and insecurity in between company so that before the implementation process starts and also during the implementation the employees should be informed. First to get buy in for all levels in organization.
Security/Role Development: There is a common data base and it is used by everyone so that some limitation should be given to the user. To do that the roles of each employee should be defined and relevant access should be given.
Super User Development: They are chosen to ask some questions about new system because they are given a response to help employees in their department. They are chosen because they are better than others in terms of new system. And they are given more training then others. It is not a easy job; they need to search a lot to answer questions.
Business Process Procedures: The documentation process of business should be managed; document specification.
All of these parts should be managed very well to have an efficient organizational change.
Showing posts with label Day 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Day 3. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Day 3 Learnings
In order to implement ERP solution we should first do SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis before implementation of ERP should be made and SWOT analysis simulating after ERP implementation should be made.
There are system solutions
1) Keeping Legacy Systems
No change in the existing systems.
2) Best of Breed Systems
Writing different applications and trying to integrate them
3) ERP
4) In-House Development
In pre- ERP process company should create questions.
You should negotiate with different ERP vendors and invite salespeople to come to your company and make presentations. Usually implementation people do not come to companies in that process
Waiting documentation from companies makes consultant to understand if the companies do their homework or not. In this process consultants try to figure out the potential problems of companies.
After that process, company should select the provider.
Organizational Change Management
It is perceived as soft stuff; however it is usually a hard stuff. Using right people for that process is important. Key issue in that process is communication within the company.
There are five parts of Organizational Change Management. These are:
Training
Training has several elements:
Core team training
Management Seminars
End user training.
Communication
Elements of the communication plan is
What is the content/ message
Who is the audience?
How do we tell them?
What is frequency?
Who will deliver?
Security and Role Development
Giving permissions to people to view appropriate data or doing things.
Super User Development
Helpful person who has computer skills is called super user. Literally, it is 10% of the end users. They are educated to tell other users how to use the system.
Business Process Procedures
A document to define steps how each transaction is used within ERP system in your company.
It is strategy and tactics to capture, document and control business process procedures.
Why this procedure is hard stuff?
Because changing individual behaviors and changing company is first perceived as soft stuff.
There are system solutions
1) Keeping Legacy Systems
No change in the existing systems.
2) Best of Breed Systems
Writing different applications and trying to integrate them
3) ERP
4) In-House Development
In pre- ERP process company should create questions.
You should negotiate with different ERP vendors and invite salespeople to come to your company and make presentations. Usually implementation people do not come to companies in that process
Waiting documentation from companies makes consultant to understand if the companies do their homework or not. In this process consultants try to figure out the potential problems of companies.
After that process, company should select the provider.
Organizational Change Management
It is perceived as soft stuff; however it is usually a hard stuff. Using right people for that process is important. Key issue in that process is communication within the company.
There are five parts of Organizational Change Management. These are:
Training
Training has several elements:
Core team training
Management Seminars
End user training.
Communication
Elements of the communication plan is
What is the content/ message
Who is the audience?
How do we tell them?
What is frequency?
Who will deliver?
Security and Role Development
Giving permissions to people to view appropriate data or doing things.
Super User Development
Helpful person who has computer skills is called super user. Literally, it is 10% of the end users. They are educated to tell other users how to use the system.
Business Process Procedures
A document to define steps how each transaction is used within ERP system in your company.
It is strategy and tactics to capture, document and control business process procedures.
Why this procedure is hard stuff?
Because changing individual behaviors and changing company is first perceived as soft stuff.
Lessons learned by 23rd of June
There are alternatives for ERP software
- Keep Legacy system, and improve it
- Best of Breed Applications, and try to connect them.
- Use ERP
- In House development. Deal with your own problems
When implementing there are 5 steps
- You must check your options, do workshops
- Prepare today’s SWOT
- Prepare future’s SWOT
- Learn about the systems
- Select Your Provider
Organizational Change Management
- It is Who, Why, How, Where, When of your implementation plan
- Sample Case Welch Allyn
- 17 Consultants from capgemini
- 23 Project members
- Peoplestuff: training, communications, security,authorization, super user authorization, business process procedures. These all change behaviours. Of people
- Peoplestuff is therefore hard stuff.
Core team training is called Training period, you teach your members.
Where in management seminars you give your message t your superior executives, share your vision.
End user training grants the ability to your employees who will face the software on a daily basis.
What must be done is to practice the software before it goes live. Support people with the help of super users, who will act as local leaders and knowledge centers.
Keep in mind that people will have to do the loads of work when they will be back from training, so give them room but remind them practice makes it perfect.
Lessons Learned v3.0 by Tolga YILDIRIM
Organizations that are in search of effectively managing their information in order to have better decision-making capabilities have several options for an enterprise wide information system. The first option, obviously, is implementing an ERP solution to solve the information needs. An ERP solution should be considered as a digital nervous system that enables the organization to act as effectively and efficiently as if it were a single body. Information needs, business processes should be analyzed by a core team in the organization to implement an ERP solution which will enhance the capabilities of the organization.
However, implementing an ERP system is not the only option. The second option is the ‘best-of-breed’ solution. For example, an organization may choose to implement the best SCM (Supply Chain Management) from one solution provider, the best HR application from another solution provider and a CRM from another one. Then, the organization tries to tie these different applications so that information integrity is maintained. This approach incurs several concerns, beside advantages. By installing the best applications for different functions, an organization gets the best possible individual solutions and capabilities. However, the amount of time and effort, in addition to cost, needed to ensure the integrity of information is tremendous. The organization has to deal with the complex tasks of handling upgrades and monitoring any integrity problems, thereby employing increased number of technical staff.
