7. March 2010 by admin.

In the second part of a recent Computerworld series on ensuring software implementation project success, Ian Anderson, director at SAP services company DNAstream sets out four elements that he regards as critical:

The first one is a telling reflection on SAP in particular:

“The chosen software must be able to meet the required business processes, not absolutely, but at least to a level that is agreed in advance as acceptable, perhaps a 70% to 80% fit. This is often achieved through a level of compromise, such as adapting the business processes to fit the software where possible.

It is essential to have these business processes identified, documented, understood, mapped to the software and signed off by the business before you start implementation.”

A lot of billing folks would regard a 70 to 80% fit for billing to be a failure.  To be fair to Anderson, he was talking about ERP.

The second is “choose the vanilla flavor”.  In billing that’s not always possible, as billing rules are often mandated by external agencies and regulators.  Here’s what Anderson says:

“The overwhelming advice is to keep the software as standard as possible to avoid potentially costly effort on support and future developments, including upgrades. This is often referred to as vanilla ERP.”

His third point is always a timely one, especially where utilities rush out to get advice from a big-name consulting firm, as if that minimises their risk – use a consultant who understands your business and will know the best approach for you, rather than simply repeating the method he used at his previous client.

Lastly, “Constantly check and review during the project.”  A well-managed project is a prerequisite for a successful implementation.

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21. February 2010 by admin.

One of the issues with regulated and partially-regulated utilities such as those in the public sector, is that the actions of the regulator may impact projects already started.  That’s the cautionary tale this week out of New Zealand:

TrustPower announced to the stock exchange this month that it had suspended work on an $18 million project to replace its billing and customer management systems with Oracle software and would probably have to write off a portion of the $9.5m it had spent on the system to date.

Meridian Energy put a project to install Oracle software on hold in December in similar circumstances. Contact Energy last year raised eyebrows within the industry by budgeting up to $80m to replace its systems with software from Germany’s SAP.

Contact would not comment on whether it believed any unnecessary complexities in the electricity market were behind the big bill, or had contributed to a decision by its original implementation partner, IBM, to pull out of the project, but said it was now pressing ahead with the investment.

TrustPower spokesman Graeme Purches says it became clear Oracle’s software would need to be extensively changed to meet the demands of the New Zealand market, so TrustPower had decided to review its options.

Oracle had tendered software used in Australia that both companies believed would do the job, but the difficulty of dealing with 28 electricity lines companies that had their own ways of calculating tariffs, reconciliation with the wholesale market, and a variety of metering technologies meant the software would need to be largely rewritten.

"New Zealand is a complex market and it is probably no coincidence that three companies have had to pause projects and they are all in New Zealand."

Oracle was not to blame, he says. "Maybe there was an issue about us not communicating in enough detail what we were expecting."

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18. February 2010 by admin.

Fred O. Angel, Jr., the Customer Operations Administrator and CIS Implementation Project Manager for Chesterfield County Department of Utilities, has written an article published on the Water World site, about effective CIS implementation project management.  Fred writes:

In summary, the key to being an effective and successful project manager is doing the right thing, at the right time, utilizing the right people for the benefit of the project team, staff, customers, the utility, and the CIS implementation project.

Being named project manager for your utility’s CIS implementation project is an opportunity and challenge. One’s project management skills will most likely determine the success or failure of the project. As PM, you lead the project effort by setting expectations and communicating effectively, managing and resolving risk, and providing leadership. A strong project manager leads his or her team with trust, fairness, and integrity — which in turn encourages respect, confidence, support, and involvement from everyone affiliated with the project.

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14. February 2010 by admin.

The stoush between SAP and Waste Management as reported by PC World highlights the issues at the heart of vendor selection:

SAP used "fake" and "rigged" software demonstrations to convince Waste Management its products were a good fit, according to the trash hauler. But after years of work and great expense, the product did not work satisfactorily, Waste Management claims.

But SAP has denied any wrongdoing and counters that Waste Management breached its contracts with SAP by failing to "timely and accurately define its business requirements" and provide "sufficient, knowledgeable, decision-empowered users and managers" to work on the implementation.

First: identify your business requirements.  Setting out a checklist of essential functionality might sound like overkill, but incorporating the checklist and the vendor’s responses into the contract may help give clarity later.  Checklist availability can be found on our main site and at Public Sector Assets

Second: be in control of the selection process.  Define the script of what you want the vendor to demonstrate.  Home in on the key aspects.  Ask who else uses the software in that way

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11. February 2010 by admin.

There’s not much new in getting a successful project.  Here’s the latest list from BigNews Biz on how to implement Business Intelligence:

1. Focus on business processes and requirements. Often companies get tied up in the technical capabilities and ignore how you want your business operations to run and what your key business requirements are. Once you have this defined, you can engage in a more effective BI system.
2. Focus on achieving a healthy ROI (Return on Investment). This requires developing a high-level business case, establishing key performance measures, setting baselines and targets for those measures, and tracking performance after go-live.
3. Strong project management and resource commitment. Ensure you have a strong project manager to support and participate in the project.
4. Commitment from company executives. Besides support from a CIO or Director, support from the CEO and top management is also needed.
5. Take time to plan up front. Ensure things are done right at the beginning of the project rather than spending time to fix the problems later on.
   Ensure adequate training and change management. Help people to understand and effectively use the BI system.

