A nine-month project in which MAHLE Behr South Africa, a subsidiary of Mahle, the global automotive supplies specialist, and Britehouse Specialist SAP Division, a SAP Alliance Partner, collaborated in aligning the local company's human resources system and processes with the German parent's SAP platform, has won the bronze 2013 SAP Quality Award in the small business category.
The SAP Quality Awards acknowledge customers which embrace quality in their SAP software implementations, and through successful planning and execution of implementations, realise great business value.
The MAHLE Behr project was made more than usually complex by the fact that the company was being taken over by the Mahle group, whose process requirements did ultimately cause scope changes. In addition, the MAHLE Behr South Africa project team had minimal SAP experience. And, an HSRP upgrade released during the run of the project called for a special tool to be created to map the designed implementation to the upgrade.
These and other risks were managed successfully through close communication and collaboration among all team members.
"We started our planning a year before the implementation kicked off, by involving key business users in 'disciplined thought sessions' focused on optimising MAHLE Behr South Africa's existing HR, payroll, and training business processes," says Toni Acton, HR manager for MAHLE Behr South Africa. "In some cases, we actually redesigned our processes.
"Then, in the blueprint phase, we overlaid what we'd done on best practices and, where necessary, enhanced the processes further.
"So, from inception, everyone who would be affected by the new SAP HR system had input into the functionality they would be using and understood all the phases and requirements of the implementation. This made for an extremely efficient project."
Regular meetings with project stakeholders that ensured changes and challenges were identified and dealt with early also kept the project on track in terms of cost and timelines.
Following a formal tender process, MAHLE Behr chose Britehouse as its implementation partner, because the Britehouse proposal promised that Britehouse would not simply help MAHLE Behr implement its preferred HR processes, but would advise on best practice in order to ensure that MAHLE Behr's new system would be best suited to its real needs.
"And, they lived up to that promise," Acton says. "Their experience and insight enabled us to get the best solution rather than the easiest or most obvious one. Also, they supported us well beyond the strict terms of their fixed term contract. They didn't see our relationship as a financial exchange. They adopted our business as their own."
MAHLE Behr South Africa had moved to SAP ERP in 2008. It was planned that the implementation of SAP's HR components take place in a second phase, although this was delayed further by the financial crisis of 2009.
MAHLE Behr's German head office provided guidance via a company template, and head office representatives joined the implementation team from time to time to provide input. They also take back to the main system enhancements contributed by the South African project team's innovations.
"We believe that the quality for which SAP has acknowledged this project extends beyond the exceptional user adoption levels achieved to include the intellectual property that all of us working together added to the SAP HR system used by MAHLE Behr - and therefore to SAP as a whole," says Karen Booth, Britehouse HCM Business Unit Manager.
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