Another option available is in-house development. Depending on the complexity of business processes and information needs of an organization, the success rate of in-house development approach diminishes. ERP solution providers, or solution providers in general, have the expertise and know-how in solving information needs successfully. Implementing an ERP system is a serious job, and requires professionalism, expertise and know-how. In addition, the organization needs to employ a huge number of technical staff.
Organizational Change Management is the most important aspect of an ERP implementation. The organization may implement the most appropriate ERP solution, yet information needs may not be met. An ERP system changes the way people do their jobs. Therefore, the human factor comes into play significantly. Resistance to change occurs if the organization does not manage the change process. The soft stuff in fact, is really the hard stuff. Organizational Change Management can be summarized as a series of initiatives to prepare the organization and the individuals. Five steps can be categorized as training, security/role development, super user development, communications, and business process procedures.
However, implementing an ERP system is not the only option. The second option is the ‘best-of-breed’ solution. For example, an organization may choose to implement the best SCM (Supply Chain Management) from one solution provider, the best HR application from another solution provider and a CRM from another one. Then, the organization tries to tie these different applications so that information integrity is maintained. This approach incurs several concerns, beside advantages. By installing the best applications for different functions, an organization gets the best possible individual solutions and capabilities. However, the amount of time and effort, in addition to cost, needed to ensure the integrity of information is tremendous. The organization has to deal with the complex tasks of handling upgrades and monitoring any integrity problems, thereby employing increased number of technical staff.
Another option available is in-house development. Depending on the complexity of business processes and information needs of an organization, the success rate of in-house development approach diminishes. ERP solution providers, or solution providers in general, have the expertise and know-how in solving information needs successfully. Implementing an ERP system is a serious job, and requires professionalism, expertise and know-how. In addition, the organization needs to employ a huge number of technical staff.
Organizational Change Management is the most important aspect of an ERP implementation. The organization may implement the most appropriate ERP solution, yet information needs may not be met. An ERP system changes the way people do their jobs. Therefore, the human factor comes into play significantly. Resistance to change occurs if the organization does not manage the change process. The soft stuff in fact, is really the hard stuff. Organizational Change Management can be summarized as a series of initiatives to prepare the organization and the individuals. Five steps can be categorized as training, security/role development, super user development, communications, and business process procedures.
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.
Day 3 Lessons Learned
Elevation speech
Key performance indicator
short, brief
SWOT analysis
Before and future analysis and compare them,
ERP implementation alternatives
In house developed solutions
Best of breed Find best for each kinf of system and combine them if possible
Keep legacy system
Current State --------------------? Fıtıre State
Options
Figure out each of alternatives options. Then after choosing right solution then select the provider,
How do we select the provider,
-we can go and visit them
- we can have some presentations from different vendors, benefits and options can be explained by them
-That gives a basic overview of what a system will look like.
- ask a lot of questions or visit other companies who has an experience from that company,
SAP has user groups that can be questioned about other companies’ experiences.
Best of breed implementation
Advantage? you have bargaining power, functionality advantage
Disadvantage? upgrade difficulties, integration, different kinds of experience, cost disadvantages, integration point support can be difficult
How an ERP consultant can understand a company did not do his homework,
--lack of documentation
--must know business processes
--if they do not do that consultant must work extra hours to extract business processes
ERP system comes with its own practices somehow customizable,
-- first company must pass through the ERP systems’ best practices to get a taste of the system.
-- the way the erp system goes for the companies’ business processes.
We talked about physical infrastructure of an ERP system. Servers such as web, gateway, database, sybel.
We talked about Sybel software clients.
What would be reasons a salespeople would not use an ERP system
--Salespeople would not want to share their experience
--Salespeople use personel relations
--Depending on sales differnt things can be thought,so it is not easy to computerize the data
--It is not easy for a salespeople to enter data into a computer.
Organization Change Management
1- Organizational change management looks like soft but it is really the hard stuff.
2- The goal is to learn what can go wrong
3- Organizational cahnage is to change the functions of the organizational units.
4- The key part of change management is communication, to take commitments.
5- İs there a dedicated team for organizational chane.
We talked about WelchAllyn.
6- We talked about general structure of SAP implementation on WelchAllyn
7- There were differnt consultants , and everytime a different person came to team meetings. This was very disrupting.
8- There were to kinds of challange, technical stuff and people stuff
9- Five dimesnsions
a. Training
b. Role development
c. Super user developments
d. Communications
e. Business processes
10- Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day.
11- People do not want to learn purposes, just the stuff they will use
12- They think thet do not need any practice
13- Some other wants to learn the purposes.
14- Core team is trained to understand core functions, and they will be used to train other people at the company.
15- Training is a huge HR project in itself that goes with the big project hand in hand.
16- There is a huge process in documentation.
17- Arranging rooms, schedule, manage invitations is not easy.
18- After training practice sessions are arranged.
19- Tests, scoring...
20- Training is just training, real life situations are harder to manage.
After training, communication comes into picture
21- İnternal project level communication involves project team people communication
22- End user needs communication handling
23- İn order to take support from different departments, we need to communicate.
