CEO and CIO Leadership Challenges When Implementing SAP ERP
Implementing an ERP system is a daunting challenge for any organization, regardless of size. It is hard to determine when the time is right to make the leap from current systems that are no longer able to support your operation and may well be unsupported. Business growth or any number of factors can drive you to evaluate and then implement an SAP system; either way it is a major decision for companies where time, cost, quality and continuity are paramount.
Vision, leadership and commitment throughout the organization are needed to set the stage and drive an ERP project to a successful conclusion.
There is potential disruption to your operations and your ability to provide high quality products and services to your customers, not to mention horror stories of runaway budgets and endless project time lines. When you make the decision to implement SAP, you want to be confident that you have done so with full knowledge of the upfront costs and with a clear road map to success. This would include:
- initial green lighting of the project
- implementation
- ongoing expansion of the SAP ERP footprint and penetration throughout your organization.
You want to be sure that an SAP ERP project is a sound business and financial decision.
How DataXstream Helps
DataXstream helps companies in their pre-purchase decision making as well as ongoing implementation and roll out activities as follows:
SAP ERP Fit Analysis
We help you assess your current business processes and technology capabilities and map them into an appropriate SAP release and infrastructure. Some, but not all companies need to deploy the full SAP ERP solution: in some cases SAP All-In-One or Business-by-Design is an appropriate choice. We guide you through the myriad choices to ensure you don’t buy functionality you don’t need, but do have functionality that you will need as your business grows.
Project Investment
We help you understand the true cost of ownership from initial purchasing and licensing through to ongoing support and functionality expansion. Typically, an initial implementation deploys baseline capability to support business operations and to allow an organization to get used to working with the new system. You want to understand the various phases and content of a multiyear plan so you can ensure budgets and resources are available and to manage organizational change.
Implementation Strategies & Risk Management
We help you identify different approaches to implementation from a “big bang” to small incremental releases and when it makes sense to retain or decommission existing systems. Early identification of risks and potential pitfalls is critical to ensure that conflicts do not arise between business strategy and execution of the SAP ERP deployment.
Managing Technology Change
We help you identify where you need to change or can re-use existing technologies or introduce new ones. We provide high level infrastructure assessments and a road map to get from your current capabilities to those required in the future.
We know that budgets and timelines are never open-ended and you don’t have time or resources to waste. Our commitment is to help you quickly determine the SAP version best suited to your needs and layout the roadmap to implementation and ongoing deployment success.
DataXstream is the Right Choice
DataXstream worked with a 700M USD natural rubber and non-latex company to determine the SAP ERP version best suited to their business. Over the course of a few weeks the client and DataXstream jointly developed a multi-year roll out plan encompassing a full range of business processes, multiple international locations, implementation sequence and approaches as well as a budget and resource requirements.
