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Chapter 3: SAP in a Microwave
One of the pre-eminent challenges for information systems people has traditionally been the prolongation of the useful life of an implemented system. "Useful life" may have a malleable definition, but should generally be viewed as "serving the base requirements of the company" (minimum) to "providing business impetus, direction, and economy" (paradigm).
Major IS investments are often followed by major upheavals in a business climate and systems have seldom been updated or enhanced to reflect those upheavals. Thus, the speed of degradation of performance has increased as business complexity has increased.
In most projects, the degradation of usefulness begins during the acquisition/development stage. The lag time between project planning (during which goals and objectives are established) and implementation can be anywhere from three to twelve months, during which time the business environment will have changed, sometimes radically. Project scope is seldom updated to address those changes and the implemented systems tend to be a source of disappointment.
A second, continual phase of degradation begins once the implementation is completed and the system is moved into maintenance mode. Programming alone cannot keep pace with business changes (and consequent changes in needs), most especially because the business changes in question will have an impact on system architecture and interfacing. The IS burden is therefore complicated by functional requirements, integration requirements, and information requirements. It is not surprising that traditional IS cannot meet these expectations.
Degradation occurs when informationsystems no longer match company needs. Needs change as business changes. And needs can scarcely be met with traditional IS methods.
With SAP, however, this life cycle does not have to be followed. Instead, a cycle of continuous business improvement can be envisioned in that the SAP infrastructure can be modified according to business changes as they occur with considerably less delay and disappointment.
Once SAP is implemented, the system should no longer follow this pattern. Add-on modules and upgrades will always be needed, just as there will also be a "wish list" of functionality that could not be implemented in the core project.
For the core of your business (and a large core at that) you should not find it necessary to redesign or replace software. As needs arise and the performance of the system is found wanting, your company may find it advantageous to re-engineer the business processes that were the model of the initial implementation and reflect changes in the SAP configuration.
This should best be a continuous process just as business is a continuous process. Many firms make the mistake of implementing SAP, throwing a Friday night party, (oh those wild SAP parties!) and then stopping on Monday, on the faulty assumption that they now have all they need in the world of information systems. Once implementation is complete, teams are disbanded and SAP efforts are converted into maintenance. This maintenance mentality should be avoided at all costs. SAP should not be maintained like some Cobol-based information system. It should continue to evolve just as your business evolves, in the same fashion, at the same pace. Company reorganizations, the incorporation of new distribution methods, emerging markets, acquisitions and mergers, all have an effect on the information system. As configurable software, SAP allows for a rapid response to changes in business climate and degradation of information services should not occur.
Adds Nancy Bancroft, "I think the issue is greater than the life cycle. I think it is a matter of how a company thinks about their systems. Companies that implement an integrated system successfully approach the task with a more comprehensive viewpoint than ever before. They understand the need to balance the technical, workflow, business, and worker concerns. Of course, plenty of companies don't do this with a corresponding lessening of bang for their buck."
The term 'implementation' can be misleading. In traditional systems projects, the implementation was the end point in which the new system began to function in place of the old and thereafter only maintenance and enhancements were required. However, an SAP endeavor, embracing business process reengineering and the installation of integrated enterprise-wide software should necessarily lead to a new life cycle in which continuous reengineering will take place.
In this chapter, we are addressing what should be referred to as 'core implementation'; that is, the first implementation of base modules required to support your business. Whether this is a phased (or rollout) implementation, in which modules or business sectors are put in play sequentially or a big bang (all modules at the same time) is of no import. The point that must be made is that true implementation is no longer finite but core implementation is...