24- To prevent fear, insecurtiy, some type of chaos, we use communication, no need to be afraid, this gonna make good use, better process, we will have trainin sessions.
Securtiy/ Role Development
25- New responsibilities after SAP
26- New jobs evolve
27- New SAP transactions to do their jobs
28- When we think about authentication, we talk with roles.
29- We develop roles and security acess codes, than assign these to people
30- But there would be changes, when the system goes to live.
31- Super users and/or power users must be identified and trained.
32- 10% of end users, must be natural leaders
33- As super users leran over time, there will be fewer calls to HelpDesk
34- It is hard to prospect super user issues for the typical first weeks.
BUSİNESS PROCESS PROCEDURES
35- Strategy and tactics to capture, document and control business process procedures
36- What docs to control and store, where and how to control ans store
37- Web sites for easy access, to SAP On line Help.
38- BPP – Business Process Procedure – a document to define steps – how each transaction is used within SAP system as configures in your company.
39- These documentation is a concurrent process to implementation.
Key performance indicator
short, brief
SWOT analysis
Before and future analysis and compare them,
ERP implementation alternatives
In house developed solutions
Best of breed Find best for each kinf of system and combine them if possible
Keep legacy system
Current State --------------------? Fıtıre State
Options
Figure out each of alternatives options. Then after choosing right solution then select the provider,
How do we select the provider,
-we can go and visit them
- we can have some presentations from different vendors, benefits and options can be explained by them
-That gives a basic overview of what a system will look like.
- ask a lot of questions or visit other companies who has an experience from that company,
SAP has user groups that can be questioned about other companies’ experiences.
Best of breed implementation
Advantage? you have bargaining power, functionality advantage
Disadvantage? upgrade difficulties, integration, different kinds of experience, cost disadvantages, integration point support can be difficult
How an ERP consultant can understand a company did not do his homework,
--lack of documentation
--must know business processes
--if they do not do that consultant must work extra hours to extract business processes
ERP system comes with its own practices somehow customizable,
-- first company must pass through the ERP systems’ best practices to get a taste of the system.
-- the way the erp system goes for the companies’ business processes.
We talked about physical infrastructure of an ERP system. Servers such as web, gateway, database, sybel.
We talked about Sybel software clients.
What would be reasons a salespeople would not use an ERP system
--Salespeople would not want to share their experience
--Salespeople use personel relations
--Depending on sales differnt things can be thought,so it is not easy to computerize the data
--It is not easy for a salespeople to enter data into a computer.
Organization Change Management
1- Organizational change management looks like soft but it is really the hard stuff.
2- The goal is to learn what can go wrong
3- Organizational cahnage is to change the functions of the organizational units.
4- The key part of change management is communication, to take commitments.
5- İs there a dedicated team for organizational chane.
We talked about WelchAllyn.
6- We talked about general structure of SAP implementation on WelchAllyn
7- There were differnt consultants , and everytime a different person came to team meetings. This was very disrupting.
8- There were to kinds of challange, technical stuff and people stuff
9- Five dimesnsions
a. Training
b. Role development
c. Super user developments
d. Communications
e. Business processes
10- Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day.
11- People do not want to learn purposes, just the stuff they will use
12- They think thet do not need any practice
13- Some other wants to learn the purposes.
14- Core team is trained to understand core functions, and they will be used to train other people at the company.
15- Training is a huge HR project in itself that goes with the big project hand in hand.
16- There is a huge process in documentation.
17- Arranging rooms, schedule, manage invitations is not easy.
18- After training practice sessions are arranged.
19- Tests, scoring...
20- Training is just training, real life situations are harder to manage.
After training, communication comes into picture
21- İnternal project level communication involves project team people communication
22- End user needs communication handling
23- İn order to take support from different departments, we need to communicate.
24- To prevent fear, insecurtiy, some type of chaos, we use communication, no need to be afraid, this gonna make good use, better process, we will have trainin sessions.
Securtiy/ Role Development
25- New responsibilities after SAP
26- New jobs evolve
27- New SAP transactions to do their jobs
28- When we think about authentication, we talk with roles.
29- We develop roles and security acess codes, than assign these to people
30- But there would be changes, when the system goes to live.
31- Super users and/or power users must be identified and trained.
32- 10% of end users, must be natural leaders
33- As super users leran over time, there will be fewer calls to HelpDesk
34- It is hard to prospect super user issues for the typical first weeks.
BUSİNESS PROCESS PROCEDURES
35- Strategy and tactics to capture, document and control business process procedures
36- What docs to control and store, where and how to control ans store
37- Web sites for easy access, to SAP On line Help.
38- BPP – Business Process Procedure – a document to define steps – how each transaction is used within SAP system as configures in your company.
39- These documentation is a concurrent process to implementation.
Day 3 Learnings - OnurOzensoy
For implementing a business information system solution, we should first consider two states via SWOT analysis of business currently and an estimated/desired SWOT state. Either analyzing each solution separately to see if one fits or devising a workshop to determine which provides best benefits/cost ratio, help us to see what is the ideal tool to reach "future desired state".
