We are rapidly approaching the point for our overseas site to go live – they are due to start using the SAP production system starting on the first working day of the new year. As we only have a few days left before Christmas, there is not a lot of spare time.
The data loading process has been going on for some time now - I asked about how they were getting on a while ago. I was told that it was all done – but when I pressed a bit harder, it was admitted that there were a few items not quite finished. (Such as bank details, purchasing info records, part of the master material, some of the customer’s data and some other equally inconsequential items!) The work to load this is still going thru, but I would not be surprised to find it incomplete on day 1 of their go-live.
It also has to be said that there are still some items that have yet to be configured. Two weeks ago, it was agreed that we would stop all further changes in order to concentrate on the data load. It was suggested that I would do any further role change requests, as this could be arranged at a time when there would be no issues with processing the transports (as it happens, there has been no need for this). However, one of the consultants apparently didn’t get the message – a change was made, pushed thru without reference to anyone and a whole day was spent undoing some of the issues created.
In the mean-time, the SI has sent a letter of complaint that caused some internal discussion. There are a lot of bills that they have submitted that our FD simply will not pay. Of these, more than half are for work they say was done, but that we have no evidence for. For example, they had a person on site for several days over a 3 week period according to one bill, but the person concerned had left their employment and was working in a country on the other side of the world on the dates that they supplied. There have been items for 100s of miles of travel and a night’s accommodation for the same day. Just to really stick the knife in, they also changed the agreed daily rate billed on some of the items – and when the FD asked who had authorised this, they were unable to give him an answer.
Over the past few months, I have also been trying to look at ways that we can make more use of our SAP system. It seems to me that whatever I might think of its capabilities and shortcomings, having spent as much money on the project as we have, we should try to make sure that we get the most bang for our bucks. There is a specific process that one of the managers has been wanting to do for several years, and altho I have a few concerns about it, it seems that this could be done within SAP. Part of the work is already done, which is a plus – it would just need slightly more data being entered than before.
His concern (and it is a valid one) relates to the output – he wants to do specific things with that, and it was subsequently suggested that it could also be used to improve some of the data provision to customers. These are all very consistent with company strategy and I want to encourage him. However, there are some concerns about how it would be done, and at present we don’t yet have the necessary specific skills internally – this would then require we buy in more consultancy.
Because of those concerns, he has recommended that we look to buy another software product – and to me, this is just utter madness. He wants the company to allocate another $300,000 to fund his project, but what really bothers me is that it would then duplicate the work being done, require more hardware, more software (plus licences, maintenance etc.) and he’s suggesting that it could be at least a year before the project would have any output worth using. Color me crazy, but that does not seem like the best way forward when we have already paid as much for SAP as we have, and could do the job as well by spending a little more on getting some training done.
So – the holidays are nearly upon us. Decorations are up, the tree is dressed, presents are wrapped, parties are being organised. We seem to have enough food in the house to last for the rest of the winter – I’m told that we are inviting lots of friends & family around this year and we must of course provide hospitality (I don’t remember having THAT discussion!).
As this will be my last post for 2011, I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and I hope that whatever the holidays mean for you, that you enjoy them in the company of your friends, family or loved ones - and may the New Year bring you all the success that you would wish.
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Monday, 21 November 2011
Back to the training board
I've not posted anything for some weeks - mainly because I've not really had anything to add. Work continues as normal, but there has not a great deal happening with our SAP project.
The go-live date for our overseas site was put back to January of next year. This should have given us time to get some of the data load done, but very little has been added so far. We still have time, but we are still waiting for much of the data, which is still to be cleaned up. However, the staff at the overseas site have actually been doing some training, and they have also been testing what data has been added, as well as manually adding some data of their own. I think that this will be very useful as it means that they will be more comfortable once they start using the system for real.
One thing that has been discussed in some depth is an old favorite of mine - training. I've said a number of times that I feel we should be enhancing our internal skills by getting our project team members and perhaps even some of our end users to attend formal SAP training. To me, it makes sense to invest the money in our staff, and retain knowledge within the business, rather than pay consultants who will be here today, gone tomorrow.
The costs are pretty straight forward - pay a consultant $1500 per day, or get staff on a 2 day training course for about the same money. I'm not sure how many times I've discussed this with people - probably to the point where I get boring. But I've been on some courses, as have some of my staff, and we know the value of the training, and can demonstrate the benefits.
To me, it is so simple - and yet our project team haven't seen it that way. I believe that part of the issue is that I am used to the idea of continuous training - anyone in IT will know the value of this and the need for constantly renewing skills. On top of that, I am also used to the requirement of managing my own training - but clearly, this is not how others see it.
However - it seems that my message is slowly starting to sink in. I've recently had a number of members of the team speak to me about organising training, and it seems likely that they will now carry this thru. The only problem is what courses will be of the most benefit and how to make sure that they get the most from the courses.
