Lessons learned on SAP S/4 HANA implementation

I have just wrapped up managing the SAP S/4 HANA greenfield ERP implementation at Mizuho OSI.  I believe this was my 16th SAP implementation and it has been been a great experience.  We actually went live a day early and completed the project within budget.  I would like to thank Lindsay Neill, Director of IT Applications at Mizuho OSI, for giving me this opportunity.  I would also like to acknowledge the excellent job that KPIT did on this project as the implementation partner led by Bimal Brahmbhatt.

No matter how many times I implement SAP, I always come out of it with some lessons learned.  This being my first SAP S/4 HANA greenfield implementation, was no exception.

Below are a few of these lessons learned.

1)  I have heard that it would be difficult dealing with SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) hosting service.  Thankfully this was not the case.  As with most hosting partners as long as you submit tickets, the work gets done quickly.  HEC also dedicated a representative to help guide us through the proper ticket coding.

2)  The BP (Business Partner) transaction is a one-stop-shop for maintaining all business partners (customers, vendors, etc,).  At first I thought this was great, because it shows that the module silos at SAP actually got together an agreed on something.  But, we soon found that does not have sufficient authorization objects to properly segregate the maintenance of customer, vendors, contacts, and employees (as vendors for paying expenses).  SAP recommends having centralized master data maintenance model rather than a distributed model.  This may work for some companies, but many companies will have to either change their model or live with a monitoring / detective control rather than a preventative control.

3) I always recommend starting data migration efforts early in the project.  In this project, there was a lot of data transformation even though the company was migrating from ECC to S/4 HANA.  I hate to admit that we were caught off guard on this project partly due to the data structure changes and partly due to the data cleansing effort.  We were able to go-live on time, but there was added effort and stress that could have been avoided if we had dedicated resources to data migration activities.

4) The security roles had to be re-developed mostly because the company wanted to tighter security than they had in ECC.  We should have started on the effort sooner and had the users test it more thoroughly during UAT.  Most of the post go-live issues were access issues, but they were resolved quickly during hyper care.

We managed this project using an agile-like project management methodology.  It was similar to SAP Activate, but I added some things I picked up working on Salesforce ERP implementations and luckily KPIT also wanted to use an Agile-like approach.  We completed the project in 6 sprints followed by 2 mock cut-overs which each led into UAT (user acceptance testing) sessions.

Over all, I am very happy with this successful SAP S/4 HANA implementation and I am proud to have been a part of this project.

Dan Raven
Raven Business Practice, LLC.
dan.raven@ravenbp.com
http://www.ravenbp.com

SAP S/4 HANA Implementation

I have been working as a project manager on a greenfield SAP S/4 HANA implementation.  It has been an exciting experience and very educational.  Dealing with SAP HEC is different than working with other SAP hosting partners.  Learning the differences between ECC and S/4 HANA has also been interesting.  I appreciate the opportunity that Mizuho OSI has entrusted me with.

SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) is easy to work with once you understand their ticketing process.  I have not been able get on a conference call with all parties involved in a change.  The Basis team, network team, server team, etc. are different groups often from different entities.  All changes require creating tickets which is normal when working with hosting partners.  However, because there are multiple parties involved, you need to create a ticket for each group.  Luckily we were assigned and account manager that guided us through all of the tickets that need to be created for a change.

Most people know about the Business Partner functionality in SAP S/4 HANA and that it replaces the Customer Master account groups and Vendor Master records.  It includes pretty much all types of accounts.  If you pay expenses to employees, then you will need to create employees as BPs as well.  I like the concept that pretty much every entity that your business deals with is created as a BP in S/4 HANA.  However, this has resulted in a fairly complex object with many Business Partner roles.  Hopefully SAP will find a way to simplify this BP beast.

I really like the consolidation of tables in SAP S/4 HANA, but it has created challenges in data migration, even from a legacy SAP ECC environment.  I always recommend starting early with Data Migration activities in ERP implementations and this is no exception.

The success of any ERP implementation depends on the experience of the team.  The consultants' functional and technical experience as well as the business team's business process experience.  These are key to a successful implementation.  Managing change is critical.  Business Process flexibility is critical.  It always comes down to people, process, and technology.

