Put the SAP Bunny back in the box

I had a video conf with a CIO struggling to land his global SAP programme

Q. How would I regain control

I used one of my favourite film SAP delivery analogy's, Con Air, a film about a group of prisoners that take control of their prison plane and hope to land it on the Vegas strip.

For me Con Air is your classic chaotic SAP programme, a cast of contractors and SIs battling against the guards (business), to land the plane, on budget and on time with numerous changes to the required outcomes as the film ticks over.

The plane had to be gutted mid air, everything including bodies was thrown out the back to keep the plane airborne, so that they could crash land on to the strip. Similar to how many SAP programmes limp to go live as a much reduced minimum viable product MPV.

So back to the bunny, a famous scene within the move, when events are about to spin out of control, similar to a SAP programme starting to wobble as risk after risk, dependency after dependency start to collide with devastating impact.

Internal and external reputational Damage, reduced benefits, possible hit on liquidity and EBIDTA.

So to answer the question "how do you gain control " ? 70% of SAP programmes crash and a few burn....

Data Data Data - not migrated but delivery data

All ERP programmes share a codified set of deliverables, the codified rules (fractals) can be expressed as metrics, each set of metrics is surrounded by delivery meta data.

I can develop and track a critical path within weeks and put in the controls, analytics and counter measures to land your burning SAP programme.

I'll mould the programme into one team, manage the SI, IT and business obligations, dependencies and risks. Focusing upon evangelising the final operating model product that is SAP.

I have to give credit to Axon back in the early noughties, their implementation methodology and tooling (APSE) was ahead of its time, I can remember sitting in Programme leadership meetings where the focus was upon the critical path and supporting burn downs, delay was never an option.

The trick is to define a detailed total holistic view of the delivery and to spot and mitigate the risks before they contaminate the delivery. Going back to the fractals I see the same failure points time and time again so the identification of risk and mitigation becomes a real enabling factor.

People will say doesn't SAP Activate do all of the above and the answer is no, but its still part of the bigger solution in terms of getting the metrics and tracking them.

I think there is a need for a new Axon, an SI that is objective and focuses on the total Transformation undertaking, that will help the client move from strategy through to delivery and help the customer fully understand their obligations to enable huge business value through the adoption of a SAP operating model.

Watch this space !