I am aware that if they attend a course and it doesn't meet their expectations, they will be less likely to want to go on another. I'm therefore trying to make sure that we have a very clear roadmap of the appropriate modules for each individual. I'm not so sure about the need for some of the certfication tracks - I don't consider it necessary that we need to get people qualified, but we should try to make sure that the plans follow a pattern that will provide appropriate knowledge in each area.
One thing that has been noted - the project team members are a bit more vocal in the way that they describe the lack of knowledge transfer from the consultants. They also seem a bit more prepared to criticize the quality of work carried out, and several of them have highlighted key areas that they want to cover in training that have been those where the consultants did not achieve what was required. I'm not sure that we can do this straight off, but I don't want to put them down too quickly - I'd rather try and keep their new enthusiasm high for as long as possible.
I suppose that once one of them goes on a course and then comes back and can confirm to the others the value of what they have learnt, we will then see a sudden rush of the others - well, that's OK as far as I am concerned. We have a decent sized budget now for the training as long as we can continue to justify it, so I want to see it used to best effect.
Hopefully, I'll have some feedback from at least one of them soon.
The go-live date for our overseas site was put back to January of next year. This should have given us time to get some of the data load done, but very little has been added so far. We still have time, but we are still waiting for much of the data, which is still to be cleaned up. However, the staff at the overseas site have actually been doing some training, and they have also been testing what data has been added, as well as manually adding some data of their own. I think that this will be very useful as it means that they will be more comfortable once they start using the system for real.
One thing that has been discussed in some depth is an old favorite of mine - training. I've said a number of times that I feel we should be enhancing our internal skills by getting our project team members and perhaps even some of our end users to attend formal SAP training. To me, it makes sense to invest the money in our staff, and retain knowledge within the business, rather than pay consultants who will be here today, gone tomorrow.
The costs are pretty straight forward - pay a consultant $1500 per day, or get staff on a 2 day training course for about the same money. I'm not sure how many times I've discussed this with people - probably to the point where I get boring. But I've been on some courses, as have some of my staff, and we know the value of the training, and can demonstrate the benefits.
To me, it is so simple - and yet our project team haven't seen it that way. I believe that part of the issue is that I am used to the idea of continuous training - anyone in IT will know the value of this and the need for constantly renewing skills. On top of that, I am also used to the requirement of managing my own training - but clearly, this is not how others see it.
However - it seems that my message is slowly starting to sink in. I've recently had a number of members of the team speak to me about organising training, and it seems likely that they will now carry this thru. The only problem is what courses will be of the most benefit and how to make sure that they get the most from the courses.
I am aware that if they attend a course and it doesn't meet their expectations, they will be less likely to want to go on another. I'm therefore trying to make sure that we have a very clear roadmap of the appropriate modules for each individual. I'm not so sure about the need for some of the certfication tracks - I don't consider it necessary that we need to get people qualified, but we should try to make sure that the plans follow a pattern that will provide appropriate knowledge in each area.
One thing that has been noted - the project team members are a bit more vocal in the way that they describe the lack of knowledge transfer from the consultants. They also seem a bit more prepared to criticize the quality of work carried out, and several of them have highlighted key areas that they want to cover in training that have been those where the consultants did not achieve what was required. I'm not sure that we can do this straight off, but I don't want to put them down too quickly - I'd rather try and keep their new enthusiasm high for as long as possible.
I suppose that once one of them goes on a course and then comes back and can confirm to the others the value of what they have learnt, we will then see a sudden rush of the others - well, that's OK as far as I am concerned. We have a decent sized budget now for the training as long as we can continue to justify it, so I want to see it used to best effect.
Hopefully, I'll have some feedback from at least one of them soon.
Monday, 3 October 2011
Have we been here before?
So - we were supposed to go live at our overseas site today. Up until Wednesday of last week, they were still determined that it would go ahead, come what may. This was despite no more than 10% of the data having been loaded, and we are still waiting for quite a bit of data to be extracted from their legacy system.
I only finally got the confirmation of the delay midday on Thursday - it's been put back to December at the moment, but I'm not sure if that will stand either. I know that the site manager is relieved as he was really concerned that they are just not ready, and I believe that most of the staff there are equally pleased. Our project team are not entirely happy - but they all accept that it would be too much of a risk to try and go ahead.
Now we have a bit more time to try to resolve some of the issues that are still outstanding - but I'm a bit concerned that we may end up with a few more as well. There have been a couple of config changes made and once again, it has caused us some problems. (Did someone mention testing?)
This time it's the purchasing, which is a real pain as that has actually been pretty good for some time now. It appears to be to do with the release strategy - the change means that staff can release purchase orders to any value, instead of the staged release which took us about 3 months to get right. I left the manager in charge of the purchasing department working his way thru a number of items to try and get a handle on exactly where it has gone wrong.
