According to John Lagaay, group executive for business applications at Business Connexion, SAP is becoming increasingly popular in the South African market - both in the public and private sectors.
Most companies see SAP as a tool to integrate disparate systems into one view of the organisation. "In addition to that, SAP is scalable, which means it can grow with your company," says Lagaay. It also creates a base from which the organisation can manage and measure its human, financial and physical assets.
The benefits of implementing SAP include company-wide standardised processes; improved reporting and in turn corporate governance; an integrated view of the organisation and all its silos; increased cross-selling and improved efficiencies.
In light of the growing number of organisations implementing SAP, Lagaay recommends that the following critical success factors are taken into account at the start of the planning and implementation process.
One of the single biggest challenges faced when implementing SAP is the interface to other applications. "Our call centre management system, Remedy, for example, requires up to 30 interfaces," says Lagaay. It is critical for companies to use SAP recommended interface standards. "This safeguards your organisation against issues during future upgrades."
Organisations are dynamic by nature and therefore the entire process must take into account that there could be changes to the structure during the course of implementation. "The blueprint must remain flexible as it will then allow for these changes to be made while the implementation is taking place," Lagaay says. In addition to that, SAP implementation is booming at the moment, which means an organisation needs to plan well in advance to ensure that the required skills are available at the time that the implementation needs to commence.
"Many organisations underestimate the work required to get their data to a point where it can be seamlessly integrated into the system to ensure maximum benefit," he says. This could mean extended timeframes. There must also be executive level buy-in and active participation. Many organisations believe that the financial manager is best poised to determine business requirements and processes, but in order for the implementation to be effective and meet all needs, there should be involvement from all parts of the business. "This could become the single point of failure," Lagaay warns. "There must be broad participation to eliminate costly reworks."
Change management is also a critical success factor. "Our experience shows that people are often wary of moving to new systems, which makes an effective change management and training programme vital to its success," he says. "Prior to implementation, organisations should work out what their training requirements will be and then multiply it by three to ensure that they have budgeted adequately."
Keeping these critical success factors in mind, Lagaay says it will take roughly two to three months before employees will become comfortable with the system and start trusting its figures. "You will then see a dramatic transformation as the system is used to extract information in a much more meaningful way, leading to improved reporting standards and the firming up of processes," he concludes.
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