Ruslan Omurbekov
What were the common threads between the Hugger-Mugger and HP ERP
implementations?
HP failed in planning and providing for the IT problems that eventually cost the company
over five times the cost of the original project. The IT problems that are inherent in many
of these large ERP projects must not be allowed to snow ball and cripple supply chains
and other essential business processes. HP suffered the consequences back in the 2004 because minor IT problems were allowed to become major business disruptions due to inadequate contingency planning.
Similarly, Hugger-Mugger’s implementation lacks a good, if any, methodology and certainly no understanding of “go live” readiness and how to address the issues once the system was in production.
2. What were the key project management strategies that may have been used to
minimize “Go-Live” problems with the HP SAP “Go-Live” process?
Firstly, the project team did not test the legacy interfaces with live data or production
data. Inadequate testing of the legacy interface came to the fore when the customer orders could not be taken by the system. The company lost $160 million due to this issue. Added to the above issue was the fact that the contingency plan did not work properly.
Not enough time was spent on the back-out plan.
Another major issue was the planning around training of the new system. Training was
administered before the Go-Live Date without any refresher courses just before the
implementation date. This resulted in many questions as well as ineffective usage of the
system by the users.
3. When implementing an ERP system, especially supply chain systems, identifying
risks and minimizing them require planning. Discuss how IT needs to work with
the business to address “Go-Live” planning and issue resolution.
Key business processes need to be defined by the functional users such that the IT team can ensure there is a process in place to ensure business can...