Improvement projects often don’t get the same level of attention as initial implementations. Learn how to manage the roll-out of upgrades, additional functionality, process improvements and ISV solutions.
Carlo DiPucchio
BDO Canada LLP
BDO Connections 2016 | Breakout Session
2. Agenda
1. Introduction
2. Life After Go Live
3. Have a Roadmap
4. Post Implementation
Assessment
5. Why an ERP Center of
Excellence?
6. Building a Thriving ERP
Business Community
7. Rolling out Post
Implementation
Improvements
8. Bottom line
9. Q & A
Page 2
3. Carlo DiPucchio, Senior Manager Delivery
Page 3
• Over twenty years of Management Consulting
experience organizing and implementing Business
Solutions with various applications including
Dynamics Ax, Dynamics NAV, SAP, Dynamics GP,
Sage, and Epicor.
• Planned and executed 80+ projects, of which many
were multi-year projects and international, providing
services in the following areas:
• Project Management
• Technology selections
• ERP solutions, upgrades,
ISV
• Technology and integration
• Disaster recovery planning
• Application training
• Management reporting
• Custom development
5. Post Implementation Assessment
• Celebrate successes
• Learn from mistakes
• Do both as a team
• Document findings
• Review them before
starting next project
Page 5
• Did we meet the goal?
• Did we meet the budget?
• Did we do it on time?
• Are we better off today
than before the project?
6. Have a Roadmap
Page 6
BusinessBenefitsandCompetitive
Advantage
Time
Phase 0: Legacy
System
•Broken
Business
Processes
•Misalignment
with Business
Requirements
•Technology
Obsolete
Phase 1: Go Live
ERP
•Core
Functionality
•Embedded Best
Practices
•Industry
preconfigured
•Limited
Alignment with
Competitive
Edge
Phase 3:
Competitive Edge
•Advanced
Modules and
Competitive
Edge
•Third-Party
ISV’s
•Reporting and
Analytics
•Business
Process
Improvements
•Customizations
Phase 4: Results
and ROI
•Fine Tuned
Business
Processes
•Fulling Leverage
Functionality
•Ability to
Analyze and
Execute
28% of ERP Implementations
Business process reengineering and
Organizational change management
focus
72% of ERP Implementations
Software Focus
7. Page 7
AS IS
TO BE
Go
Live
Continuous Business Improvement
ROI, Extended Applications, e-Commerce
Extensions toward SCM and CRM
Core ERP Implementation
The “TO BE” vision established during core ERP implementation is limited to near and mid-term planning and is
targeted for achievement at the point of Go Live.
At Go Live, a new “TO BE” must be established or business improvements will only be incremental relative to the
initial To Be vision.
Clients need to simultaneously a) maintain and support existing ERP functionality and b) provide the engine to
seize new benefits.
CoE? No
Yes
Performance
Beyond Day One
Incremental
Improvement
8. Why an ERP Center of Excellence?
• An optimization of business processes that drive business benefit
continually
• An optimization of end user competency and employee fulfillment of
business processes
• Continued coherence and integration of functionality and data through
all process chains.
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9. Building a Thriving ERP (AX) Business
Community
• Build a Center of Excellence around your ERP software
• Plan and schedule incremental training sessions to continuously
improve your knowledge
• Update your documentation as business changes
• Establish your system of governance structure
• Begin executing an on-going maintenance plan
• System evolution planning
• Keep up to date on your product versions including security patches
• Communicate with your partners to keep abreast of new features and
competitive advantages in the marketplace
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10. Create a Continuous Business System Process:
Improvements Through Motivation
• Share information from start to finish
• Share the good and bad
• Seek employee insight and feedback
• Make employees feel part of something
important, exciting and new
• Endorse change
• Make them accountable
• Allow creativity
• Measure performance and adjust
behavior accordingly
• Thrive for improving processes
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11. Rolling Out Post-Implementation
Improvements
• Build a case for the new process or
needs
• Set realistic expectations
• Use upgrades as an opportunity to
reassess the functionality of the ERP
Software
• Create a realistic project plan with
checkpoints and milestone
• Rollout in phases where possible (Big
Bang or Phased)
• Build sandbox test environments as
needed to replicate the live environment
• Follow a methodology and best
practices
• Try incremental updates initially until
you have a process in place to manage
mass changes
• Identify the ways that the change can
help you realize measurable business
benefits
• Measure the ISV solutions against a
custom solution
• Don’t forget all that SOFT “people” stuff
12. Post Implementation Planning
• Hotfixes
• Deferred Modifications
• ISV Solutions
• Upgrades
• Data Mart or Business Intelligence
• New Functionality
• Change Management
• Turnover
• Performance Optimizations
13. Learn How to Say “No”
• Bug fix vs new functionality
• Maintain system performance
• Pros/Cons of customizations
• Changes to core functionality
• Reports, Queries, Data out
• Unique business processes
• Nice to have functionality
14. Build a Change Management Process
New
Requests
Enter request in Change Management
System and complete initial level of
effort estimate
Received via help
Desk, email, phone,
etc.