Strategic alternatives are; keeping legacy systems with no change, employing "best of breed" solutions packages which are not thoroughly integrated, employing an ERP or utilize in house development team to devise an ERP or non-integrated solutions package. Among these ERP implementation has the difficulties of requirement of change in the organization and an extensive process to adopt ERP. Best of breed solutions, on the other hand, will require many consultants, a larger group of admins and maintaining personnel, potentially higher costs and more comprehensive work to upgrade the system whereas it does not offer integration between functional groups. It is important to note that a best of breed application may be implemented to a compatible ERP system, if it is more desirable to do so.
In the vendor selection process, a core team will assess the potential vendors. This, of course, requires an awareness of vendors and their products at the first place.
Typically, a firm will learn about opportunities via vendor presentations, mouth-to-mouth or attending seminars. Sales people are to be communicated carefully though since they probably are not familiar with implementation and compatibility issues. Another key issue is to map your business processes before starting the implementation as consultants for implementation will need them and success will mostly depend on "doing your homework"
We talked about difficulties in making sales people adopt CRM and some other cons of it.
Organizational Change Management
This is perceived as a last and easy step; "soft stuff". But typically it will turn out to be the "hard stuff" as people will realize that changing other people is the most difficult part. Since most employees will be afraid of losing their job or doing something that they are not used to do, there will be friction in the organization. This is not a solely technical issue and it is about culture. Using right people for it is important.
We analyzed OCM process in Welch Allyn which is an Syracuse medical company dealing with medical diagnosis devices. There are five parts of OCM.
-Training: It involves core team training, which is about presenting the system with its capabilities and opportunities, goes on with management seminars and end-user traning to support adoption and ease of usage. Practice course must be the main element with theory.
Attendance and attention to courses should be followed via surveys or simply taking attendance.
-Communication: It should involve bottom-up and top-bottom parts. Communication must be devised so that fears will be overcome and adoption of program will be successful.
Of course, communications should be designed on a audience basis.
-Security/Role Development: It involves grouping different tasks and transactions and giving authority to appropriate person to view appropriate data. There will be many requests to examine other transactions than previously planned ones but as long as job did not change, it should be rejected.
-Super User Development: Super user is a computer literate, helpful person who is responsible for communicating the system to people and for helping fellow employees to use the interface. The person does these along with his/her regular tasks. This is an important part to over come friction in the organization via communication. Super users should be trained further, though.
- Business Process Procedures: It is mapping business processes of the company (workflows) so as getting ready them before training. Also, pre-ERP business processes and post-ERP processes should be mapped along with implementation.
Strategic alternatives are; keeping legacy systems with no change, employing "best of breed" solutions packages which are not thoroughly integrated, employing an ERP or utilize in house development team to devise an ERP or non-integrated solutions package. Among these ERP implementation has the difficulties of requirement of change in the organization and an extensive process to adopt ERP. Best of breed solutions, on the other hand, will require many consultants, a larger group of admins and maintaining personnel, potentially higher costs and more comprehensive work to upgrade the system whereas it does not offer integration between functional groups. It is important to note that a best of breed application may be implemented to a compatible ERP system, if it is more desirable to do so.
In the vendor selection process, a core team will assess the potential vendors. This, of course, requires an awareness of vendors and their products at the first place.
Typically, a firm will learn about opportunities via vendor presentations, mouth-to-mouth or attending seminars. Sales people are to be communicated carefully though since they probably are not familiar with implementation and compatibility issues. Another key issue is to map your business processes before starting the implementation as consultants for implementation will need them and success will mostly depend on "doing your homework"
We talked about difficulties in making sales people adopt CRM and some other cons of it.
Organizational Change Management
This is perceived as a last and easy step; "soft stuff". But typically it will turn out to be the "hard stuff" as people will realize that changing other people is the most difficult part. Since most employees will be afraid of losing their job or doing something that they are not used to do, there will be friction in the organization. This is not a solely technical issue and it is about culture. Using right people for it is important.
We analyzed OCM process in Welch Allyn which is an Syracuse medical company dealing with medical diagnosis devices. There are five parts of OCM.
-Training: It involves core team training, which is about presenting the system with its capabilities and opportunities, goes on with management seminars and end-user traning to support adoption and ease of usage. Practice course must be the main element with theory.
Attendance and attention to courses should be followed via surveys or simply taking attendance.
-Communication: It should involve bottom-up and top-bottom parts. Communication must be devised so that fears will be overcome and adoption of program will be successful.
Of course, communications should be designed on a audience basis.
-Security/Role Development: It involves grouping different tasks and transactions and giving authority to appropriate person to view appropriate data. There will be many requests to examine other transactions than previously planned ones but as long as job did not change, it should be rejected.
-Super User Development: Super user is a computer literate, helpful person who is responsible for communicating the system to people and for helping fellow employees to use the interface. The person does these along with his/her regular tasks. This is an important part to over come friction in the organization via communication. Super users should be trained further, though.
- Business Process Procedures: It is mapping business processes of the company (workflows) so as getting ready them before training. Also, pre-ERP business processes and post-ERP processes should be mapped along with implementation.
Day 3 - Lesson learned - Seçil Akdemir
There are 3 types of Opportunities:
In-house developed systems
Best of breed approach – taking the best systems from different vendors
ERP system
Keep legacy system and improve whatever needs improvement
1st stage: Current SWOT analysis
2nd stage: Future SWOT analysis
3rd stage: Options in order to reach future desired and estimated state
4th stage: Choose the provider and the system
These vendors come to the potential companies and talk about their systems.