Take out the references to BI and it could be any software project.

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7. February 2010 by admin.

Computerworld has quoted from a Panorama consulting report that shows how companies are saving money during software implementations in these recessionary times:

1. A decrease of over 20 percent from 2008 to 2010 is attributed to efforts to limit IT budgets and reduce implementation scopes in response to weak economic conditions. The tradeoff to these reduced implementation costs is that companies are less satisfied with their ERP investments than in years past.

2. Decreasing implementation timelines can be partially attributed to a weak economy which has forced companies to more tightly manage implementations. Further, a number of companies decreased the scope of their enterprise software initiatives.

3. The survey found that 54 percent of ERP implementations went over budget, a slight decrease from the 2008 data when 59 percent of implementations cost more than planned.  The finding is attributed to the fact that many organizations in the study failed to identify and budget implementation costs not attributable to software vendors, such as project management, organizational change management, hardware upgrades and the like.

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15. January 2010 by admin.

In a recent article in CIO, the topic of resourcing SAAS projects is discussed, with a focus on CRM applications.  SaaS (software-as-a-service, an aspect of “cloud computing”), you may recall, is where companies surrender aspects of their critical data to be housed “somewhere" else” and accessible via an application they do not own but merely rent only while the Internet connection remains available.  The author, David Taber, asks “if you’re using a SaaS CRM system, when should you be thinking about the implementation team as "staffing-as-a-service?"  CRM projects can represent a big investment of IT personnel.  Perhaps they too should be sitting in the clouds?

Taber concludes “Given the likelihood of change, even if your staff is extremely constrained, no part of the CRM work should be done entirely by outsiders. Your organization will need internal capabilities to develop and manage the system going forward.  That said, it’s also not a great idea to have major parts of the project done without any outside input. There are certain parts of the project that you don’t really want to get good at: technologies that provide you no particular leverage, or processes (such as data cleansing) that are incredibly boring or time-consuming. Consultants also bring valuable lessons from other implementations, and they can help you develop best practices in areas such as sales processes or Agile project management.”

A second section discusses on-going operational resourcing.  The article is called CRM Team Staffing Inside or Out.

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19. December 2009 by admin.

Any new billing implementation will challenge the people who will be using it to carry out their day-to-day jobs.  Anticipation of changes in process and culture that occur when implementing a new system can cause considerable anxiety throughout the business. It is important to foster confidence, support, and active engagement from the end-user community. This will help lead to quicker adoption of any new business processes and a stronger return on your investment.

Anytime a change as significant as implementing a billing system is made, the business must seriously rethink how all the people, processes, and technologies fit together to support the business goals.  A strategic planning process including change management should reinforce implementation plans and identify potential pitfalls early on so that they can be addressed them in advance.

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5. December 2009 by admin.

As the cost of any software implementation project is high, it is critical for an organization to make the project a success and start deriving benefits out of it as far as possible. But what is it that makes an implementation project successful?

• A well-defined project organization structure that details the project planning, execution and monitoring mechanism
• An attitude that stresses on business transformation instead of process automation
• An approach that brings about the proper integration of people, process and technology through effective management of change

Companies need a well thought out, comprehensive process to help plan, guide and control the entire software implementation effort. Before the entity-gritty of software selection begins, management should know how current strategy, process and supporting system work and if any changes should be made before the new information system is introduced. The pre-implementation stage is the time to re-consider the way you do business and to make a detailed analysis of the requirements and the expectations of the new information system.

Optimization of business process rather than technical innovation should stand in the focus of an implementation project. Start defining software needs by examining current process that govern your flow of information and material throughout the order-to-delivery process and ultimately the entire supply chain. There is a common tendency to shortcut this very important activity but you will pay - sometimes dearly - in time and money for avoiding this essential step.

Take the time to evaluate your software plan before you commit to software acquisition and installation. Doing it right the first time is the only way to go. There are many people out there who wish they had taken a brief pause to evaluate their direction.

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20. November 2009 by admin.

Within six months to one year after an initial software implementation project is complete, there is often a need for a second project to address opportunities with the original implementation.  Typically with a new system we try to do things better than we have in the past – the project goal should be to try and improve upon the existing.  In many billing implementations the sheer effort of getting the software implemented means that business process improvements are let slip and the old ways are allowed to continue.  For many processes, improvement can be achieved, but with other processes, the new way of doing things is not realistic — there are nuances, dependencies, or constraints that are not considered at the beginning of a project. Addressing these opportunities as they are understood will help longer term adoption of whatever product you are attempting to implement.

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