Business Owner & IT IT
Business Owner
Approved
Review,
Approve /
Reject, &
prioritize
Notify requestor
Rejected
IT
Complete
Development & Unit
Testing
IT
Complete Test
Plan and test per
plan
Pass or
Fail
Business Owner
Business Owner
Communicate,
provide training,
& schedule
deployment
Migrate to
Production
Business Owner
Functional
Requirements
Documentation
Approve
Req Doc
Complete second
level of effort
estimate
Release for
development (based
on priority &
workload)
Complete technical design
documentation & final
workload est.
Failed–Requirements
Change
15. So Be Prepared!
• Ask the right questions
• Find out what the Best Practices are
• What level of partnership does the reseller have
with the ISV or ERP software?
• How long have they worked together and what
type of projects?
• What type of support is offered?
• Don’t be bullied into making rash decisions
16. ERP Implementation Doesn’t Stop at Go Live
• Give business process ownership to business
• This includes responsibility, not simply the right to order up new code.
• Place IT or a governance group in a support role
for business process
• Retains integration controls & disciplines
• Retains customization role
• Spread these roles and the urge for change
• Continual refresh of “To Be” vision
• All measured, all monitored
• Business Impact: ERP becomes an engine for
benefit, not a cost center.
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17. Bottom Line
• ROI should be measured from the beginning of the project
and carried through time
• Cost is only half of the equation
• ROI has no ceiling (nor does a To Be Vision)
• Continuous business evolution is the goal, not just
implementation
• Plan, plan, plan…
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Editor's Notes
Notes: Gone through a very long and complex process to implement a new system, sometime can be painful and at best exhausting exercise. Now its done and you are ready to start moving forward, therefore things to think about are what’s next, improvements, continued training, future of the application, business needs, changes in the business and supporting the business.
Before you start all that Celebrate the project just completed, make sure you have a get together with everyone who was part of the project and review the outcome.
Your original project is complete now realize 72% of the effort was spent to get you here to Go Live and really it was all spent on implementing an ERP software to replace the existing software, now you got some improvements and streamlined some processes, standardize and aligned business processes. But now you are live and you start spending the remaining 28% on BPR and CM from fine tuning business processes to adding new functionality that was postponed (Customizations, ISV’s, reporting) Therefore have a roadmap for you pre and post implementation project take into considersation postponed deliverables, reviewing processes, training, reporting, maintenance, hotfixes, re-engineering processes and continuing the buy in.
No one is prepared for Beyond Day One but begin planning with a Center of Excellence it will help you control and manage the business and change post live. There are two outcomes on whether you have planned for a COE up front and whether you believe your ERP system will manage itself perpetually. Therefore lets recap you have just gone from an AS IS to a TO BE in the initial implementation with the finality of GO Live, what happens next will depend on how you have planned things all along. First of all you have built a COE which means you have planned to ensure that you will have continuous improvements happening to keep the business always growing and you are looking at extension or additional software to help the future of the business but you could have also not planned and have no COE then the outcome of that process will still have improvements but they will be staggered, short-lived initiatives, poorly executed and more than likely 50% of those improvements will never be implemented. Eventually you realize they ERP system is very costing and it doesn’t self manage itself and you will be right to think that but the status quo wasn’t good enough either which forced your change initially but you haven’t learned anything from that experience but you will, good consulting firms will always thrive to ensure the companies build COE’s and leverage their experience to ensure customer understand the complexity and ongoing management that will be required for many ERP systems.