Companies should ask lots of questions in order to understand the exact benefits of the vendor system since there could be extra costs or different needs in order to use that feature.
Sales people do the presentations most of the time, implementers are different people. So, sales people do not care much.
Best of breed: bargaining power is the main advantage; hopefully you take the best products of each vendor so you can achieve a better system at the end.
But you have to manage the upgrades of different companies. You always have to manage the integration points.
Cost disadvantage since you need different consultants for each product.
If there is no clear documentation of business processes, then it means they do not know the business processes in detail.
When you buy an ERP system, it comes with some business processes in mind. So consultants have generally in depth knowledge in terms of generic business processes.
Sales people generally do not want to use information systems:
Since they are paid in terms of their sales amount so they do not want to share the information with others within the company
In most of the companies, they do not have good evaluation systems so they are not interested in seeing the reports of sales people
Moreover, sales people are only interested in sales and if reporting is not a part of the evaluation process they would not report.
Organizational Change Management Presentation
In many ERP projects, most of the companies did not consider the organization change part of this project.
Communicating expectations is a key part of OCM.
OCM is a series of initiatives to prepare your company to the change.
Commitment of the employees is also important for OCM.
Technical stuff vs. people stuff
People stuff is training, communications, security authorization, super user organization, business process procedures. These are all initiatives that involve changing people behavior.
Technical stuff is blueprinting, configuring and etc.
Which one is harder to change?
Company culture really matters in strategic changes and decisions. Culture includes values the company holds, behaviors, leadership, and customers.
Culture and the view points really affect the success of the project.
Training has several elements:
Core team training is important so they will be involved more and understand the features of the system
Management seminar – ensure management understands what is going on
End user training:
Training needs analysis
Develop course contents
Deliver training courses
After training – practice before go live
Getting employees to see SAP as an organization and business process change
When training is approached as a software project, participants focus on “how to perform their own transactions”
1st part of the OCM is the training and the 2nd part is the communication.
Communication
It is important in order to take support and commitment of every department and user.
Security / Role Development
At the beginning defining the end users access needs could be a difficult task.
Super User Development
Use these people to increase the communication within the organization. Also, we can use these users for training purposes. Super users could be used to elevate problems. To distribute support within the organization is the main idea.
You want people who know about the process.
You select the key users – good workers. They need to be helpful. You need to ensure that super users know where to get help.
Super user workshops can be useful in terms of improving the ERP system.
Super user trainings can be organized so they will transfer their knowledge to the regular users.
Business Process Procedures
BPP is a document to define steps – how each transaction is used within SAP system as configured in your company.
OCM initiatives are inter-related – support and enhance each other.
OCM is hard stuff because you are talking about changing people.
Do plan the OCM and have a significant budget. At least 10% of implementation cost should be put apart for this purpose.
In-house developed systems
Best of breed approach – taking the best systems from different vendors
ERP system
Keep legacy system and improve whatever needs improvement
1st stage: Current SWOT analysis
2nd stage: Future SWOT analysis
3rd stage: Options in order to reach future desired and estimated state
4th stage: Choose the provider and the system
These vendors come to the potential companies and talk about their systems.
Companies should ask lots of questions in order to understand the exact benefits of the vendor system since there could be extra costs or different needs in order to use that feature.
Sales people do the presentations most of the time, implementers are different people. So, sales people do not care much.
Best of breed: bargaining power is the main advantage; hopefully you take the best products of each vendor so you can achieve a better system at the end.
But you have to manage the upgrades of different companies. You always have to manage the integration points.
Cost disadvantage since you need different consultants for each product.
If there is no clear documentation of business processes, then it means they do not know the business processes in detail.
When you buy an ERP system, it comes with some business processes in mind. So consultants have generally in depth knowledge in terms of generic business processes.
Sales people generally do not want to use information systems:
Since they are paid in terms of their sales amount so they do not want to share the information with others within the company
In most of the companies, they do not have good evaluation systems so they are not interested in seeing the reports of sales people
Moreover, sales people are only interested in sales and if reporting is not a part of the evaluation process they would not report.
Organizational Change Management Presentation
In many ERP projects, most of the companies did not consider the organization change part of this project.
Communicating expectations is a key part of OCM.
OCM is a series of initiatives to prepare your company to the change.
Commitment of the employees is also important for OCM.
Technical stuff vs. people stuff
People stuff is training, communications, security authorization, super user organization, business process procedures. These are all initiatives that involve changing people behavior.
Technical stuff is blueprinting, configuring and etc.
Which one is harder to change?
Company culture really matters in strategic changes and decisions. Culture includes values the company holds, behaviors, leadership, and customers.
Culture and the view points really affect the success of the project.
Training has several elements:
Core team training is important so they will be involved more and understand the features of the system
Management seminar – ensure management understands what is going on
End user training:
Training needs analysis
Develop course contents
Deliver training courses
After training – practice before go live
Getting employees to see SAP as an organization and business process change
When training is approached as a software project, participants focus on “how to perform their own transactions”
1st part of the OCM is the training and the 2nd part is the communication.
Communication
It is important in order to take support and commitment of every department and user.
Security / Role Development
At the beginning defining the end users access needs could be a difficult task.
Super User Development
Use these people to increase the communication within the organization. Also, we can use these users for training purposes. Super users could be used to elevate problems. To distribute support within the organization is the main idea.
