Successful roll-out of SAP 4.6c implementation to four countries within one financial year

A Fortune 500 industry leader with revenue of over $40 billion and over 50,000 employees worldwide, this organisation is one of the world's largest manufacturers of food and snacks.

Produced products include the day-to-day basic necessities of every household, targeted at every sector of the economy.

Indeed, the company's decision to select the world's leading ERP software is a testament to the sophisticated functionality and robustness of the SAP Software, which is the fruit of years of research and development.

The software allows clients the freedom to configure, bespoke-program and fine-tune the SAP modules for model multinational organisational processes. Data is stored in a single information repository, readily available for strategic purposes, executive decisions and daily transactional business activities.

Providing global ERP software systems for an organisation of this magnitude, with diversified multinational markets, is challenging and requires a common global framework, within which systems are to be implemented.

The End User Information Technology Management Team, having previous hands-on experience in implementing SAP 3.0b, took charge of all responsibilities including project Implementation and management, whilst outsourcing some project work to Hybrid External Consultants.

The Management Team perceived the SAP implementation as a critical successful factor for day-to-day business activities, as well as a business enhancer and source of competitive advantage.

By February 2000 the planning, fact-finding and analysis phrase of the SAP 4.6c implementation was progressing successfully.

Lotus Notes database documentation systems were designed to reflect the necessary data structure of the content and the projects methodology for building documents at the business requirements analysis and design stage, with a link activity to the technical requirements specification and testing phases.

Lateral and vertical communication between the various Module Teams was promoted. The 'theme song' was emphasis on achieving the project's common goal sooner rather than later, and this became the main target focus of every resource involved in this SAP 4.6c implementation.

An appropriate methodology to support the ERP implementation was selected, as this was vital to the systems implementation life cycle. Benefits from using this methodology included the deliverables documentation, requirements scope, measurement for quality and project control, common interface, requirements transparency, reference point, support for project roll-out and reduced maintenance costs.

Each stepwise phase of the system's implementation was signed off before successive progress to the next stage. Weekly team reviews provided an insight into the overall project monthly planner and forthcoming challenging indicators.

The SAP 4.6c implementation was ambitiously rolled out to two sites in January 2001. A post-go live Implementation Support Team was set up to monitor progress, user transactions, intermediary documents, data, performance and enquiries.

In the fourth quarter of 2001 the template solution was rolled out to another two major manufacturing plants. Low system activity was expected during the initial ten working days post-go live, and subsequent weeks proved quiet for the Template Support Team, with only two minor enquiries per day. This was very good news for the Project Management Team, Template Team as well as the end user's local site. The year 2002 witnessed successful roll-outs of the template solutions within Europe and the Americas.

It seemed as if the 'Art of Successful Roll-outs' had been mastered and encapsulated in a detailed plan. Rather, the case was that adherence to the critical successful factors, methodology, project planning, communication, team building, accurate documentation, project goal setting and good practices had all together contributed to the success of this SAP 4.6c implementation roll-out.