Dan Raven
Raven Business Practice, LLC.
www.ravenbusinesspractice.com

How Agile techniques can improve enterprise software implementations

Chris Doig interviewed me for his CIO magazine article to gain insight on the benefits of using and agile-like ERP implementation methodology.  Check out the article:

How Agile techniques can improve enterprise software implementations

ERP on the Salesforce1 Platform?

Everyone is talking about moving to the Cloud.  ERP companies such as SAP and Oracle have been on the path to the cloud for some time and hundreds of companies are running their ERP in a private cloud.  But running your ERP on a public cloud such as the Salesforce1 platform has been a concern especially for large companies.  For small to mid-sized companies that have not yet made an investment in ERP, a cloud-based ERP solution could be ideal.  But is the public cloud ready for ERP?

I have now seen first hand, how an ERP can work effectively on a public cloud.  I was the project manager on the Kenandy ERP implementation and Salesforce platform migration for which Dave McLain won a 2015 Consumer Goods Technology Industry Visionary award. (see the article).  Congratulations to Dave!  I think this was a well-deserved award.

Kenandy is one of a very few companies that has developed an ERP on the Salesforce platform.  As an independent consultant, I have now worked on 2 Kenandy implementations and I have learned quite a lot.

Prior to going into consulting I was an IT executive who was very successful rolling out SAP.  I developed a fast implementation approach using an agile project style to roll out SAP to new acquisitions for a large high tech manufacturer.  During my tenure, I migrated nearly every application the company used to the SAP NetWeaver platform.  My strategy was based on my belief that applications built on a single platform can be easily integrated with one another and require less maintenance to keep them working.  They also do not require a wide variety of skill sets to develop and maintain.  My IT Strategy was sound and it drove a very low TCO.  

At the time, the thought of paying a subscription for every user license really hit a nerve.  I could not imagine paying a never-ending fee for ERP software.  Until one day I realized that I had been doing so for years.  The annual maintenance fee on a large ERP package was such that I was basically re-buying the software every 4 to 5 years.  And this annual maintenance fee was never-ending.  I may as well have been paying an annual subscription fee for a cloud solution.  In fact, my ERP was already hosted on a private cloud which also came with a never-ending cost.  I had incorrectly compared it to buying or renting a home.  I thought you should always try to buy a home rather than throwing away money on rent.  But my analogy was not right.  When you buy a home you don't have to pay 20% annual maintenance on it.  You don't effective buy it over again every 5 years.

"It is always good to learn from your mistakes, but it is far better to learn from other people's mistakes." - Dan Raven       You can quote me on that, but unfortunately this was an occasion where I learned from my own mistakes, and perhaps you in turn, can learn from mine.

Now that you know a little about my background, you can better understand my thoughts on the public cloud's readiness for ERP.

My first Kenandy implementation for was a small company.  It was a company recently acquired by Del Monte and we decided to use it as a bit of a guinea pig.  That implementation was extremely fast.  In fact, we went live 90 minutes after the funds transfer for the acquisition.  The entire project only took about 3 months.  There were a few bumps in the road much like any ERP implementation, but kinks were worked out very quickly which is one benefit from being on the Saleforce platform.  Development on this platform is very fast.  The users of this small company really liked their new ERP.  It was far superior to their legacy applications.

This implementation gave us some experience and we found some functionality that would need to be added before rolling it out to a large company.  I won't bore you with the details of the large company implementation, but I will say that go-live went smoothly and the large company is now operating on the Kenandy ERP in the Force.com cloud.  In fact, I was very pleasantly surprised with the smooth cut-over which I attribute to an outstanding team that had a good plan and was well prepared.

The question remained, "How well would it work for a large company with many application interfaces and large volumes of data?".  The Salesforce1 platform is already an enterprise platform.  It was built to handle volumes of sales lead and opportunity data.  It was build to enable the development of many more applications that just CRM.  It was built to handle masses of users across many companies.  So in theory, we thought, it should be able to handle the data volume and complexity of an ERP for a large company.   

