How to select an integrator, coach, and mentor?

Integrator, coach, and mentor selection should follow a strict, compliant, and verifiable process.

The duration depends on the process and geographical scope. You should not spend more than 6 weeks to 3 months on integrator, coach, and mentor selection.

The 4-step process for integrator, coach, and mentor selection looks like this:

1. Requirements catalogue and longlist
2. RfI process and shortlist
3. RfP process, fit-gap analysis, and scenario modeling, including business case creation
4. Recommendation and decision

Followed by contract negotiation and signature.

What are best practices?

The shortlist should not contain more than 4 integrators.

Planning enough time to work and align

• Which activities are performed by the integrator/ coach/ mentor/ your company
• Understanding efforts (customizing, development etc.)
• Project planning with the integrator/ coach/ mentor
• Business case
• Incorporating all relevant stakeholders, understanding the results and the recommendation, having all required information aligned prior to the final decision meeting

How we can help

• Adhering to a strict, compliant, and verifiable process
• Providing an integrator, coach, and mentor repository to select from which integrators, coaches, and mentors are selected, but not defined from scratch
• Providing accelerators and templates, e.g., RfI and RfP documents, business case, and many more that need to be adapted, but not created from scratch

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, but with us you will be faster, more effective, and more cost-effective.

How to select a software?

Software selection should follow a strict, compliant, and verifiable process.

The duration depends on the process, system, and geographical scope. You should not spend more than 6 weeks to 3 months on software selection.

The 4-step process for software selection looks like this:

1. Business requirements catalogue and longlist
2. RfI process and shorlist
3. RfP process, fit-gap analysis, and scenario modeling, including business case creation
4. Recommendation and decision

Followed by contract negotiation and signature.

What are best practices?

The business requirements catalog should contain

• Legal and regulatory requirements, e.g., E-Invoicing, DORA in terms of Financial Services,
• Requirements that are mapped differently in different software packages.

Banal requirements, such as it must be possible to create a customer, should not be considered.

The shortlist should not contain more than 4 providers.

The scenarios should not be modeled based on more than 6 criteria, namely coverage of the required functionality, extensibility, integrability, costs, risks, and usability.

The business case should include benefits.

How we can help

• Adhering to a strict, compliant, and verifiable process
• Providing a requirements catalog with requirements, legal and regulatory specifications, from which requirements are selected, but not defined from scratch
• Providing accelerators and templates, e.g., RfI and RfP documents, business case, and many more that need to be adapted, but not created from scratch
• Carrying out a fit-gap analysis
• Providing a benefits catalog from which the benefits are selected

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, but with us you will be faster, more effective, and more cost-effective.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 status management 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆?

𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵. Learn more here: ⬇️

2 weeks ago, we kicked-off our 6-week Program Management challenge. The first episode dealt with Program Planning. The second episode dealt with Status Management. Thanks to all participants, it was a lot of fun.

Join us next week. Episode 3 will be about Issue and Risk Management: https://lnkd.in/e4BJmmt3

📣 Our best practices from previous programs are:

1️⃣   A status meeting deals with understanding the high-level status of the program and its projects and being able to steer and guide them. It is not about having a coffee talk or discussing technical solutions.

2️⃣   Status reporting covers Progress Tracking Actual versus Plan, Budget Consumption Actual versus Plan, Time, Quality, Resources, Pulse, Scope, Issues and Risks, Escalations (alternatives with pros and cons and recommendation).

3️⃣   Status meetings take place on a regular basis same time, same venue. Never cancel a status meeting. Postpone status meetings only as exception.

4️⃣   Minutes should be created by the same person to guarantee consistency in writing and follow-up. Minutes should be distributed the same day and aligned within 2-3 days.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? Do you look for a PMO Support that knows best practice approaches, methods and tools and is able to orchestrate you and your integrator and making the program or project more successful? Send me a direct message (DM) to discuss the options.

#businesstransformation #programmanagement #statusmanagement #microsoftdynamics #saps4hana

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? Do you look for a PMO Support that knows best practice approaches, methods and tools and is able to orchestrate you and your integrator and making the program or project more successful? Send me a direct message (DM) to discuss the options.