You want people who know about the process.
You select the key users – good workers. They need to be helpful. You need to ensure that super users know where to get help.
Super user workshops can be useful in terms of improving the ERP system.
Super user trainings can be organized so they will transfer their knowledge to the regular users.
Business Process Procedures
BPP is a document to define steps – how each transaction is used within SAP system as configured in your company.
OCM initiatives are inter-related – support and enhance each other.
OCM is hard stuff because you are talking about changing people.
Do plan the OCM and have a significant budget. At least 10% of implementation cost should be put apart for this purpose.
Lessons Learned Day 3
What can we do instead of implementing an ERP system.
- Best of breed (best solutions/modules from different providers and their comination)
- Customized development (in-house development)
- Keep going and improve whatever needs to be improved
- Convert everything to MS Excel
yERP so what?
The first task is to select the provider; for this you,
Research
Invite/presentations, let vendors talk
Look at what others do
You should not rely on the presentations; ask a lot of questions about features etc; price and licenses..
Extras, costs, man hours should be asked for.
There are SAP groups where you can learn about what I should ask my vendor
You should keep in mind that vendors are not implementing
Best of breed solutions have certain disadvantages as;
Difficulty in managing upgrades
Integration problems
Different systems, different admin skills (coding language or what)
Cost disadvantage? Different types of consultancy costs will incur
Best of breed, is it the best in terms of functionality? Some people claim this however this might not be the case.
To be successful in the implementation prior to the ERP your homework is to analyze your processes. As a consultant in order to find out if they did their homework look if they ask questions, if they say yes to everything, if they don’t know why they implement ERP, if they don’t have documentation of business processes. If they don’t have it you should have them go through this. Workshops can be conducted for this.
ERP comes with certain flexibility, and when consultants come there is some exchange of knowledge/information.
For the selection process it seems infeasible to check whatever is possible with that solution. Vendor presentations, and talking to people who use ERP is what you can do.
After selection go through courses/trainings to see how it goes with your functions.
Sales people keep track of information about their customers.
They don’t want to share information because you work on commissions, they build personal relationships which makes them powerful, salespeople don’t take this process as a part of their job it just looks like time consuming task with no benefits to them.
There needs to be a mechanism for evaluation and make people write down the information.
Organization Change Management
OCM is regarded as soft stuff but turns to be hard, since appropriate resources are usually not allocated.
OCM initiative can improve company’s success levels.
What is OCM?
Serious set of actions
People’s job changes
Communication is a key point
Ask questions, why are you here, what’s your involvement, do you have a dedicated team
In the example given the company was growing and the IT was not supportive enough.
A single global system was to be implemented.
The project was led by the VP as Champion.
Technical stuff
People stuff
OCM
Training
Security and role development
Business process procedure
Communications
Super user development
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day
Culture should allow (make room for) change (entrepreneurial vs. bureaucratic, risk taking conservative, trust vs. fear, etc.)
Underestimation of the complexity leads to unsuccessful projects.
There is not so much time, they have work plus training and on the top practice is required
Learn as less as possible, just what you need.
Just tell me the answer
Question the purpose
- Training starts with the core team training. (information exchange, understand the capabilities)
- Management seminar
- End user training (training needs, contents, delivery, after training-practice) exams, qualifiers before giving access.
Refresher courses are necessary for newcomers.
Courses are though, you have to prepare courses, write down material, come up with exercises and the set up must be done.
Set-up classes.
Who will train? Do you have your own key people managers that can contribute to the training, who could deliver the training?
An outsider specialist does not know your company, and your processes, they need to be backed up about the process.
Hire documentation specialists
Arrange training and manage back up for your functions.
Sending invites, make sure people come to class.
1 administrator and one database for the training
COMMUNICATIONS
Is all communication the same?
We need to communicate with end users, other plants, organizations.
Main goal is the consensus; avoid fear anxiety, insecurity among employees.
In a communications plan: stakeholder and audience, channel, objectives, frequency, communicator, date and time should be included.
Team lunch, impact project management team meeting, impact newsletter, weekly sire leader, cost of meetings
Branding, banners, boards
How to measure effectiveness is difficult.
Do people show up?
Polls? Might be ways of measurement
No time, there is real work to do is the people’s attitude.
SECURITY
Role development and security
You look at what people do at a company, define transactions and group them. These groups are your roles.
Then you look at the individuals and assign roles to them.
There are also view roles only.
When you go live you need to modify access, and change security roles.
Roles are built from scratch there might be templates
SUPER USERS
Super users are knowledgeable, you go to them when you have questions, they help elevate problems, 10% about all users. They also need help and learn throughout time.. they learn with the helpdesk, helpdesks know about all transactions.
When you go live there should be a certain level of understanding.
You select super users there are more than one, and they are chosen on departmental basis.
Super user location and function matrix.
Super user workshops and trainings separately, so they can help others.
BUSINESS PROCESS PROCEDURES
Documentation creation and management.
Not the same as configuration management.
If you do after implementation you won’t be able to use it for training.
The goal is to get them ready concurrently.
Difference from business blue print? Transactional, blue print is a managerial tool. You don’t use blue prints for documentation, blue print is mapping your procedures.
Security will determine training courses
BPP output is training document input.
Super users are key communication, key feedback on security
KEY learning points
Changing people!
Do plan!