There are challenges for a large company running their ERP on the Salesforce1 platform.  Because this platform is a multi-tenant platform, there are governor limits that need to be complied with which presents some difficulties with batch job management and APIs used for interfaces.  We have worked through many of these issues and the company is operating within the governor limits.  We have now been live for over 4 months and through a fiscal year end. There is still some optimization that is underway, but this experience as proved to me that it can be done.

Witnessing this has made me very excited about the opportunities it brings to the SMB space.  If the Kenandy ERP can be run on a the Salesforce1 platform for a large company, I have no doubt that small and mid-sized businesses can benefit greatly from this as well.

Please note the disclaimer on this blog.  I would like to reiterate that this is a personal blog and the opinions in this blog are not meant to represent any company or brand that is mentioned in this blog.  I am only writing about my personal experience and my personal opinions.     
  

Kenandy ERP on the Salesforce.com Platform

I have been working on a very exciting ERP project.  I managed the first implementation of the Kenandy ERP for a large company.  Big Heart Pet Brands, the company that makes brands such as Milk Bone, Kibbles 'n Bits, Gravy Train, 9Lives, Meow Mix, Nature's Recipe, Natural Balance, and many more, is the first large company to go-live on Kenandy's cloud-based ERP solution.

Please note the disclaimer on this blog.  I would like to reiterate that this is a personal blog and the opinions in this blog are not meant to represent any company or brand that is mentioned in this blog.  I am only writing about my personal experience and my personal opinions.

Kenandy is an ERP that is built on the Force.com platform.  (www.kenandy.com)  It is one of only a few ERP solutions built on the Salesforce platform and I am very impressed with with this PaaS (Platform as a Service).

As many people already know, data created in a Force.com application can be "made available" to other applications in the same Org (company environment).  For example, if you create a customer record in the SF CRM application, that record can be utilized by a say a credit management application that a company may download from the Saleforce App Exchange.

Now think of this from an ERP perspective.  Master Data Management has long been a major thorn in the side of many companies that utilize different applications for different functions within their organization.  Traditionally, you would create the master data record in one system and copy it to other applications that need the same information.  This was originally done manually and later automatically via programs.  The manual effort was always error prone and the automatic solutions still require the data to be located in multiple databases where keeping them in sync has been challenging.

Salesforce has resolved this by allowing the record to be created once and be "utilized" by other applications on the same platform.  With Kenandy's ERP application on the Force.com platform, companies can create records in CRM and utilize them in the ERP sales order and billing processes.  The records are not copied from one application to another, they are simply made available to other applications on the platform.

They have gone even further than master data.  Any record can be shared, including transaction records.  Companies can utilize sales history data from the ERP in a Trade Promotions Management application as long as they are both on the Force.com platform.  This is amazingly powerful.  The efficiency gains of this architecture is incredible.

In my past, while working for companies on SAP, my main goal was to migrate as many applications as possible onto the NetWeaver platform.  It is always less expensive and more efficient to maintain applications that are built on the same platform.  Now as a consultant, striving to gain a lower TCO, and ultra high efficiency for my clients, I am still convinced (now more than ever) that it is a platform play.  The best way to gain efficiency, increase business velocity, and reduce TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is to migrate or build applications on a single platform.

Now, with Kenandy ERP experience on the Salesforce platform, I am in awe of the possibilities.  The data sharing / utilization for enterprise applications, in my opinion, is one of the best features of the Force.com platform.  

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go-Live! - Now available on Amazon.com

Hello Everyone,

You can now find my book on Amazon.com; "On Your Mark, Get Set, Go-Live!"  - The SMART Approach to implementing SAP.

 http://www.amazon.com/Your-Mark-Get-Set-Go-Live/dp/1477493247

I am very excited to now have this book available for people interested in rolling out ERP applications such as SAP in the most efficient way.  In this book I have shared many examples of project documents that can be used as templates to speed up your implementations.  Currently it is available in paperback.  I plan to have it available in the Kindle format soon.

I hope you enjoy the book and I am happy answer any questions that you post as comments on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you.



Enjoy.