#businesstransformation #programmanagement #programplanning #microsoftdynamics #saps4hana

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻? 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗘𝗧𝗟 (𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁, 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺, 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱) 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹. What are our recommendations? Learn more here: ⬇️

There are a lot of #ETL tools available on the market. But which one is the best?

Based upon our 20+ years’ experience in Business and IT Transformation projects we narrowed down the waste list of ETL tools to a limited set that fits the purpose for different requirements and/ or IT system landscapes and are user-friendly (from an IT perspective 😉).

Please find an extract from our list mentioned below:

📣 #AzureDataFactory in terms of #MicrosoftDynamics.

📣 #SalesforceDataLoader in terms of #Salesforce.

📣 #SNPCrystalBridge ® in terms of #SAP #S4HANA.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? Do you want to know which ETL tool is the best one for you? Send me a direct message (DM) to discuss the options.

#businesstransformation #azure #transformation #datamigration #Datenmigration

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆? 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝟱-𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀. Learn more here: ⬇️

Today we kick-off #datamigration and #datacleansing for our #RealEstate client. We start at a very early stage (design phase was approved last week) with sample records and will increase complexity and volume over time.

📣 My lessons learned from one of my previous projects are:

1️⃣   Start early. Data migration and cleansing cannot start too early.

2️⃣   Do not underestimate the time it takes to gather and upload data correctly.

3️⃣   Assign people to the tasks who are patient and pay close attention to detail.

4️⃣   Approach and planning are key – as always.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? Do you look for a PMO Support that knows best practice approaches, methods and tools and is able to orchestrate you and your integrator and making the program or project more successful? Send me a direct message (DM) to discuss the options.

#businesstransformation #sap #s4hana #microsoftdynamics #transformation #Datenmigration #Datenbereinigung

Make it work, make it great, make it stick is the smart Swedish approach for business transformations reducing the risk that they fail

I learned about this successful approach during the 3 years I worked in Sweden, and apply it to all projects that we support.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝘄𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀?

1️⃣   Make it work

✅ Reducing scope to the minimum that is required. You have great expectations when you start a program/ project. There is a business case, there are improvements that should have been done within the last years, but they have been postponed due to budget, time, resources or because of the business transformation ahead. Slice and dice it into digestible portions (releases). Realize the minimum with a first release.

✅ Working on the integrator relationship. You decided on an integrator. As in a marriage, the hard work comes after saying “yes”. You must communicate, discuss, come to joint decisions, sometimes compromises, and adjustments each day. This is applicable to all levels within the program/ project organization. You will be rewarded with a successful project as it is always the people who makes a project a success.

2️⃣   Make it great

✅ Reality checking business needs,
✅ Potentially adjusting the scope that did not went live with the first release.
✅ Realizing the outstanding scope with different releases.

3️⃣   Make it stick

✅ Making sure that

✅ The solution is used as it is supposed to be,
✅ Potential errors are solved in time,
✅ Training needs are analyzed, and delta trainings are performed on a regular basis,
✅ KPIs are monitored and reported on a regular basis
(e.g., guidelines and process adherence, data quality etc.)
✅ Data is maintained in a clean manner (no duplicates etc.), and
✅ Customizing of the solution is neither expanded exhaustively nor not documented properly.

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? Explore how we can help you: www.norda-advisory.com.

#businesstransformation #sap #s4hana #transformation #makeitwork #makeitgreat #makeitstick

What is the benefit of reducing list entries when moving to SAP S/4 Hana?

One of the biggest benefits and levers moving to SAPS4Hana is the reduction of listentries – independent whether you choose a Greenfield, Brownfield or SNP Group’s Bluefield™ approach.

This potential should be leveraged in any case following the maxims of structuredness, organization and tidiness to achieve the goals of easeofuse, easeofextension and transparency.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆?

List entries are related to drop-downs or value helps. This means fields a user has to select a value, and potentially has to scroll through an extensive list of entries.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀?

Amongst others typical examples comprise the following:

• Distribution channels
• Divisions
• Business partner roles (previously known as customer account types)
• Business partner functions (previously known as partner functions)
• Payment terms
• Technical object types (e.g., equipment types)
• Sales inquiry, quotation and/ or order types
• Price calculation schemes and condition types
• Invoice types
• Maintenance and/ or service notification and/ or order types
• And many more

What is the financial impact?

