BilkentMBA2010, Lessons Learned, Week 4, Gun Gokmen

Leadership Behaviors and Perception in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

• Leadership are two distinct concepts. We discussed the differences of each other.
• Our project teams sre examples of "Self-Managing Virtual Teams" (SMV) Leadership is more challenging here, since there is no defined leader and one should grab it himself.
• The important point is that, what people observe is behaviors. Two concepts here: task-oriented (getting work done) and relationship oriented (knowing who knows what, directs you to the right person; for example our department secretary).
• IBM Sametime is a similar program to Teamviewer
• Emergent leadership: becoming a leader later, emerging yourself.

Guest Speaker: ERP Implementation in FNSS Defense Industries

• Cigdem came to talk, she's an HR specialist in the company.
• FNSS had MRP systems before, making one think that change would be easier. But turned out to be not, end user resistance was high.
• The selected ERP system was IFS from Sweden for its flexibility and defense industry experience. (FNSS's designs changed frequently, was doing engineer-to-order) They went live on May 2009
• The most important thing is a dedicated team for implementation.
• It was expected 8 months, but turned out to be 13 months.
• the biggest problem with HR process was the organization chart. The relations were very hard to link, it took3 months.
• Choosing consultants is very important. "You have to love them, you spend too much time with them. They shoould be flexible, should know empathy."
• The benefits of the system won't be well understood until 18 months after implementation.
• According to Cigdem, it is not good to change everything at once, go one by one.
• 2 important points: Customization is expensive, master data cannot be changed.

The Lecture:

• Cost ingredients for Cisco: software, hardware, integration, headcount. The biggest cost was integration at Cisco.
• We should be prepared to pay twice the budget we estimated.
• Three trade-offs in ERP implementation:
• big-bang vs. phased (roll out) implementation
• outsourcing vs. in-housing staff and resources (cannot do full in-house, must outsource to some extent)
• high vs. low customization level (must be closer to implementing as is. )
• Also there is customization vs. business process reengineering. (changing the company for the program)
• We also talked about Accelerated SAP methodology and support pack upgrade.
• Realization: unit test - you only test ones that are critical.
• Final system cutover: switch from old to new system. Old system is shut off. It can also go in parallel for some time, but is more costly and time consuming.

BilkentMBA2010, Lessons Learned, Week 3, Gun Gokmen

Week 3 started with the concept of change management.

• As an introduction, we started with the source of resistance: why do people resist to changes in their workplaces, and we talked about some instances. A salesman, for example resists to an ERP system because entering the information to the system requires time, which can be traced to lost sales eventually. Or they may not want to share their sales or customer information with the others. There ale solutions to this problem, like communicating and convincing them that the system will benefit them eventually, and to show them how to get benefit from the system as a tool. Or these people could be given incentives to use the system.
• Norm is a culture, which is not written. This affects the change efforts.
• The change management also involves trainings for different levels in a company: Core team training, management seminar, end user training. I used to give end user trainings and remember my hard times because of the resistance of the users. They looked forward to seeing some problems with the software and not to use it. I learned that training the trainers sessions I've once attended was a mean of change management concept.
• Business process reengineering makes business processes leaner.
• Do biz process optimization or ERP implementation first? Best to do hand in hand, but getting ERP before could be better because ERP already provides "best practices"
• Business process procedures (BPP): documents to define steps in processes. They also represent the actual business processes of a company because ERP processes REPLACE the old processes. A good transactional document also includes clues of the actual process.
• The Silo Problem: Departments working distinctly of each other, doing their own work and "throwing off the wall" But they should work together.

Then we did Risk Assessment and analysis

• 1. identify the risk 2. identify impact 3. identify probability 4. Risk index 5. Find its mitigation
• Risks: technical or related to people
• We did an example of network down for a day... Red index.
• Risk assessment can be used as a project management tool. Could be done monthly, twice a year, in the phases of a project, etc.

BilkentMBA2010, Elevator Speech, Week 2

Sir, I have always been into learning new things, trying to be as much multi-faceted as possible. My idustrial engineering education with a focus on management and innovation also sparkled my entrepreneur side, leading me to get a patent for one of my ideas and developing a biz plan for it. I've worked in four different industries as a trainee in summers to learn about the industry as much as possible. Considering all these, I realized I was tailor-made for consulting and started working in a consulting company on business managment software implementations. After nine months full of projects providing me valuable insights on different industries, I was promoted to a special project on entrepreneurship and business plans before leaving for my military duty. All these led me to top my experience with an MBA degree to fill the gaps for the perfect consultant.

I wish I could have the chance to utilize my skills and knowledge for a consulting position, this is your floor, this is my biz card and thank you for your attention and I am looking forward to hearing from you:)

BilkentMBA2010, Lessons Learned, Week 2

This week, we are taught about building the ERP business case and the concept of Enterprise Architecture.

• The initial need for ERP originates from company growth, current systems not handling the load, higher complexity of operations, to improve processes and reduce costs, collecting better information about processes etc.
• There are also reasons NOT to implement an ERP system: high resistance to change, high integration and development costs, being not in line with company strategy, problem can be solved with cheaper alternatives etc.
• Success means customer satisfaction in business basically. This passes through meeting their needs, within the budget and appropriate time.
• ERP is a good market since because most top 500 companies already have ERP systems, the market goes towards medium-sized companies.
• Before implementing ERP, analyses should be made like SWOT, GAP, ...)
• We talked bout GAP analysis and then Enterprise Architecture, critical success factors.
• With GAP analysis, we can determine the current situation (as-is) and the future system (to-be). The difference between the two is the GAP, and it could be filled in some ways. ERP implementation could be one of the ways.
• I learned Japan's "Keiretsu" concept, working with their suppliers.
• Enterprise architecture: Zachman invented it, Spevack studied it further and made it more basic. U.S. federal govt. implemented its own architecture and applied widely.
• We discussed whether EA and ERP are competing solutions or not. EA finds out the gaps, ERP might be ONE solution. But they have common points.
• Process owner: The responsible of a business process. They are mostly seniors in the company, and they can proopse changes in the process.
• Power user: The users that are trained before the others. This is a part of change management. They must have good communication skills.
• Role profile owner: Decides on and arrange who accesses what in the system.
• 20% of the ERP implementation budget should be allocated to change management.

BilkentMBA2010, Lessons Learned, Week 1

The first week was an introduction to the ERP systems and some providers of them.

• ERP systems are categorized into major ("best practice", less development expenses), smaller (simpler processes, niche software, lower price) and open source (free licensing, high security, accessible to community) ones.


• BPR stands for business process re-engineering, which is done for improving processes.


• Each SAP module has its experts, like FICO (finance and controlling), One consultant cannot be an expert of all modules. These consultants could be for implementation or for ongoing maintenance.
• The concept of audit trail: anything you do in the system is tracked with your user-ID.
• GIGO: Garbage in - garbage out.