The consultants fixed the printing problem on the purchase order - well almost. There's a bit of an issue with the vendor addressing and a number of the POs have completely the wrong details. I got a message earlier today to tell me that there is a specialist going to take a look - it appears that he has already had access to the system, but he's been using someone else's account. I've now created an account for him, and asked him to use that - I've had no response, so I don't know if he hasn't received the message, or just can't be bothered to do so.
There was also an issue on the finance side (not quite sure what it was) and they had arranged for a consultant to look at the problem - we were told that it would take them about 4 / 5 days. However, the FD was looking at it, and with the help of a Google search, he has fixed the issue. The SI are not pleased at this.
Talking of the SI, I've had one of their people chasing me to outsource the systems to them. This is something that I'm not particularly keen on for a number of reasons. They insisted that it would all be managed in a facility in this country, but when I checked, the data center they use is actually somewhere else in the world - I think it might be either eastern Europe or Malaysia, I've not been able to clarify.
Their sales guy insisted that it would be cheaper to use them - well there would be savings in hardware / software / utilities, but I doubt very much that it would work out any cheaper. Some time ago, I looked into the costs, and based upon what we would need, the price from the only hosting center prepeared to give me an estimate would indicate that we would be looking at $300,0000 a year now, rising to $600,000 in about 3 years time. I can tell you, that would be more than our current IT budget.
However, it's not just the cost that worries me - this system is going to be the key system for the whole business. A decade ago, it wouldn't have mattered if it went off line for a few hours or even a day or two - that's not the case now. Quite simply, a loss of service of more than a few minutes would be problematic, more than a hour could be disastrous.
Based on their performance, can we trust our key system to them? Of course, it's not just the potential loss of service. I don't feel that they have demonstrated that they work in a particularly secure mananer, and I'll be honest, the thought that they might lose data scares the heck out of me. However, it won't be my decision anyway - this is something that the board will decide. Apparently, they are arranging for a junket at a country club for the shareholders and the board, to advise of them how it would work - I have not been invited.
However, I have been asked to put together a presentation of my concerns, highlighting the costs. I've also included some statistics on what we have achieved and how much we have saved by doing it all inhouse. In addition, I've put forward some plans for future development that would allow us to ramp up the resources to deal with required increases as the other sites come on line. We'll see what happens.
Back overseas again next week. I'm really racking up the frequent flyer miles - next time, I'm taking my wife with me!
I only finally got the confirmation of the delay midday on Thursday - it's been put back to December at the moment, but I'm not sure if that will stand either. I know that the site manager is relieved as he was really concerned that they are just not ready, and I believe that most of the staff there are equally pleased. Our project team are not entirely happy - but they all accept that it would be too much of a risk to try and go ahead.
Now we have a bit more time to try to resolve some of the issues that are still outstanding - but I'm a bit concerned that we may end up with a few more as well. There have been a couple of config changes made and once again, it has caused us some problems. (Did someone mention testing?)
This time it's the purchasing, which is a real pain as that has actually been pretty good for some time now. It appears to be to do with the release strategy - the change means that staff can release purchase orders to any value, instead of the staged release which took us about 3 months to get right. I left the manager in charge of the purchasing department working his way thru a number of items to try and get a handle on exactly where it has gone wrong.
The consultants fixed the printing problem on the purchase order - well almost. There's a bit of an issue with the vendor addressing and a number of the POs have completely the wrong details. I got a message earlier today to tell me that there is a specialist going to take a look - it appears that he has already had access to the system, but he's been using someone else's account. I've now created an account for him, and asked him to use that - I've had no response, so I don't know if he hasn't received the message, or just can't be bothered to do so.
There was also an issue on the finance side (not quite sure what it was) and they had arranged for a consultant to look at the problem - we were told that it would take them about 4 / 5 days. However, the FD was looking at it, and with the help of a Google search, he has fixed the issue. The SI are not pleased at this.
Talking of the SI, I've had one of their people chasing me to outsource the systems to them. This is something that I'm not particularly keen on for a number of reasons. They insisted that it would all be managed in a facility in this country, but when I checked, the data center they use is actually somewhere else in the world - I think it might be either eastern Europe or Malaysia, I've not been able to clarify.
Their sales guy insisted that it would be cheaper to use them - well there would be savings in hardware / software / utilities, but I doubt very much that it would work out any cheaper. Some time ago, I looked into the costs, and based upon what we would need, the price from the only hosting center prepeared to give me an estimate would indicate that we would be looking at $300,0000 a year now, rising to $600,000 in about 3 years time. I can tell you, that would be more than our current IT budget.
However, it's not just the cost that worries me - this system is going to be the key system for the whole business. A decade ago, it wouldn't have mattered if it went off line for a few hours or even a day or two - that's not the case now. Quite simply, a loss of service of more than a few minutes would be problematic, more than a hour could be disastrous.
