It makes me chuckle when companies regard IT as the department that keeps the light on. With ERP systems such as SAP reaching critical business maturity these days, your internal SAP experts and Business Analysts bring the most value of any department in the company. These key employees have been on countless projects, dug deep into vital data and have an intimate knowledge of business processes. With the right leadership, facilitation and a solid methodology your company and SAP system can go from good to superb.
Identifying areas of weakness in your customer delivery, inventory management, procurement or other business metrics will disrupt some people and make them protect their turf. But what’s more important? Turf and silo protecting or delivering excellence to your customers?
Your SAP group should be the front runner on innovation across the company. If not, you have probably chopped the IT budget and unfortunately lost (or will lose) your most valuable set of resources.
If you are an innovator of leading edge business processes and SAP, here is a methodology your SAP group can use right now.
- Build a business case and analyze the key performance metrics that the company is tracking.
- Identify key metrics that are failing (and failing your customers).
- Identify root causes to why performance metrics are not being met (bottlenecks, lack of information, SAP not utilized, lack of training …etc). Data mine, data mine….and data mine.
- Prioritize the major pain points and ROI (with the business) to address the top three pain points.
- Map the business processes.
- Introduce best practices in leveraging SAP solutions and technology to optimize business performance.
- Prioritize key SAP projects with the short, medium and long term company strategy
- Use in house leadership and experts with hands-on business experience before introducing outside consultants.
Piss off a few people, remove their turfs, throw out the silos and bring excellence to your company and customers.
Stir and repeat.