Overcoming issues of standardization, data, conflict and resistance
Situation and problem
The company, a production/commercial reality, had been 100% part of a Group for 5 years. Within the Group, the SAP roll-out had already started with multi-year international consolidation. The model: headquarter/manufacturing connects the national commercial subsidiary, to mitigate infrastructure risks and become more competitive at Group level. It must be considered that the company concerned was the largest, most complex and most economically successful in the Group. Legacy Erp/Business Intelligence systems had been well developed over decades with a very high level of internal/external integration. In the early years of integration to the Group, the focus was on interfaces and reporting alignments. However, this was not yet a digital transformation in which the benefits of integrated analytics were exploited and users in various countries were provided with data for real-time operations and decision-making.
Challenge
The starting point was challenging: increasing efficiency and performance while downgrading the spectrum of functionalities managed. The critical issues identified: the discordance of the organizational cultural model between the parent company and the subsidiary with deeply rooted patterns in both organizations, the difficulties in identifying the added value of the operation, the need to overcome fears and resistance.
The codes/masterdata/reporting systems were suitable for a manufacturing environment managed with high levels of autonomy and success, deviating from the parent company’s settings. The national system was characterized by highly customized and advanced information systems with poorly documented third-party integrations.
Actions
The multi-year journey comprised these activities: deep data analysis and a “mass” cleaning in the data assets: separation of historical archives, duplicates, taxonomy alignments, attributes, models. Gaps analysis, definition of fields of action, classification of use cases. Implementation of a guided system conversion path. Complete redesign of certain processes and harmonization, removal of redundant processes; extensive functional and integration tests, removal of unused code. Integration reporting with distinction between economic and process performance.
Results
Conversion was managed without disruptions and no negative impact on growth and profitability. International masterdata integration. Gradual conversion of national IT specialist staff to Lean experts for process streamlining and user education. Reorganization of the national/international IT team.