Based on their performance, can we trust our key system to them? Of course, it's not just the potential loss of service. I don't feel that they have demonstrated that they work in a particularly secure mananer, and I'll be honest, the thought that they might lose data scares the heck out of me. However, it won't be my decision anyway - this is something that the board will decide. Apparently, they are arranging for a junket at a country club for the shareholders and the board, to advise of them how it would work - I have not been invited.
However, I have been asked to put together a presentation of my concerns, highlighting the costs. I've also included some statistics on what we have achieved and how much we have saved by doing it all inhouse. In addition, I've put forward some plans for future development that would allow us to ramp up the resources to deal with required increases as the other sites come on line. We'll see what happens.
Back overseas again next week. I'm really racking up the frequent flyer miles - next time, I'm taking my wife with me!
Sunday, 25 September 2011
I'm Back!
I’m back! Before you ask, I had a great time thank you.
Unfortunately, the flight back was delayed – and we got home very late on the Sunday. There were a number of messages waiting on the ansafone (I hadn’t taken my cell phone), and essentially, the messages all said that I was to get over to our overseas site asap. So I packed a fresh suitcase, and got my flights booked – with an early flight, the time differences plus the delays the day before, I was really very tired by the evening.
I spent the week over there, and then it was decided that I should go back again this last week. What with that plus trying to do my normal work and various other chores, this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and analyze the situation.
I’ve not been told officially, but it appears that a number of staff have been told that the overseas site will not be going live in October after all. I’m not surprised – the data load was supposed to have started the 1st week of August and it hadn’t started by September. Even now, very little data has actually been loaded, and it appears that there are still some unresolved issues with parts of it.
During my first week over there, I spent a bit of time doing some training – about half of the staff there had still not even logged onto the test client, and they are a long way from being confident in using SAP. I also had a very upset General Manager complaining that there was a printing problem. When I checked, it was actually only one document that had the problem – the sales order form, so rather important that they gets this fixed.
I haven’t done that much work on the smart forms, but I took a quick look, and discovered that one their consultants had made the change. Unfortunately, no-one knows why or what for, and the guy isn’t available. I’ve left it to them to chase up, but so far, it’s still not printing at all.
Another issue has also appeared recently that affects the financials. At first, the consultants suggested that it was an authorization problem, but we’ve now identified that certain products are being assigned to the wrong ledger code. Again, no-one is really quite sure why – we have our consultants telling us that the configuration was correct, and their consultants are saying that it’s not. So they’ve made a change and now we have a problem.
Our Accounts Manager is really upset about all of this. A couple of times now, she has spoken to me in private, and it’s clear that she is very distressed about the whole scenario. She’s been with the company a long time, and has been thru some really tough times, but I think that this is the worst she has ever felt about her job. I just don’t know what to say to her anymore.
I’m also a bit concerned about the amount of testing that they have done. If you’ll remember, a bunch of us went over back in April, and we did some full end to end testing of processes and made sure that everything worked – but that was only using a limited amount of test data.
The guys on site have access to the test system and although not all of the live data has been loaded, about 80 – 90% is available. But the testing that they have been doing is not the same end to end testing. Yes they have put a whole ton of quotes, purchase orders, sales orders on the system, but they have not then followed this thru to make sure that orders appear on the MRP or that sales get billed.
It could be argued that we shouldn’t need to test again, as it was proven to work in the development system and we are using the processes in the production system. But the issue is that their consultants have made a few changes and I strongly feel that we can’t be absolutely sure that any of their tests would actually work unless we do try it out.
I did manage to speak to the GM of our overseas site one evening over a beer – he is very much of the opinion that they will not be ready for the start of October. He did suggest that perhaps they could have a staged approach to the go-live, perhaps by working in tandem on both systems. I wouldn’t have a problem with that in principle, but they don’t have that many staff, and I’m not sure they could actually do that.
Oh well, back in to work tomorrow, and maybe I’ll find out a little more about what the plans are.
Unfortunately, the flight back was delayed – and we got home very late on the Sunday. There were a number of messages waiting on the ansafone (I hadn’t taken my cell phone), and essentially, the messages all said that I was to get over to our overseas site asap. So I packed a fresh suitcase, and got my flights booked – with an early flight, the time differences plus the delays the day before, I was really very tired by the evening.
I spent the week over there, and then it was decided that I should go back again this last week. What with that plus trying to do my normal work and various other chores, this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and analyze the situation.
I’ve not been told officially, but it appears that a number of staff have been told that the overseas site will not be going live in October after all. I’m not surprised – the data load was supposed to have started the 1st week of August and it hadn’t started by September. Even now, very little data has actually been loaded, and it appears that there are still some unresolved issues with parts of it.
