A project designed to enable PPC, southern Africa's leading supplier of cement, lime, and aggregates, to move from a 10-year old legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to vanilla SAP without disruption to the business, succeeded because of exceptional planning, teamwork, and buy-in from the customer.
So says Henry Varges, Britehouse account director for PPC. "PPC's focus was on risk mitigation - because their legacy system was no longer being supported in terms either of software or hardware. Also, their internal information technology (IT) specialists, who had done 300 customisations to the system, were ageing out of the company.
"Because they needed to very quickly replace the system at 21 different sites, ranging from factories and mills to depots - some of them outside South Africa, there was no time to re-engineer the business to take advantage of SAP's more advanced functionality. We had, therefore, to ensure that their business processes remained the same while changing the underlying technology that drives the business processes.
"Achieving that meant working very closely with the business in order to understand how it operated and then getting SAP functionality to allow them to continue to operate in the way they were used to.
"It's an unusual challenge because, instead of advising the client on how to make the most of SAP, we needed to adapt SAP to provide a like for like business process outcome. That said, we also had to create a platform that would allow the business to enhance its processes with SAP once the replacement process was bedded down. So, we had to keep the future in mind, without getting ahead of ourselves or of what PPC needed at the time.
"Without the very high levels of PPC executive commitment of time and attention to our steering committee, we couldn't have done that - or brought the project in on time and on budget as we did."
In fact, according to Varges, the entire project has been a superb example of collaboration and co-operation among all the role players in what was branded internally as the Phambili Project. Those involved included KPMG, who provided continuous quality assurance, and Ndawu, who led the change management campaign within PPC.
"It's one of the very rare times in our experience in which all the organisations involved truly acted in partnership, with the single vision of delivering a successful solution for the client," Varges says.
PPC project leader for the Phambili Project, Herman Coetzee, agrees. "There were several factors that enabled the project to flow smoothly from beginning to end. One of them was choosing the right implementation partner. Britehouse impressed us from the tender stage with their willingness to make our business their business. They were interested in the detail of the project and building a long term relationship with us, instead of simply doing the implementation and walking away.
"That, and the fact that, once appointed, they were utterly professional and put in the hours and intelligence needed to get things done on time, has meant that we're not looking at any other contractors for the next phase of the SAP implementation - during which we will begin to exploit the additional value that SAP can give us."
Coetzee believes that branding the project to get maximum buy-in from users and having change management running side by side with the technology implementation also contributed to the success of the project. "Our users actually looked forward to being able to use SAP and, now that the system is live, they are positive about adapting to a new way of working when we begin to adopt SAP best practice.
"In addition, having KMPG acting as the programme assurance manager, issuing roadmaps for discussion at each steering committee before each of phase of the project, ensured that everyone did the right thing, in the right sequence, to achieve the right result."
PPC opted to use the ASAP methodology in implementing SAP Financials, SD, CO, MM, PP, and PS, as well as migrating to the same platform the standalone SAP HR module that the company had installed some years before Project Phambili was launched, along with a separate maintenance application.
Planned for 510 users and now supporting 570. Project Phambili was launched in February 2009. The pilot went live in February 2010, and the full roll-out was completed in May 2010. Britehouse provided post -go live support until the end of July 2010, and is now working with PPC on driving additional value out of the vanilla version of SAP by focusing, initially on procurement. In phase 2 of the implementation, scheduled to start in January 2011, further optimisation of the system will take place.
"We've asked users to submit ideas for using what they now understand of the functionality SAP offers to continuously improve PPC performance," Coetzee says. "We've had some 41 suggestions, 15 of which we will implement before December and the rest will be considered in 2011."
Varges says the Phambili Project was "incredibly well planned and managed. For instance, PPC's entire network was upgraded and refreshed before we started to implement SAP, so we had no hitches on that side. Also, Herman Coetzee retained his independence as PPC's project manager. By not getting involved in detail, he ensured that the big picture was never compromised."
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