1. Reducing input time and incorrect entries and consequently process cost
2. Reducing SAP maintenance cost for the internal and/ or external IT team

What is the background?

Research shows that the human brain is able to process up to 6 alternatives correctly. As soon as this number is exceeded, the human brain struggles.

What are the consequences?

1. Longer input times (e.g., if you have a list of approx. 100 order types, it takes time for your staff to go through them and process the information),
2. Incorrect entries (e.g., the likelihood that your staff selects a wrong entry is quite high in this example which leads to wrong follow-up processes, cancellation of orders, and invoices, and newly created orders) or
3. Dummy entries (e.g., if there is a “general”, “dummy” or “other” option available, the likelihood is high that your staff selects this option).
4. Longer times for error analysis and solution extension due to unnecessary customizing entries resulting in untransparent processes in the system.

What are guiding principles?

1. Reducing list entries to the number of 6
   (FYI: I used 9 in previous years as my brain can remember “it should be a 1-digit number” which also worked very well for clients.)
2. Keeping the system clean and transparent by deleting unnecessary customizing

N.B.: There is also research on 4 and on 7 +/- 1 or 2 alternatives.

Putting it in a nutshell, the common nominator seems to be a 1-digit-number, and the consequent reduction of cost list entries will be beneficial in any case.

𝗗𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵?

Within the course of one of our current projects, we

1. Deleted 3.500 list entries, and
2. Achieved 6 list entries or less in 95% of the cases.

#businesstransformation #sap #s4hana #transformation

How to move to SAP S/4 HANA in a smart way?

Nowadays the professional discourse revolves around “How to move to SAP S/4 HANA in a smart way?”, no longer about “Should we move?” and “When to move?”. The last two questions were absolutely justified a few years ago when SAP S/4 HANA was at its starting point and entire areas, processes or functions were missing. But these are no longer valid questions and certainly not with the current releases in 2022.

How to identify a smart way moving to SAP S/4 HANA? Which building blocks should be dealt with?

1️⃣ Which approach should be chosen: Greenfield, Brownfield, or SNP Group’s Bluefield™ approach?

2️⃣ How does the timeline look like?

3️⃣ What kind of and how many internal and external resources do we need?

4️⃣ How do we engage and enable our internal resources?

5️⃣ Which services do we source from which partner?

6️⃣ How do we ensure that all parties and people work collaboratively together?

7️⃣ What are the benefits that can be leveraged?

8️⃣ How does the benefits-cost case look like?

This post will focus on the different approaches, additional posts will focus on the other topics.

Which approach to choose when moving to SAP S/4 HANA?

Many of our articles compare transformation to building a new home. However, the choice is more akin to being overall very happy with your existing home, but it needs some upgrades, or you are considering building a new one to be custom-made for you.

When moving from SAP ERP to S/4 HANA there are three possibilities at hand:

1️⃣ Taking the greenfield approach in which effectively a new system is set up. The new system is designed, customized, and developed and data are migrated in from the pre-existing system(s). In this case, you have a whole new house to move into and set up as you see fit.

2️⃣ Or taking the brownfield approach which primarily consists of migration. The system is emptied of data, technically upgraded and the data are migrated in again. In this scenario, you move out of your home completely for a little bit, including all of your belongs, while renovation takes place, and then move back in with a similar arrangement. Even in cases where a brownfield approach is chosen, there are some topics where no migration path is available. This means for specific processes or new functionalities (e.g., business partner), a greenfield approach is needed.

3️⃣ Or taking the SNP bluefield™ approach combines elements of the green- and brownfield approaches. It is supported by SNP’s CrystalBridge®.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches?

If you favor high security clearly a brown or Bluefield approach is the right choice as you don’t need a fallback solution. Your tried-and-true processes and functionalities are kept as they were. The changes can be performed worst case with workarounds for a reasonable timeframe. In the case of greenfield, there is no real fallback solution. It would mean rolling back to SAP ERP and then starting again as you need to move to S4 HANA. This is risky, potentially lengthens your time frame and has higher associated costs.

If you favor a high degree of standardization, clearly greenfield is the answer. By contrast, industry-specific processes may be covered with a lower degree of standardization in SNP bluefield™.

If you favor lower effort (regarding budget, resources, and timeline) brownfield is the answer; here again in the middle you will find SNP bluefield™ with somewhat higher effort than brownfield.