During my first week over there, I spent a bit of time doing some training – about half of the staff there had still not even logged onto the test client, and they are a long way from being confident in using SAP. I also had a very upset General Manager complaining that there was a printing problem. When I checked, it was actually only one document that had the problem – the sales order form, so rather important that they gets this fixed.
I haven’t done that much work on the smart forms, but I took a quick look, and discovered that one their consultants had made the change. Unfortunately, no-one knows why or what for, and the guy isn’t available. I’ve left it to them to chase up, but so far, it’s still not printing at all.
Another issue has also appeared recently that affects the financials. At first, the consultants suggested that it was an authorization problem, but we’ve now identified that certain products are being assigned to the wrong ledger code. Again, no-one is really quite sure why – we have our consultants telling us that the configuration was correct, and their consultants are saying that it’s not. So they’ve made a change and now we have a problem.
Our Accounts Manager is really upset about all of this. A couple of times now, she has spoken to me in private, and it’s clear that she is very distressed about the whole scenario. She’s been with the company a long time, and has been thru some really tough times, but I think that this is the worst she has ever felt about her job. I just don’t know what to say to her anymore.
I’m also a bit concerned about the amount of testing that they have done. If you’ll remember, a bunch of us went over back in April, and we did some full end to end testing of processes and made sure that everything worked – but that was only using a limited amount of test data.
The guys on site have access to the test system and although not all of the live data has been loaded, about 80 – 90% is available. But the testing that they have been doing is not the same end to end testing. Yes they have put a whole ton of quotes, purchase orders, sales orders on the system, but they have not then followed this thru to make sure that orders appear on the MRP or that sales get billed.
It could be argued that we shouldn’t need to test again, as it was proven to work in the development system and we are using the processes in the production system. But the issue is that their consultants have made a few changes and I strongly feel that we can’t be absolutely sure that any of their tests would actually work unless we do try it out.
I did manage to speak to the GM of our overseas site one evening over a beer – he is very much of the opinion that they will not be ready for the start of October. He did suggest that perhaps they could have a staged approach to the go-live, perhaps by working in tandem on both systems. I wouldn’t have a problem with that in principle, but they don’t have that many staff, and I’m not sure they could actually do that.
Oh well, back in to work tomorrow, and maybe I’ll find out a little more about what the plans are.
Saturday, 20 August 2011
Problems with prices
About 4-5 months after our go-live, I received a request for a change to a role. At that stage, we were still making quite a few changes as we discovered issues that had not been uncovered during the testing phase. This was quite normal, but something about the request didn’t seem quite right.
The particular role was one that I had worked on with the sales manager, and the request from our second site seemed to indicate that there was a problem that should have affected everybody. When I went into it in more detail, I wondered if it was due to the staff concerned not entering the correct information.
I passed this back to the relevant key user from sales, and she confirmed that the process was working for each site – it seemed that this was an issue with staff training. So the sales manager organised a quick refresher session with the sales staff at the second site.
Whilst he was going thru this with them, he also spotted an issue with the cost price of one item that they were using. Quite simply, the cost price shown in SAP was way out – in fact, even with the price uplift, they were actually selling the item at a loss of about 25c each for a selling price of just under a dollar. He then started checking a few other items – most were OK, but there were more than a few with a price that was wrong.
Subsequently, they spent some time going thru the rest of the price list to make sure that this was OK – and based on what he found, the second site had lost just under $10,000 in incorrect pricing during those first few months due to an incorrect price having been loaded during the data load process.
An investigation proved that the price had been wrong in our old system. At some stage, the price had gone up but never been altered in our old ERP system. No-one knows how much we lost in total, but most agree that it’s probably over $25,000 for each of the previous 4 years – a total of at least 100 big ones. You can imagine that there were some people that were very unhappy about this.
The reason I raise this now is that we were doing the training with our overseas site just over a week ago, and it appears that they also had the same incorrect prices in their old system. This has caused some real upset as people are trying to uncover when things went wrong and why. I doubt that we will ever know.
Of course, one thing we can say is that is not down to SAP. The problem occurred long before we started the implementation. It could be argued that this should have been picked up at the data cleansing phase, and that’s probably true – but it wasn’t. No matter what anyone thinks of the software, there is a limit to how much it will cope with the failure of the human element.
So chalk one up for SAP – while the correction of the price won’t cover the costs of the software, it’s identified a major problem that has taken money off the bottom line, and one that would quite possibly not have been discovered for many years. Although there are still questions about getting an ROI for the project, each of the areas where it has made a difference will help to justify the decision to buy it.
Oh well, vacation time is here. I feel that it is overdue, and am looking forward to a good break.
The particular role was one that I had worked on with the sales manager, and the request from our second site seemed to indicate that there was a problem that should have affected everybody. When I went into it in more detail, I wondered if it was due to the staff concerned not entering the correct information.
