SAP implementation

Tips for successful SAP implementations

If you haven’t seen ComputerWeekly’s reporting on what we’ll call a “difficult” SAP implementation for the Somerset County Council in the United Kingdom, it’s a worthy read.

The long and short of it is this - a more than a year long, costly SAP implementation with less than ideal go-live and upset staff members.

In fact, employees are so unnerved, they’re being offered workshops in managing excessive pressure within teams, coping strategies for abnormally high workloads and dealing with difficult situations/conversations, according to the ComputerWeekly reports.

We’ve been down this route before on SAP Watch — are go-live problems the software’s fault or the businesses’ and systems integrators’ fault?

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Is certification the ticket to a more successful SAP implementation?

I recently spoke with a company with a unique story — they were actually growing their landscape supply business despite the recession. They credited their SAP Business One software with helping them do so.

But when I asked Bamboo Pipeline about any problems it experienced with the software, its one gripe was a common one — the ERP implementation took twice as long as the company was told it would.

The sentiment is consistent with a recent report by Panorama Consulting Group. Of the more than 3,000 companies surveyed, 93% said their ERP implementations took longer than they expected and 65% indicated that they went over budget. Companies named lack-of employee buy-in and lack of the proper ERP skills as the two main culprits for ERP implementation problems.

Our readers have been lending some interesting advice on how to avoid ERP implementation failures, in response to a recent blog post, “What’s the real trend in failed SAP projects?” The blog questioned who was really to blame for the recent Shane Co. and Select Comfort SAP ERP implementation failures — the software, the system integrators or the company’s management.

Ensuring that you have the right skills on your project team is cited in multiple responses. In that light, SAP’s announcement this week that it will focus on increasing the quality of its workforce — largely through pushing SAP certification – is quite interesting.

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What’s the real trend in failed SAP projects?

The big SAP buzz on the web this week is the claim by Shane and Co. that a failed SAP ERP implementation was a catalyst for the jewelry company’s descent into bankruptcy.

Reporters often joke that anything that happens three times signals a trend. So when you consider Select Comfort’s announcement last month that it was halting its SAP ERP implementation as part of a cost cutting measure, it would seem SAP is one step away from being blamed for business failures in this economy.

But what’s the real story?

Josh Greenbaum points out in his recent blog, basically, that it’s not the software’s fault that you didn’t put it in right. He argues that blame for Shane and Co.’s failings lies more squarely with the management team and the system integrator.

The same theme runs through Michael Krigsman’s chronicles of Miami-Dade School District’s SAP implementation, which is over-schedule and over-budget. Krigsman has been focusing a lot of his ink on the systems integrators’ role, plus management’s mismanagement of the project.

As it turns out, it seems a lot more companies aren’t too happy with their system integrators.

According to survey conducted by Forrester Research, a quarter of 1,002 technology decision-makers interviewed were downright dissatisfied with the work, and only 18% are very happy with it, according to research from Forrester Research’s Liz Herbert.

So how do they get better results?

Predictably, one of the ways to ensure success is by management taking a stronger role in the project. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make, Herbert said, is not changing course or correcting problems when they’re detected and just assuming they’ll correct themselves. Missing or forgoing regular check-ins can contribute to this.

So it would seem that in this economy, stronger project management will be even more important, as the margin for error is slim.

“It’s those consensus-driven companies that really cause projects to fail and to take forever because you can never move forward,” said SAP retail vice president Isaac Krakovsky. “It really does come from the top down.”