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Technology Stocks : SAP A.G. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keith Fauci who wrote (1480)	7/16/1998 8:40:00 PM
From: ioioioi	Respond to of 3424

Faster implementation of ERP from SAP. Faster ERP Rollouts -- Companies avoid pitfalls with focus, minimal software customization Rich Levin, Jennifer Mateyashuk, and Tom Stein Enterprise resource planning projects can take years and, if mishandled, can hurt a company's bottom line, as Snap-on Inc. learned when problems with a Baan installation contributed to its recent financial difficulties. Some companies are attempting to avoid ERP pitfalls through aggressive project management and minimal customization, both of which can also shorten implementation times. Morrison Knudsen Corp., a $1.6 billion engineering and construction firm in Boise, Idaho, is in the middle of rolling out Oracle Financials, and has set an ambitious 15-month time frame for completing the project. "It's a year 2000 replacement project, so it's fairly critical," says Jim House, director of IS for Morrison Knudsen. An earlier SAP project, implemented by a German consortium of which Morrison Knudsen is a partner, was also completed in 15 months. House says the key to success on that project was assembling a project team capable of making decisions and acting on them. "We didn't allow anyone on the implementation committee who couldn't make a decision," he says. Modem manufacturer Hayes Corp. enlisted AnswerThink Consulting Group in a $3 million project to implement Oracle applications. The companies completed an implementation in the United States in May, 14 months after they started. Hayes' facilities in London and Hong Kong will get the apps by year's end. Hayes attributes the fast turnaround to sticking to Oracle's framework. "The most important thing we decided when we started was to make minimal changes," says Marc Javadi, CIO of Hayes, in Norcross, Ga. "When companies start making too many changes to the framework, they run into a lot of problems." Hayes took what it calls a "big bang" approach to the implementation, emphasizing fast deployment with minimal testing. A more conservative approach, where legacy and new applications run in parallel, can add six months to the schedule and increase costs by up to 60%, says Jim Grebe, director of Oracle solutions for AnswerThink. The big-bang approach is faster-but riskier. To avoid problems, Hayes evaluated the Oracle applications in a production environment during an eight-week training program. Bioproducts Inc., a $100 million maker of animal foods and biological products, is 12 months into an implementation of Baan's ERP suite. The apps are live at two of the company's manufacturing plants, with three more to be added by October. "We reengineered our business to meet the product," says Mitch Styndl, MIS director at Bioproducts, in Fairlawn, Ohio. "We tried to do as little customization as possible." Last week, the Wolf Organization, a distributor of building materials in York, Pa., revealed plans to implement SAP's R/3 applications at 50 sites. Its timeframe: six months.