I passed this back to the relevant key user from sales, and she confirmed that the process was working for each site – it seemed that this was an issue with staff training. So the sales manager organised a quick refresher session with the sales staff at the second site.
Whilst he was going thru this with them, he also spotted an issue with the cost price of one item that they were using. Quite simply, the cost price shown in SAP was way out – in fact, even with the price uplift, they were actually selling the item at a loss of about 25c each for a selling price of just under a dollar. He then started checking a few other items – most were OK, but there were more than a few with a price that was wrong.
Subsequently, they spent some time going thru the rest of the price list to make sure that this was OK – and based on what he found, the second site had lost just under $10,000 in incorrect pricing during those first few months due to an incorrect price having been loaded during the data load process.
An investigation proved that the price had been wrong in our old system. At some stage, the price had gone up but never been altered in our old ERP system. No-one knows how much we lost in total, but most agree that it’s probably over $25,000 for each of the previous 4 years – a total of at least 100 big ones. You can imagine that there were some people that were very unhappy about this.
The reason I raise this now is that we were doing the training with our overseas site just over a week ago, and it appears that they also had the same incorrect prices in their old system. This has caused some real upset as people are trying to uncover when things went wrong and why. I doubt that we will ever know.
Of course, one thing we can say is that is not down to SAP. The problem occurred long before we started the implementation. It could be argued that this should have been picked up at the data cleansing phase, and that’s probably true – but it wasn’t. No matter what anyone thinks of the software, there is a limit to how much it will cope with the failure of the human element.
So chalk one up for SAP – while the correction of the price won’t cover the costs of the software, it’s identified a major problem that has taken money off the bottom line, and one that would quite possibly not have been discovered for many years. Although there are still questions about getting an ROI for the project, each of the areas where it has made a difference will help to justify the decision to buy it.
Oh well, vacation time is here. I feel that it is overdue, and am looking forward to a good break.
Saturday, 30 July 2011
None so blind...
I started to write this item a couple of weeks ago – but didn’t finish it at the time. I was highly annoyed and wanted to think about things before posting.
We actually started work on the SAP rollout at our overseas site almost 2 years year ago. However, nothing was ever completed, even in the development system and eventually, the project stopped before being started again with a new set of consultants in the middle of last year. The plans then were to go live at the end of October last year – as the previous consultants had done quite a bit of work, it was felt that this was achievable.
However, it quickly became clear that most of what had been done was of no value. Essentially, it all had had to go right back to the very beginning. The SI were still trying to say that October 2010 was achievable, but most people on our project team could see that was never going to be possible. A date was set for the end of July this year – most people agreed that this could be done if all went well.
As it happens, in April of this year, the consultants still had not finished working on the development system. We also had issues because almost no testing had been carried out, and absolutely no training had been done either. Our project team then went to the site to do some work, and as I’ve indicated, we managed to get a great deal done. So much in fact that we all thought it might still be possible to go-live in July. There is still major work being done by the consultants, but from experience, it seems to be normal for them to still be working on items right up to (and even after) the go-live date.
But there has been a major problem with getting data loaded. First getting data out of their existing system has proven to considerably more difficult than anyone believed would be the case. Cleansing the data was also a bit of an issue – but the biggest problem has been getting it matched to the relevant data load into SAP. I had been told by the SI that about 80 - 85% of the data load had been completed into the development system – but during our test phase it became very clear that it was really closer to 10 - 15%.
Since then, some data has also been loaded into the test system – but no more than about 30 – 40%. Some training has been done with key users, but none with the rest of the end users. I had to go over there again a few weeks ago, and they were trying to do some testing work in the test system. Most of this failed simply because there was insufficient data to allow more than few test scripts to be used – it took them as much as half a day to complete a single test item.
As it became clear that July was slipping away, a decision was made to move the go-live date back yet again. This makes sense, and I have no issue with that other than once again, we are committing many resources to the project than was originally planned. But what has outraged me is a decision that has been made following further discussions with the SI.
The director of the SI suggested to our senior managers that we did not need to complete the data load process in either of the development or test systems, but simply go straight to the production system and load the data without having to do any testing. The argument was that we had done a few items so that proved the process worked and therefore any further data added to the same process would also work. He also argued that if we needed to have data in the other systems, it would be easier to do a system copy after the go-live.
I tried to point out that this view was completely wrong – we have seen repeatedly that people make mistakes when preparing the data. In some cases, the mistakes are so significant that the data will simply not go into the database without considerable manipulation by the people carrying out the work. To trust that all of the data will load correctly just because you have loaded a few lines is at best, wishful thinking in my opinion. As far as I am concerned, completing the data load process in the development and test systems should then save time and effort when loading into the production system.
But there we are – I can do no more than point out the issues and then do my best to see if I can fix the problems when they occur. But I must admit that I am now really beginning to feel that I can do no more on this project. I feel so frustrated all of the time – all I hear is that everything is going well, when it is abundantly clear that things are far from satisfactory.
