Challenges
At the time of planning for implementation of Oracle ERP (Or any ERP for that matter), a Project Manager should take care to plan for some of the major challenges that he will face during the implementation process which can have a direct impact on project deliverables.
You, as a Project Manager, are able to plan your activities and resources efficiently so that whatever activities you and your team need to perform is executed timely and professionally. But there are various activities that are dependant on the customer / third parties involved over which you do not have much control. If these activities are not planned and managed carefully from the beginning, they have a potential of directly impacting your deliverables.
In life cycle of implementation of Oracle ERP, there are various activities falling on a Critical Path. Any delay in these activities can shake the entire project.
The challenges that I would like to talk about in this series of blogs are:
1) Proper constitution of effective Steering Committee and Project Management Team from the customer’s side.
2) Customer’s Stakeholders’ availability as planned
3) Timely feedback / approval by customer’s stakeholders on deliverables
4) Readiness of the End Users for ERP
5) Data readiness for Going Live
Importance of Steering Commitee
Whether to go for an Oracle ERP (or any other ERP) is a very critical decision for any organization. ERP Assessment in itself is a topic which needs a detailed discussion as it encompasses numerous issues and considerations. I will dwell on this in another series of blogs. In this blog I will restrict my thoughts to challenges that need to be taken care of at the time of planning for an implementation.
Let’s assume that a Company has gone through an ERP assessment process in great details and have identified Oracle Application as its ERP and now you are planning the implementation process. You have taken care of planning activities and resource mobilization etc that will enable you and your team to ensure that deliverables are given on time and to the satisfaction of the customer. As stated in my previous blog on this, you need to take care of all the challenges that you might face from the customer’s side. A properly constituted Steering Committee helps minimizing most of the challenges that are faced in any implementation.
Steering Committee constitutes members from senior management of the Customer and also key stakeholders from the implementing company's side. Typically CIO of the customer should head its team with senior members from all its departments. Proper constitution of this team is extremely important for successful implementation and acceptance of the new ERP system. A properly constituted Steering Committee (from the customer's side):
a) Displays commitment of the Management in the ERP implementation.
This display of commitment
to the entire potential ERP user community in the organization helps in
motivating them to come forward and actively participate in this process.
b) Manages changes in business processes within the company.
During the ERP implementation process, more often that not, existing business processes have to be modified slightly and in some cases there might be a requirement for a major change in some these processes to bring them in line with the processes being mapped in Oracle ERP. The end users must have been working on the current business processes for a long period of time and in some cases they might have played a major role in maturing these processes to the current level. Hence it becomes very difficult for them to accept any change in the business processes. Steering Committee plays a very important role in driving acceptance to changes in the business processes.
The end users must have been working on the current business processes for a long period of time and in some cases they might have played a major role in maturing these processes to the current level. Hence it becomes very difficult for them to accept any change in the business processes. Steering Committee plays a very important role in driving acceptance to changes in the business processes.
c) Oversees the Project Management Team and manages escalations by them / the Implementation Team.
The Project Management Team (of the customer) reports to its Steering Committee on a periodic basis. On regular intervals, the entire Steering Committee (members from the customer's side and the implementing company's side) meet together to discuss issues and potential risks and find ways to resolve the issues and find ways to mitigate the risks.
Importance of Appropriate Project Management Team from Customer's Side
Here I will like to touch upon the importance of a properly constituted Project Management Team from Customer’s side.
You must have identified the resources required in your implementation team and are good to go for the implementation but is your customer ready with his Project Management Team as you are? If not then the project is set to be a disaster. A properly constituted Project Management Team (PMT) of the customer is extremely important for successful implementation and Go Live of an Oracle ERP implementation.
An ideal PMT should have a representation from all the Operational Departments of the customer. There are various studies which reveal that successful projects have been driven from the customers’ side by their Operations Team and not IT. An ERP project is an Enterprise project and hence should not be considered as any other IT project.
Following are a few major advantages of having key representatives from the Operations Departments of a customer in its PMT:
1) Timely and proper inputs to Implementation team
2) Domain knowledge is readily available to the Implementation Team
3) Sharing pains from legacy system which the Implementation Team needs to address.
