The Little Geeni

With my current role of managing global virtual project teams, I have been asked repeatedly by my peers on what are the key success factors of implementing SAP for plant start-up in Asia, especially since the users have no previous SAP experience and business process knowledge ,and English is not their first language.

As you can see, global project teams have several unique characters and challenges, such as multi-functional, constantly evolving to meet business and resource constraints, matrix structured, culturally diverse and geographically distributed. These challenges resulted in that corporate culture is not very conductive for effective communication and cross-team learning. Many learning opportunities are missed and corporate have been paying high price for repeating similar mistakes. Thus, capturing and sharing lessons learned as must-to-have project management processes will reduce global project costs and increase customers and users’ satisfaction. 

If you are responsible for global SAP rollout, here are some lessons learned that can benefit your team and your company.

Lessons Learned – Local Leadership Buy-in event
More often, global project team encounters issues like roles and responsibilities of extended team* are not well defined, local support team resources are not committed after project started, there is no go-to person on site to coordinate issues between site, business team and project team, etc.  In order to get full support from the local leadership team, a project buy-in event needs to carry out by change management team 3-6 months prior to the project kick-off to help local leaders to understand that SAP implementation project is not only an IT implementation, but a business project as well; to help local leaders to understand the importance of aligning business to SAP; to communicate with local leaders clearly about organizational structure, business processes and business units that will be impacted by implementation, resource requirements, etc.  

Lessons Learned – Decoding Email Messages
As many companies are moving their business to Asia, communicating effectively in a cross-cultural work environment can ensure companies’ international business success.  Due to the language barriers and different vocabulary systems, core team and local users are having difficulty understanding and decoding email messages.  As a result, misunderstanding often arises and issues do not get resolved on time, which affects activities schedule and eventually, affects the rollout schedule.

The recommendation is to conduct a Cross-Cultural Communication session during the Kick-off period to the local users and project team to recognize specific cultural differences, to aware of communication differences and to overcome or minimize the cultural communication barriers to high quality communication. 

Lessons Learned – Local Site Coordinator
Global SAP ERP project team normally is referred to as “virtual team”. Team members are working on remote and scattered all over the world. For example, my team has about sixty members and they are located in Germany, Budapest, Mexico, US, Canada, Singapore, China. A lot of times, core team members do not know who to go to address local business-related activities and issues; users do not know who to go to bring up project and business-related issues; and local site management does not get the latest project status therefore unable to provide just-in-time support.

The recommendation is to nominate an experienced site coordinator onsite to act as a local go-to person for all SAP-related issues. The role is responsible for communicating to all appropriate parties on overall project status, issues, successes, and barriers to keep the members engaged in the project.

Lessons Learned – ERP concept and Global Business Process
For most international companies, global SAP implementation is to provide an ERP solution in support of constructing new production start-up in Asia. Most of users are new hires and they do not understand the ERP concept or the Global Template; they do not understand their roles and the associated business processes.

Recommendation is to conduct a Global Template Familiarization session to introduce the Global End-to-End Processes to the users. Afterwards, change management team should work with the local business to determine which processes are applicable to the site, and which ones need localization due to legal and language requirements. A process mapping exercise is highly recommended as well, where the to-be processes (Visio diagram with swim-lanes) are finalized and presented to the local management team. Upon their agreement, SAP roles are able locked, training courses for different SAP roles can be assigned.

Lessons Learned – To-be Process
Like I mentioned above, users are new and they do not have much of SAP and business process knowledge. It is unrealistic to expect users to grasp the to-be process fully.

Recommendation is to conduct a User Acceptance Test/Process Testing prior to go-live after end user Basic SAP and business process training.  By now, the design has been tested by the Core Team, actual data has been loaded to the test environment, and Super Users have been trained in SAP and business concepts.  The Super Users run through the integration test script. This milestone ensures the design works, the data load is accurate and complete, and the super users are trained properly. This key success step should be included in the project plan in order to give core team, business team and extended team good visibility.

Lessons Learned – Master Data & Data Validation
Another issue global SAP implementation team faces is that requesting for data validation took much longer than expected. Three steps that involved in master data. There are data collecting, data loading and data validation. Because not all colleagues from business have been told the data collection process, “how” to validate and the importance of validation, master data always came last minute and past the deadline.

The recommendation is that change management team to conduct workshops locally to explain the data collection and data validation process to business users; to help users understand the meaning of the fields to be validated; and to communicate roles and responsibilities surrounding master data collection and validation by specify who will do what by when. Further, requests for validation should be to a single individual, not a group. Project manager should segregate data load and data validation activities in work plan and ties back to articulating due dates for specific activities and responsibilities distribution list.

Lessons Learned – End User Training
According to normal SAP implementation methodology, change management team plans the training activities one month before system go-live. The training focuses on to-be processes. 

Due to the cultural differences, people in Asia intent to nod a lot when instructor talking. It does mean they understand what instructor talking about, it only means that “I hear you”. They may not tell instructors if they really understand the process/SAP transactions or not.  Core team members, for example, weren’t aware that some users didn’t take the basic SAP training until they started the delta training. This resulted in that user’s SAP and business process knowledge level may not attain the level expected and some users are unable to perform transactions in SAP, e.g. create STO to move raw materials from the US to Asia, near go-live.

The recommendation is to set up process to on board new staff. The process includes obtain the SAP ID, go through the SAP navigation training, the SAP functional module training, obtain the knowledge from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and go through the after-training test.  The process should ensure the new users fully understand the process and can create the transactions in SAP independently. The standard training goes first, and in the support period, have a 2-3 week refresher training.  People are more familiar with the process and know how SAP supports the process.  They then start asking questions and we know their learning situation. 