I have no problem people trying to maintain a positive attitude – I can see that sometimes this is a necessity. When something requires such a major business transformation as SAP, it is essential to keep everyone motivated. But what worries me is that we are seeing “ostrich management” – burying their heads in the sand in the hope that if they don’t see the problem, it will just go away. I can’t believe that will be any good for us, now or in the future, on this project or any other.
We actually started work on the SAP rollout at our overseas site almost 2 years year ago. However, nothing was ever completed, even in the development system and eventually, the project stopped before being started again with a new set of consultants in the middle of last year. The plans then were to go live at the end of October last year – as the previous consultants had done quite a bit of work, it was felt that this was achievable.
However, it quickly became clear that most of what had been done was of no value. Essentially, it all had had to go right back to the very beginning. The SI were still trying to say that October 2010 was achievable, but most people on our project team could see that was never going to be possible. A date was set for the end of July this year – most people agreed that this could be done if all went well.
As it happens, in April of this year, the consultants still had not finished working on the development system. We also had issues because almost no testing had been carried out, and absolutely no training had been done either. Our project team then went to the site to do some work, and as I’ve indicated, we managed to get a great deal done. So much in fact that we all thought it might still be possible to go-live in July. There is still major work being done by the consultants, but from experience, it seems to be normal for them to still be working on items right up to (and even after) the go-live date.
But there has been a major problem with getting data loaded. First getting data out of their existing system has proven to considerably more difficult than anyone believed would be the case. Cleansing the data was also a bit of an issue – but the biggest problem has been getting it matched to the relevant data load into SAP. I had been told by the SI that about 80 - 85% of the data load had been completed into the development system – but during our test phase it became very clear that it was really closer to 10 - 15%.
Since then, some data has also been loaded into the test system – but no more than about 30 – 40%. Some training has been done with key users, but none with the rest of the end users. I had to go over there again a few weeks ago, and they were trying to do some testing work in the test system. Most of this failed simply because there was insufficient data to allow more than few test scripts to be used – it took them as much as half a day to complete a single test item.
As it became clear that July was slipping away, a decision was made to move the go-live date back yet again. This makes sense, and I have no issue with that other than once again, we are committing many resources to the project than was originally planned. But what has outraged me is a decision that has been made following further discussions with the SI.
The director of the SI suggested to our senior managers that we did not need to complete the data load process in either of the development or test systems, but simply go straight to the production system and load the data without having to do any testing. The argument was that we had done a few items so that proved the process worked and therefore any further data added to the same process would also work. He also argued that if we needed to have data in the other systems, it would be easier to do a system copy after the go-live.
I tried to point out that this view was completely wrong – we have seen repeatedly that people make mistakes when preparing the data. In some cases, the mistakes are so significant that the data will simply not go into the database without considerable manipulation by the people carrying out the work. To trust that all of the data will load correctly just because you have loaded a few lines is at best, wishful thinking in my opinion. As far as I am concerned, completing the data load process in the development and test systems should then save time and effort when loading into the production system.
But there we are – I can do no more than point out the issues and then do my best to see if I can fix the problems when they occur. But I must admit that I am now really beginning to feel that I can do no more on this project. I feel so frustrated all of the time – all I hear is that everything is going well, when it is abundantly clear that things are far from satisfactory.
I have no problem people trying to maintain a positive attitude – I can see that sometimes this is a necessity. When something requires such a major business transformation as SAP, it is essential to keep everyone motivated. But what worries me is that we are seeing “ostrich management” – burying their heads in the sand in the hope that if they don’t see the problem, it will just go away. I can’t believe that will be any good for us, now or in the future, on this project or any other.
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Eye of the beholder
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the manufacturing plant of another company. These people started to work on SAP a couple of years before us, and I had been told that they had been successful – so I was interested in talking to them in a bit more depth.
I had the chance to talk to the IT manager on site – a nice enough guy, although he seemed a little distant. As we talked, he made the point that they had gone live after just 8 months and they had experienced no problems. I won’t say that he was being arrogant, but there was a definite sense that he was as far as he was concerned, their project had gone very well indeed, and he was more than a bit proud of that. When I told him of our project and how long it took, he made me feel a bit bad.
However, I also had the chance to their production guys, and they had a slightly different story to tell. A few days after go-live, the system had gone down, and it took a couple of days before it was working again. They didn’t know why, all they knew was that it caused a few problems for them. That was bad enough, but it appears the same thing happened on several occasions over the next 4-6 months. Added to that, it appears that they still have an on-going issue relating to some of the data that they are accessing – they couldn’t tell me why.
After that, I spoke to a couple of their finance people. They remembered the first few months as being a complete nightmare caused by a series of issues with billing documents, financial reports and figures just not adding up. It appears that most of these are sorted, but they still recall those problems and again, they are still finding issues on a regular basis.