4) Active participation in changing Business Processes, wherever required
5) Helps in smooth acceptance of the new system by the End Users
6) The entire Project gets properly managed from the customer’s side.
Whatever I have stated in this series might seem very obvious to you but believe me, not all implementation projects have proper representation from the customer’s side due to which the project either ends up as a disaster or the Go Live is way off the originally planned date.
Availability of Key Stakeholders as per plan
You have now identified the members of Steering Committee and the Project Management Teams of the customer and the project is progressing as planned. You need to have series of meeting with the customer to understand their current business processes, problems they are facing from their existing systems and their expectations from the ERP system under implementation.
These requirements / information can be obtained only from the identified key stakeholders of the customer. In the project plan base-lined by the customer, you must have planned for these activities. Now if these stakeholders are not available on the planned dates for the planned duration you will not be able to complete the requirement gathering process in time.
If the key stakeholders of the customer are available as planned, you are fine but what if they are not? Now you have 2 options. Either wait for them to make themselves available or carry on with the project on the basis of your understanding of their requirements. If you go for the first choice, your project timelines will go for a toss. The second choice has equal chances of shaking the project timelines / project ending as a disaster.
It has been seen that the implementation team, with a view to complete project within the planned duration and budgets, proceed with the implementation even though the requirement gathering is not complete. In such cases they run a big risk as they might end up spending lot of additional time and effort in rework to re-align the process mapped by them to the correct requirements.
Hence one needs to be very careful on this front and insist on availability of identified key stakeholders of the customer as planned else you might have to escalate to the Steering Committee and redraw the project plan.
Timely feedback on queries submitted / approval of deliverables by customer
Another challenge in an Oracle ERP implementation project is getting timely response from the customer on queries raised by the implementation team and approval of deliverables. You might be having SOW signed by the customer clearly specifying the number of days within which the customer will respond back on queries raised and for approving the deliverables. But in reality the feedback does not come within this agreed upon period.
Project Manager of the implementation team needs to follow up vigorously with the customer on this front as delays in such feedback will result in project delays or major rework.
You might be thinking that why am I talking about these so-obvious things here. But, my friend, believe me I have seen projects going out of control because of not making conscious efforts in getting such feedbacks / approvals from customers in time.
Readiness of End Users for ERP
As the Project Manager of Oracle ERP implementation team, this is one challenge which I am sure you must have faced at every project. There are companies which have computer savvy users but there are companies which do not have such users. Even when the users are familiar with computers, they may not be ready for a major change in the way they are going about their work.
The best people to work on it and make the End Users prepared to accept Oracle ERP are the members of the Project Management Team of the customer which was identified at the beginning of the project. They need to drive down to the users the benefits they will get when they start using the new application which could be around following lines
a) Seamless integration of data generated by all departments
b) Accessibility of the system from anywhere
c) Convenient report generation and printing process
d) Timeliness and online reporting
e) Ease in modifying the reports
f) Convenience in analysis and planning
The list can go on an on and I am sure you can think of much more benefits than I have listed above.
Ideally speaking, the End Users should be made ready for the ERP system before the project commences. However, it has been observed all the time that there are some users who need some assurances and further explanations on these benefits from the implementation team. So it might be a good idea to identify such users well in advance so that needful can be done as early as possible and make them ready for the application. This will help you a lot when you approach the Go Live stage.
Data Readiness for Go Live
Your customer has accepted the Oracle ERP solution suggested by you and is very supportive to your efforts and is giving all the feedbacks that you want. Everything is running as per planned schedule and you are sure that the project is all set to Go Live smoothly.
Time comes for UAT and you come to know that the legacy data is not at all organized and is in a bad shape. It is going to take a long time for the customer to make the data ready for migrating it to the new Oracle ERP system.
The entire project plan now goes for a toss.
This is also a big challenge which you need to take care from the early stages of project implementation.
You need to have discussions with the Project Management Team of the customer and understand the way they are maintaining their data and if some data massaging etc is required to be done by them, they should be informed about it well in advance so that there are no last minute surprises.
Implementation teams take all the care to understand the current business processes of the customer and do a fitment of the same with the new system but they forget to look at the data and its readiness for getting mapped to the way the application is planned to be implemented.