Griffin Ross

Ok, I give up, what does winners vs. losers mean with respect to SAP implementations?

Griffin, a study revealed a bimodal distribution with regard to the degree of implementation success: the groups were entitled winners and losers. There was one differentiating element between winners vs losers. Losers viewed an SAP project as a technology driven project, that it was all about implementing new tech. Winners understood that it was about changing processes and that technology merely enabled to ability to create saner and better company processes.

Kris Wilson's Questions

Why does Alan prefer "copy intelligently" vs. "copy exactly"?

We’ve seen a number of failed projects in which companies ape other companies, but the settings are incompatible. It’s like when a hospital uncritically accepts the QA processes performed by top manufacturing settings. It doesn’t exactly fit and for a good reason; there has been some adaptation to producing widgets not for healing humans.

In doing the automation side, I can recount the story of a biotech that tried to implement the ERP system that worked so well for a large lumber company. The ERP was a developed in house at the lumber company. It didn’t work.

We should look at these excellent examples and then adapt it to fit the situation. We can always learn and “copy”, but we must adapt.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of user-developed versus IS-developed apps?

Check the slides on the Grandma Studor’s (Freytag) case! It’s there!

Should an MIS dept audit every process and supporting application? How do you decide which ones to target?

At anything but a small company, there are too many processes to continually track. The MIS group should periodically review the processes that support the company critical success factors.