Later when I checked, it seems that there is quite a difference between the size of the projects, even tho’ the companies are about the same size. They have a lot fewer products than us, and there was a lot less to do on data migration. In addition, they don’t use a couple of them modules that we are using – and these items were seen as being responsible for a good proportion of our delays. Possibly our project might not have taken so long if we had been in the same situation as them.
When I thought about it later, it seemed to me that this is a case that the individual people were really only concerned about what had happened within their own areas of the business, and the project had been judged by that. As far as IT was concerned, the project went well because it came in on time and budget – the other issues were irrelevant. But for the other departments, they could only see the issues that had caused them major problems. Even years later, they don’t see their SAP project as being that successful.
I was once told by a CEO that he liked me because I looked at the bigger picture, and in his experience, most people in IT just didn’t do that. I can appreciate that the IT manager in this case was pleased with the project and felt that his team had performed well – but I could also see that the other departments were not as happy and for valid reasons. OK, they did get things sorted, but it was clear that it could have been a lot worse for them. When I compare that to our project, I don’t feel quite as bad.
I think that with an ERP system, it is important that people look at it from an over view rather than just within their own specific areas. If I think back, it seems to me that when things weren’t going well, it was because it was a single person or a couple of people working on their own without involving others. When things went well, it was because we were working as a team.
I know that the SI have been telling people that our project was a success – and if you look at it from a particular perspective, they are probably right. SAP is working for us, and in some respects, it has achieved some of the primary requirements. From the company point of view, that’s not the whole story – the project has been very expensive and taken a lot longer than we had been told it would. In some areas there has been no benefit or processes are much more difficult – in other areas, we have seen improvement or there is an indication that we may see this in the future.
Essentially, it seems that the quality or success of an SAP project is very much in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I would rather judge on well it achieves the requirements stated at the beginning of the project – but then, that’s just my opinion.
I had the chance to talk to the IT manager on site – a nice enough guy, although he seemed a little distant. As we talked, he made the point that they had gone live after just 8 months and they had experienced no problems. I won’t say that he was being arrogant, but there was a definite sense that he was as far as he was concerned, their project had gone very well indeed, and he was more than a bit proud of that. When I told him of our project and how long it took, he made me feel a bit bad.
However, I also had the chance to their production guys, and they had a slightly different story to tell. A few days after go-live, the system had gone down, and it took a couple of days before it was working again. They didn’t know why, all they knew was that it caused a few problems for them. That was bad enough, but it appears the same thing happened on several occasions over the next 4-6 months. Added to that, it appears that they still have an on-going issue relating to some of the data that they are accessing – they couldn’t tell me why.
After that, I spoke to a couple of their finance people. They remembered the first few months as being a complete nightmare caused by a series of issues with billing documents, financial reports and figures just not adding up. It appears that most of these are sorted, but they still recall those problems and again, they are still finding issues on a regular basis.
Later when I checked, it seems that there is quite a difference between the size of the projects, even tho’ the companies are about the same size. They have a lot fewer products than us, and there was a lot less to do on data migration. In addition, they don’t use a couple of them modules that we are using – and these items were seen as being responsible for a good proportion of our delays. Possibly our project might not have taken so long if we had been in the same situation as them.
When I thought about it later, it seemed to me that this is a case that the individual people were really only concerned about what had happened within their own areas of the business, and the project had been judged by that. As far as IT was concerned, the project went well because it came in on time and budget – the other issues were irrelevant. But for the other departments, they could only see the issues that had caused them major problems. Even years later, they don’t see their SAP project as being that successful.
I was once told by a CEO that he liked me because I looked at the bigger picture, and in his experience, most people in IT just didn’t do that. I can appreciate that the IT manager in this case was pleased with the project and felt that his team had performed well – but I could also see that the other departments were not as happy and for valid reasons. OK, they did get things sorted, but it was clear that it could have been a lot worse for them. When I compare that to our project, I don’t feel quite as bad.
I think that with an ERP system, it is important that people look at it from an over view rather than just within their own specific areas. If I think back, it seems to me that when things weren’t going well, it was because it was a single person or a couple of people working on their own without involving others. When things went well, it was because we were working as a team.
I know that the SI have been telling people that our project was a success – and if you look at it from a particular perspective, they are probably right. SAP is working for us, and in some respects, it has achieved some of the primary requirements. From the company point of view, that’s not the whole story – the project has been very expensive and taken a lot longer than we had been told it would. In some areas there has been no benefit or processes are much more difficult – in other areas, we have seen improvement or there is an indication that we may see this in the future.
Essentially, it seems that the quality or success of an SAP project is very much in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I would rather judge on well it achieves the requirements stated at the beginning of the project – but then, that’s just my opinion.
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