As you see SNP bluefield™ combines the best of both worlds, providing high security, medium standardization, and medium effort.

Do you face the same challenges? Find the best approach moving to SAP S/4 HANA with NORDA Advisory. Explore how we can help you: www.norda-advisory.com.

#businesstransformation #sap #s4hana #transformation

How to reengineer Business Processes effectively?

1️⃣ Benefiting from NORDA Advisory’s best-practice business process library consisting of 132 processes to jump-start process reengineering in a faster and more efficient way.

2️⃣ Defining the project scope by selecting the relevant scope from the 11 business scenarios and 132 business processes.

3️⃣ Identifying optimization potentials by presenting best-practice, typical optimization potentials, comparing as-is against best-practice.

4️⃣ Performing data analysis based upon CSV files from productive system(s) identifying optimization potentials.

5️⃣ Identifying optimization potentials by measuring wastes according to Lean principles.

6️⃣ Identifying gaps not complying with the law.

7️⃣Consolidating all optimization potentials, prioritizing, and categorizing them, and deciding follow-up steps.

8️⃣Resulting in reengineered end-to-end business processes as well as follow-up actions.

9️⃣Filing reengineered business processes, follow-up action list as well as documenting guidelines in a single source of truth.

🔟 Achieving the overall goal to reduce legal costs (Prozesskosten).

Do you face the same challenges?

Get in touch if you want to take the discussion on CRM, ERP, and HR business process reengineering to the next level. Please contact us via your preferred channel.

#bpm #businessprocess #businessprocessmanagement #businessprocessreengineering #processreengineering

Business requirements are usually used by different parties throughout program’s or project’s lifecycles.

When to use business requirements?

Business requirements are usually used for the following purposes:

• Solution selection,
• Process analysis
• Process design,
• Process reengineering and
• Testing.

How should the process of creating business requirement look like?

A holistic process creating business requirements covers the following phases:

1. Define and align business process scope

2. Define quality gates and quality criteria
3. Define and align create and change process for business requirements
4. Select business requirements tool
5. Create and manage business requirements
   following quality criteria and create and change processes

Best-practice is jump-starting business requirements creation based upon an existing business requirements catalogue, discussing the relevant business requirements, selecting, or deleting them from the catalogue, and adding a couple of industry- or company-specific business requirements.

This clearly leads to

• Increased quality,
• Faster process, and
• Less cost.

How to create business requirements?

A comprehensive business requirement is described in an understandable way. It explains in-depth what e.g., a solution is supposed to provide. It is described using the following information:

• Unique business requirements ID
• Global or local scope
• Functional or non-functional
• Dimension in case of non-functional (e.g., security, compliance, steering, warning, ease of use, user-experience, maintenance, adaption, extension, decision-support, growth)
• Business Scenario
• Business Process
• Required categories to analyze business requirements on a higher level than their description
• Comprehensive and understandable description
• Functionality in Use (yes or no)
• Priority (e.g., must have, should have, nice-to-have)
• Objective (e.g., increase revenue, reduce cost, increase efficiency)

How does an example look like how to do it and not to do it?

The following examples highlight how to and not to do it:

What happens if you do not create business requirements in a comprehensive and understandable way?

Sometimes people belonging to different parties only see the written business requirements at a certain point-in-time, but do not necessarily have the possibility to discuss them with the originating party. This might lead to misunderstandings as different people have different reference points. Even though when discussing business requirements for the first time, there might be different understandings, discussions about certain topics are always beneficial.

Occasionally business requirements are changed over time without using an audit-proof change process, even though the business requirements tool would support it.

Thus, it is essential creating business requirements in a comprehensive and understandable way from the very beginning and taking your time making sure that all parties have a mutual understanding about the contents.

At worst, the following problems might occur resulting from a lack in quality:

• Wrongly selected solution due to misleading results during fit-gap analysis
• Increased effort during testing
• Reduced business fit of the solution
• Reduced business acceptance
• Increased number of bugs in the productive system / “new” business requirements after go-live

Thus, it is clearly effective creating business requirements in a comprehensive and understandable way.

Ready to talk? Please contact us via your preferred channel.

#businessrequirement #businessrequirementcreating #businessrequirementdefinition #solutionselection #softwareselection