Survey Results: What are the Major Elements of a Successful Global ERP Business Process Transformation?

It is 1 year after the implementation of a successful global ERP business process transformation. Why was it so successful? Please rank the following elements that led to the success from 10-1, 10 being most important and 1 being least important.

1. Strong executive support 6.94 / 10
2. Successfully managed the transition and change 6.32 / 10
3. Effective communications and training 6.12 / 10
4. Allocated adequate resources to successfully manage the change 5.68 / 10
5. Significantly streamlined policies and procedures 5.38 / 10
6. Global representation in the entire process 5.29 / 10
7. Conducted a detailed global change impact assessment 5.00 / 10
8. Let go of old ways and processes 4.88 / 10
9. Became more strategic through creative use of the ERP system 4.79 / 10
10. Identified industry best practices and set top-tier goals 4.59 / 10

2. What else did we do that played an important role in our success?

• High level of involvement of partners (software, consulting, stakeholders)
• If the successful global business process transformation follows the outline below, all other ranking of priorities will fall into place. The organizational change management, data, aligned best practice processes, and measurement criteria eliminated the constraints of an unsuccessfully delivered solution.
  1) Organizational Change Management
  2) Data
  3) Best practices
  4) Key performance indicators to measure success
• We made sure that our measurement & reward systems were in alignment with the newly desired results.
• Mentoring and use of SME within the organization
• Attainable goals, established process for identifying and resolving risks/issues, and strong project management
• Local change impact assesment
• Super Users as ambassadors
• Live or die strategic approach to the global process implementation
• Ensuring transformation solutions are implementable and sustainable
• Strong cascading managerial support, having change agents strategically placed and prepared, having two way communication vehicles, a reinforcement strategy to ensure desired behaviors are multiplied, and getting employees at all levels help to design the change details.
• Produced value for impacted employees: "easier to do my job," "can do things that I could not do before."
• Won support at ALL key levels:- Executive- Middle management/functional leaders- Front-line workers/supervisors
• The overall Strategic alignment and clarity of objectives why a ERP based transformation is required in the first place.
• We also assigned sponsors to ensure that each of the industry best practices and top-tier goals was given an appropriate level of focus before, during and after the implementation.
  Prepared very good plan of whole transition. All major risks were identified, analyzed and mitigated.
• Leadership, communications, training, and transition are the key elements. The other items you have listed are from a business perspective. The question is...are you looking at it from a people transition to the system or the business (ROI) perspective. I look at it from the people transitioning. Ideally...you should achieve both, but two very differert focuses.
• Involve mid-managers
• Addressed employee organizational readiness thru development of action plans
• Got the business heavily involved early on.
• Strong dislike of the current system.
• Phase the implementation, don't try to do too much at once, don't under estimate people's need to understand the new way.
• Get benefit from all of the data and analytics.
• Simple clear messages, mantained constancy of purpose, rewarded the right behaviours
• Celebrated the successes.
• Created early wins and communicated success.

Survey Participants: There were 34 global participants in the survey
Survey Elements: A group of 12 Global Change Agents developed the survey elments.
The survey was posted on the following eight Discussion Boards: Organizational Change Network, Network of Organizational Change Managers, Innovative Leadership & Change Management Expert Innovators Network, Change Agents, SAP/ERP Training & Change Practitioners, Organizational Change Practitioners, Organization Development Network, Change Consulting
Survey close date: November 9, 2008
Conducted by: Jim Markowsky, President, X-Factor Solutions