Plan budget and resources! At least 10% for OCM
People initiatives
You need to focus on people even though this is a software project
- Best of breed (best solutions/modules from different providers and their comination)
- Customized development (in-house development)
- Keep going and improve whatever needs to be improved
- Convert everything to MS Excel
yERP so what?
The first task is to select the provider; for this you,
Research
Invite/presentations, let vendors talk
Look at what others do
You should not rely on the presentations; ask a lot of questions about features etc; price and licenses..
Extras, costs, man hours should be asked for.
There are SAP groups where you can learn about what I should ask my vendor
You should keep in mind that vendors are not implementing
Best of breed solutions have certain disadvantages as;
Difficulty in managing upgrades
Integration problems
Different systems, different admin skills (coding language or what)
Cost disadvantage? Different types of consultancy costs will incur
Best of breed, is it the best in terms of functionality? Some people claim this however this might not be the case.
To be successful in the implementation prior to the ERP your homework is to analyze your processes. As a consultant in order to find out if they did their homework look if they ask questions, if they say yes to everything, if they don’t know why they implement ERP, if they don’t have documentation of business processes. If they don’t have it you should have them go through this. Workshops can be conducted for this.
ERP comes with certain flexibility, and when consultants come there is some exchange of knowledge/information.
For the selection process it seems infeasible to check whatever is possible with that solution. Vendor presentations, and talking to people who use ERP is what you can do.
After selection go through courses/trainings to see how it goes with your functions.
Sales people keep track of information about their customers.
They don’t want to share information because you work on commissions, they build personal relationships which makes them powerful, salespeople don’t take this process as a part of their job it just looks like time consuming task with no benefits to them.
There needs to be a mechanism for evaluation and make people write down the information.
Organization Change Management
OCM is regarded as soft stuff but turns to be hard, since appropriate resources are usually not allocated.
OCM initiative can improve company’s success levels.
What is OCM?
Serious set of actions
People’s job changes
Communication is a key point
Ask questions, why are you here, what’s your involvement, do you have a dedicated team
In the example given the company was growing and the IT was not supportive enough.
A single global system was to be implemented.
The project was led by the VP as Champion.
Technical stuff
People stuff
OCM
Training
Security and role development
Business process procedure
Communications
Super user development
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day
Culture should allow (make room for) change (entrepreneurial vs. bureaucratic, risk taking conservative, trust vs. fear, etc.)
Underestimation of the complexity leads to unsuccessful projects.
There is not so much time, they have work plus training and on the top practice is required
Learn as less as possible, just what you need.
Just tell me the answer
Question the purpose
- Training starts with the core team training. (information exchange, understand the capabilities)
- Management seminar
- End user training (training needs, contents, delivery, after training-practice) exams, qualifiers before giving access.
Refresher courses are necessary for newcomers.
Courses are though, you have to prepare courses, write down material, come up with exercises and the set up must be done.
Set-up classes.
Who will train? Do you have your own key people managers that can contribute to the training, who could deliver the training?
An outsider specialist does not know your company, and your processes, they need to be backed up about the process.
Hire documentation specialists
Arrange training and manage back up for your functions.
Sending invites, make sure people come to class.
1 administrator and one database for the training
COMMUNICATIONS
Is all communication the same?
We need to communicate with end users, other plants, organizations.
Main goal is the consensus; avoid fear anxiety, insecurity among employees.
In a communications plan: stakeholder and audience, channel, objectives, frequency, communicator, date and time should be included.
Team lunch, impact project management team meeting, impact newsletter, weekly sire leader, cost of meetings
Branding, banners, boards
How to measure effectiveness is difficult.
Do people show up?
Polls? Might be ways of measurement
No time, there is real work to do is the people’s attitude.
SECURITY
Role development and security
You look at what people do at a company, define transactions and group them. These groups are your roles.
Then you look at the individuals and assign roles to them.
There are also view roles only.
When you go live you need to modify access, and change security roles.
Roles are built from scratch there might be templates
SUPER USERS
Super users are knowledgeable, you go to them when you have questions, they help elevate problems, 10% about all users. They also need help and learn throughout time.. they learn with the helpdesk, helpdesks know about all transactions.
When you go live there should be a certain level of understanding.
You select super users there are more than one, and they are chosen on departmental basis.
Super user location and function matrix.
Super user workshops and trainings separately, so they can help others.
BUSINESS PROCESS PROCEDURES
Documentation creation and management.
Not the same as configuration management.
If you do after implementation you won’t be able to use it for training.
The goal is to get them ready concurrently.
Difference from business blue print? Transactional, blue print is a managerial tool. You don’t use blue prints for documentation, blue print is mapping your procedures.
Security will determine training courses
BPP output is training document input.
Super users are key communication, key feedback on security
KEY learning points
Changing people!
Do plan!
Plan budget and resources! At least 10% for OCM
People initiatives
You need to focus on people even though this is a software project
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Culture issues - lessons Day 3 + 4
Hi,
as yesterday my day was unfortunately way to busy, I also will have to summarize the "lessons learned" part in one post for two days.
