ERP and PMO Services

We have worked with top of the line ERPs including SAP, Campus Management and Lending solutions and helped companies to establish and manage a Project Management Office.

We have experience in SAP for more than a decade and half now and delivered high quality SAP implementations across industries. We have formulated SAP strategy, performed package evaluations, managed complex implementations and conducted performance audits and reviews across these engagements. We have also conducted benefit studies to track how implementations have impacted the organizations and what specific benefits they have accrued. Further, based on our experience, we have developed our proprietary methods and tools to support our SAP related services.

We helped a top B-School in strategizing and implementing a state-of-the-art campus management solution and a Financial Services Institution in the selection of a core banking solution. Such experiences have given us a wider exposure to ERPs across industries and solutions.

Our Services include:

• Program Management
• Enterprise Readiness Assessment
• Benefit Planning & Realization
• Blueprint Design & Audit and
• Performance Reviews 

Program Management

Program Management is one of our key ERP services. We work at the executive level to help identify business priorities, define scope, formulate teams, identify and mitigate risks and ensure that the solution meets the current and future demands of the organization.

We understand an ERP implementation has an enterprise-wide impact, it affects business processes across functions, redefines roles and responsibilities of people and thus demands more from the organization than making a technology change. Hence, we believe for an result oriented ERP implementation,  managing the change in the organization is critical. It requires a sustained focus to bring about a mind-set change among the users and hand-hold them to perform in the redefined roles.  In most cases these efforts are more than the technique of deploying the software. 

We bring in our long experience to the fore in driving such a change in the organization. More so, our Program Management approach considers the impact on people and roles as much as scheduling the implementation activities. 

Further, as part of our Program Management, we help in other key activities such as package evaluation, RFP preparation and implementation partner evaluation and selection. 

 

Our Program Management Services cover the following services:

• Program Management of ERP Implementation
• Assistance in setting up Program Management Office, Governance and Reporting Guidelines
• RFP Preparation and Vendor Evaluation
• On-going Project Health Reviews covering stakeholders, scope, schedule, team, risks and benefits
• Change Management – Programs and Reviews

Enterprise Readiness Assessment

Organizations which embark on ERP engagements soon find that the demands on their resources are much higher than anticipated and challenges are varied. The typical challenges faced by the organization are:

• Unspecified or high specification of scope
• Aggressive estimation of timelines
• Inaccurate assessment of budgets
• Unclear or no articulation of anticipated benefits
• Lack of proper business representation in the form of core teams and key user teams

These challenges when not anticipated and responded before commencement of the project manifest into trouble spots that threaten the project completion, stretching leadership involvement to resolve issues and requiring additional costs to meet the unplanned demands of the project.

We help organizations in their ERP project preparation by conducting a Readiness Assessment to ensure that they are well prepared to meet the demands of the project. We critique the project charter or help create one where required, conduct workshops with executives on project preparation, help set expectations among users all as part of Readiness Assessment.

Our Readiness Assessment services cover:

• Project objectives definition in line with organization objectives
• High level process review and identifying candidates for improvement
• Preliminary scope definition and business priorities specification
• Benefits realization roadmap
• Project costs and budgeting
• Core team formation and role definition

Benefit Planning and Realisation

A study on ERP implementations indicates that only 10-15%of the implementations have delivered benefits. The biggest shortfalls are reported in personnel reductions, improvements to on-time delivery, productivity gains, revenue growth and inventory reductions. Worse still, a survey by Unipart Expert Practices found that 84% of companies did not track benefits realization to the end of their ERP implementation project.

Having participated in a number of ERP implementations, particularly SAP, we have observed that in most cases the benefits are not articulated well in advance and agreed with implementation partners resulting in expectation mis-match when the project gets underway.

We believe organizations should approach an ERP implementation as an opportunity to take a tough look at their processes and practices and streamline their operations else the effort may tend towards maintaining status-quo overlooking the changes that can benefit the organization.

We can help you in defining the expectations and project objectives that match your organization goals . We will also track along the project implementation life-cycle that the project objectives are considered and actions taken at every stage of the project through appropriate interventions and reviews

. 
Towards this, we have developed our own methodology for Benefit Realization which runs as a parallel track that runs right from the initial stages of ERP implementation Project through to Post Go-Live stage. The methodology comprises of the following stages:

• Benefit Expectation Assessment
• Benefit Opportunities Identification
• Benefit Measures Development
• ERP Customization to Benefits Alignment
• Benefit Measurements and Improvements Planning

                                    

Blueprint  Design and Audit

Blueprint defines a key milestone in the ERP Implementation Process. It should provide direction to the implementation and document the demands of the business and requirements of the users with clarity. However, most implementations do not give the due importance to Blueprint due to varied reasons such as pressure on time or lack of capable personnel. The approach of "find-requirements-as-we-build" do not necessarily result in an integrated implementation.

We help in the Blueprint phase in providing the required oversight to make the discussions with the implementation partner more productive.  We bring in our industry perspectives and our experience in ERP implementation to act as client's representative in facilitating the Blueprint Design. We also conduct Blueprint Audits to ensure that the requirements and design meet the demands of the organization.

Our services towards Blueprint covers :

• Detailed Scope Definition
• Blueprint Design Oversight
• Blueprint Audit

ERP Performance Reviews

We have observed that organizations that have implemented ERP and used the application for a while, tend to seek answers to a few key questions

• Has our implementation given us the anticipated RoI?

How does our implementation compare with the best in the industry?
How well have we used the power of SAP to enable business processes? What is our scorecard for the implementation, say out of 10?
What gaps do we have in meeting the needs of the organization and the users?
What improvements can we implement to bridge the gaps and how?
What can we further do around SAP which can add value to our organization?

We conduct performance studies to analyse and report how effective the implementation has been. We consider for instance the usage of ERP. Studies on ERP implementations have shown that most of the standard features of ERP have gone un-utilized and instead companies have custom built functionalities leading to higher maintenance costs. 

Our approach to ERP Performance Review focuses on how well the package has been tailored to meet the current as well as future business demands and what has been the value to the company due to ERP adoption. Towards this, we have developed an approach and a methodology called “ERP BusinessAlign” to analyze the RoI / benefits of ERP implementation. Based on the findings, we provide a road-map for improvements where gaps exist.

Our methodology is structured to:

• Review the current implementation along 4 key dimension of Business Fitment, Functionality Leverage, Support Effectiveness and People Comfort using a structured and comprehensive questionnaire
• Arrive at a score card  for the current implementation across these key dimensions
• Provide a clear road-map for further actions on ERP – be it reworking on some aspects of current implementation or implementing additional products of ERP and
• Enable informed decisions on next level of business automation

                                        

Recent Engagements

• Provided Program Management services for Implementation of SAP for a leading IT company. The client is a leader in IT Outsourcing providing a range of Services in the areas of IT and BPO and has a number of Fortune 500 companies as its clients.
  
• Assisted an SME engaged in manufacturing pumps in reviewing their ERP implementation and recommending improvements.