SAP Projects Critical success factors - Ownership
If we were to name some of the critical success factors for a successful SAP project implementation, what would be those;
Precise requirements gathering, Efficient Design, Minimum Customization, Effective program management...
Will identifying the right project sponsorship/leadership be among the top5 CSFs? Probably as an IT/Package solutions vendor you would care less about it during project initiation or execution phase particularly if the requirements were validated and documented, design & development are in harmony with the requirements and UAT has been signed off. You would probably be assured of having a smooth go-live and a happy end-user community. Well, may be not.
In this blog, I would like to elucidate a project scenario and invite valuable comments from the readers.
This project has gone live in a few pilot locations and the team has completed the hyper-care and warranty support. It is just 6-8 weeks since the go-live and operations end-users start complaining about why the solution doesn't meet their requirements and compiling a big list of the changes required to make it work according to their business processes. This is where you start wondering whether the requirements were not correct or is it a case of change management going awry. But the real reason could lie somewhere else. The project, branded as a business transformation project, didn't have the ownership/sponsorship of the operations community who actually runs the organizational business. There was no mandate from the operations senior management to the regional/district managers to adopt the system as the one that standardizes the processes across geographies and brings in more efficiencies in the organization.
Is it true that a new process/system would be viewed as just another IT system and not adopted since it hasn't been mandated by their senior management?
On the other hand, is mandating a new process or system the only means of ensuring adoption? Adoption of a new system by the end-users depends not only on preparing the users for the change but also assigning accountability. We all know that accountability can not be imposed; it comes with the sense of belongingness and ownership. So how do we create this sense of belongingness and also the willingness to accept standardized processes?
In the wake of this scenario, what pro-active steps could have helped? I would be keen to get your point of view to tackle such a situation.