In both days we discussed the impact of culture on the implementatinon of ERP systems. Even if I am aware, that quoting wikipedia might be scientifically doubtatif, I'd really like to use a sentence I found there to define the term culture I'll use:
Regional culutres can have a deep impact on the implementation of ERP systems. As the implementation of an ERP is not only simply "buying a new software system" but more or less changing the way business has to be done, the attitudes of the people involved play an important role, one of them being the willingness to change. Different cultures have different ways to cope with that. Geert Hofstede (Bio), a Dutch scientific that did a lot of research about both types of culture, has some publishes some interesting values and their definitions one one of his websites. Taking this kind of information is crucial to develop an implementation strategy. Taking some articles to account, we learned, that ERPs tended to fail in chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE) because of some social aspects; as a loss of authority would be involved in case the senior executives of those enterprises would actually spend a lot of time on insalling a "software system", they tend to declare it a usual IT project, which is - as research shows - not a very successful strategy.
We also discussed different ways to build a team as well for planning, implementing and training users for a new system. Not wanting to repeat my fellow's posts I summarize that involvement from all parts of the organizational structure is important; involvment from descision makers as well as from lowest-level end-users. An ERP might radically change the way people think: Employees have to get rid of thinking strictly functionally for the sake of understanding procedural aspects of their work to enable the system to streamline production (or service) proceses.
Even inside a corporate culture there are - of course - different characters of persons. The implementation and the coaching/teaching/training team have to be well-selected, so that they are able to understand, accept, influence and teach the new procedures the system imposes. This is especially critical as we have talked about that number one reason of IT project failure is not out of technical issues, but accesptance and usage of the concernd company members.
Today's lesson was more focussed on the corporate culture. Stuying a Harvard businnes case about Harley-Davidson's choise of an ERP system, we addressed the issues that can emergie if there is an incompatibility between ERP provieder, client enterprise and extended the discussion to consulting firms. I personally figured that "soft factors" like corporate culture may be as important as "hard facts" like the functionalities of the provided software system. Finally in the Harley case there were huge problems because of a cultural misfit.
The last part consited of building groups of diverse nationalities and cultures. Whereas we were initially supposed to finish on the same day, describing and debating out cultures (in my personal case China, Germany, France and Poland) took way to long; I think everyone of us had partially to confirm but also to moderate clichés about our nations, whereas we all were aware that we could only give kind of a subjective point of view.
So... tomorrow's exam is getting closer! I am pretty courious what task we are going to discuss, but after restructuring the knowledge we gained in the mindmap I feel more or less prepared for this challenge.
Everyone: Good luck for tomorrow.
Thierry
as yesterday my day was unfortunately way to busy, I also will have to summarize the "lessons learned" part in one post for two days.
In both days we discussed the impact of culture on the implementatinon of ERP systems. Even if I am aware, that quoting wikipedia might be scientifically doubtatif, I'd really like to use a sentence I found there to define the term culture I'll use:
[...]The term culture denotes whole product of an individual, group or society of intelligent beings. It includes, technology, art, science, as well as moral systems and characteristic behaviours and habits of the selected intelligent entities.Whereas on day 3 we focussed on national cultures and their impact on possible implementation projects of ERP, day 4 was more about organizational culture.
Regional culutres can have a deep impact on the implementation of ERP systems. As the implementation of an ERP is not only simply "buying a new software system" but more or less changing the way business has to be done, the attitudes of the people involved play an important role, one of them being the willingness to change. Different cultures have different ways to cope with that. Geert Hofstede (Bio), a Dutch scientific that did a lot of research about both types of culture, has some publishes some interesting values and their definitions one one of his websites. Taking this kind of information is crucial to develop an implementation strategy. Taking some articles to account, we learned, that ERPs tended to fail in chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE) because of some social aspects; as a loss of authority would be involved in case the senior executives of those enterprises would actually spend a lot of time on insalling a "software system", they tend to declare it a usual IT project, which is - as research shows - not a very successful strategy.
We also discussed different ways to build a team as well for planning, implementing and training users for a new system. Not wanting to repeat my fellow's posts I summarize that involvement from all parts of the organizational structure is important; involvment from descision makers as well as from lowest-level end-users. An ERP might radically change the way people think: Employees have to get rid of thinking strictly functionally for the sake of understanding procedural aspects of their work to enable the system to streamline production (or service) proceses.
Even inside a corporate culture there are - of course - different characters of persons. The implementation and the coaching/teaching/training team have to be well-selected, so that they are able to understand, accept, influence and teach the new procedures the system imposes. This is especially critical as we have talked about that number one reason of IT project failure is not out of technical issues, but accesptance and usage of the concernd company members.
Today's lesson was more focussed on the corporate culture. Stuying a Harvard businnes case about Harley-Davidson's choise of an ERP system, we addressed the issues that can emergie if there is an incompatibility between ERP provieder, client enterprise and extended the discussion to consulting firms. I personally figured that "soft factors" like corporate culture may be as important as "hard facts" like the functionalities of the provided software system. Finally in the Harley case there were huge problems because of a cultural misfit.
The last part consited of building groups of diverse nationalities and cultures. Whereas we were initially supposed to finish on the same day, describing and debating out cultures (in my personal case China, Germany, France and Poland) took way to long; I think everyone of us had partially to confirm but also to moderate clichés about our nations, whereas we all were aware that we could only give kind of a subjective point of view.
So... tomorrow's exam is getting closer! I am pretty courious what task we are going to discuss, but after restructuring the knowledge we gained in the mindmap I feel more or less prepared for this challenge.
Everyone: Good luck for tomorrow.
Thierry
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