Sounded communication between core team and local extended team is very important factor for global SAP rollout. Including all team members in the email loop and plan the regular team update meetings can keep all parties on the same page on each project stage.  

In summary, many leading companies use SAP ERP system as an essential infrastructure to provide integrated and standardized real time data to support their global operations. As they move their productions to Asia, they are facing very complicated issues and unique challenges due to national cultural differences and local requirements. Researches of the impact of different cultures on SAP ERP systems implementation in Asian region have not been taken widely yet. Any mistakes of implementation can cost company millions and millions of dollars. Therefore, these lessons we learned from real-time SAP rollouts will provide some guidance on global SAP ERP implementation in Asia.

ERP Asia, From, Global, Implementation, Learned, Lessons

By Jose Allan Tan

Threats of security continue to pervade the global market since September 11. Bombings and threats promising mayhem and destruction had led to a surge in investments around security and surveillance systems. This is fueling the change in how we capture, store, and monitor video.

According to Shivanu Shukla, an industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan “There has been strong interest in being able to remotely monitor surveillance cameras, run video analytics, and integrate surveillance with other physical security systems.”

Shukla notes that network-based video surveillance systems are becoming popular. Frost estimates the video surveillance market to grow from $992.1 million in 2006 to $3956.7 million in 2013.

Analog vs. digital

Analog video surveillance systems consists of analog cameras connected via cables to multiplexers and in-turn connected to monitors and key boards. But what happens when the area that needs to be monitored is a significant distance away and there is a need to record 7×24?

Network surveillance solutions allow existing analog cameras to be connected to a video server, which is connected to the network, and monitored by any computer that is on the network, or the existing control room.

“Storage of the video can be done by network video recorders (NVRs), which can be anywhere on the network, as opposed to digital video recorders (DVRs), which need to be placed close to the cameras or the switcher/multiplexer. In a complete network surveillance solution, network cameras are used to connect directly to the IP network, without the need for an external encoder,” says Shukla.

Video surveillance deployments in Asia are mostly analog based due in part to the market’s price sensitivity. But this is changing as the security threats continue to remain high on radar of both commercial and the public.

Kiran Kumar, a Frost Research Associate, notes that government and transportation sectors are spearheading video surveillance deployments, with large projects for airports, city surveillance, and other critical infrastructure surveillance.

“Fast developing physical infrastructure such as airports, seaports, highways, and rail networks is a key driving force for the strong adoption for video surveillance systems,” says Kumar.

There are three main factors limiting the continuing growth of analog video surveillance systems:

Cost: Set-ups and installation costs of traditional coaxial or fiber-based cabling for analog video systems over large areas is very high. Large-scale projects for city surveillance and monitoring of harbors and ports take a significant role in effecting change to network surveillance.

Scalability: Despite DVRs having improved the recording quality of analog cameras, there is still the physical restriction of its installation near the analog matrix.

Flexibility: Integration of analog video surveillance systems with other systems can be cumbersome. Analog surveillance systems are limited to centralized video analytics, which requires additional hardware, cabling and is difficult to scale.

Benefits of network surveillance

Digital technology is helping extend the capability of surveillance beyond what can be achieved with traditional systems.

Technology now allows us to monitor an area from any location in the world in real-time without any significant investment.

Storage of video can be done on NVRs that can be anywhere on the network. How much video we can store digitally is limited only by the amount of hard disk space. And because the video traverses through the network, backups can be done remotely.

Scalability of network surveillance systems is easy and inexpensive. Network cameras can be connected to the network without rewiring.

With network surveillance systems, intelligence can be distributed either directly at the camera or encoder, or centralized on the NVR or a separate server.

Network surveillance systems are cheaper to build and maintain with reusability of existing IP network infrastructure, highly scalable with little incremental costs, low maintenance costs, and ability to reuse existing legacy surveillance cameras and other display and monitoring equipment as key factors for adoption of digital surveillance techniques.

Limitations of going digital

Not everything is bright and rosy. Due to its dependence on the network, security teams will need the support of the IT department.

“The key challenge to adoption is to get the security and IT teams to adopt network surveillance. Existing network infrastructure makes the proposition of network surveillance stronger. However, organizations where such infrastructure is less developed would be slow to move to network surveillance,” says Shukla.

He concedes that network surveillance adoption is changing the dynamics between the security personnel and the IT teams within enterprises, hindering its adoption rate. The introduction of network surveillance implies the participation of the IT division in security matters.

“Security personnel are typically more conservative and not open to major changes in their environments. Network surveillance adoption would depend on the successful interactions and communication between the two teams within an enterprise,” notes Shukla.

Although Frost & Sullivan expects the trend towards network surveillance to be strong, adoption of analog system will continue to grow as well, albeit slower than network surveillance deployments.

“While remote access, scalability, and distributed intelligence are the key drivers for network video surveillance, price, perceived reliability, and conservative nature of security teams to change and adopt new technologies will hinder adoption,” says Kumar.

Traditionally, cameras have been the point of entry for vendors into the market; subsequently their offerings include DVRs, NVRs, encoders, and software, together with switchers and multiplexers.

Increasingly, due to the emergence of network surveillance solutions, there is an effort from vendors to approach the surveillance solution from the NVR or DVR front, by offering better management software, virtual matrix systems and video content analytics as a solution package.

As traction for network video surveillance picks up in Asia Pacific, providing complete end-to-end surveillance solutions is expected to become a key to succeed in the market.

Computer Security Asia, Networkbased, Shift, Surveillance, Toward, Understanding, Video