Upgrading Systems Infrastructure with Minimal Business Interruption

The challenge the company faced was how to do this while minimizing business disruption and ensuring optimal performance from day one by employees in the critical business functions of purchasing, finance, order fulfillment, manufacturing and facilities management. The company chose to partner with Accenture to meet this challenge.

Accenture led the efforts during planning, design and implementation. A comprehensive "business readiness" program, which included change management, training, communications and executive sponsorship and alignment, was put in place. The months of hard work by the technical and business readiness teams paid off, as the business operated smoothly with minimal disruption to operations, to users or to customers.

As business-critical ERP systems age, they can eventually threaten the ability of companies to achieve high performance. That was the challenge faced by one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. Its financial, operations and commercial technology infrastructure—running SAP version R/2—had aged to the point where it was impeding the company in a number of areas.

The company had grown through a series of recent acquisitions, yet the mix of systems was making post-merger integration difficult. As the date approached when SAP would cease technical support for the older R/2 applications, the prospect of supporting these systems "solo" was of increasing concern. The company also faced regulatory issues: complying with FDA "computer system validation" procedures for pharmaceutical companies would be difficult, given the age and complexity of the technology environment. Finally, there were also data quality problems.

By revitalizing its systems infrastructure, the company believed it could quicken its pace toward high performance. It could increase employee satisfaction, improve business performance and position the company for even greater growth with better profitability and lower overhead. The company's major challenge: how to upgrade its enterprise system to SAP R/3 and integrate an Ariba procurement system, while minimizing business disruption and ensuring optimal performance from day one by employees in the critical business functions of purchasing, finance, order fulfillment, manufacturing and facilities management. People using applications in these areas processed upwards of $50 million in transactions each day; even a single day of interrupted service would have serious implications for the company's cash flow.

To make it all happen, the company turned to Accenture, a close partner for over 10 years on a series of strategic and technology initiatives. Accenture was awarded the project in a competitive bid.

Accenture first worked with the company to outline the benefits from the project:

• Enhanced business insight to support decision making and setting the company's strategic direction.
  
  
• Streamlined processes to comply with regulatory requirements.
  
  
• More efficient partnering with suppliers and providers.
  
  
• Increased nimbleness and flexibility with a more efficient and comprehensive ERP system.
  
  
• Significant savings through new procurement systems and vendor consolidation.

Accenture led the efforts during planning, design and implementation. Workforce enablement was one important key to the project's success. For the system upgrade to have maximum business impact, company executives needed to sponsor and encourage the changes resulting from the program; the business users had to be able to perform the new processes; and workers needed to be adept at using the new tools at their disposal. Accordingly, Accenture instituted a comprehensive "business readiness" program, led by experienced resources from Accenture's Human Performance practice and Accenture Learning BPO Services.

The program included change management, training, communications and executive sponsorship and alignment. Thanks to these efforts focused on the human performance dimensions of the project, users understood their new roles and were able to use the system with minimal disruption. The project team also saw a steady increase in buy-in from executive sponsors, who eventually held regular meetings to track progress and contribute to the project's success.

For the training aspects of the business readiness program, the team leveraged the deep instructional design expertise of Accenture Learning BPO Services, delivered through the Accenture Delivery Center network. By capitalizing on the content development center—and its proven infrastructure, techniques and track record—the company could deliver training with a greater impact on performance, with less risk and cost. The training program included computer-based training modules for aspects of the SAP and Ariba capabilities. The classroom-based training delivered by Accenture for a disparate group of users received some of the highest satisfaction scores that the client had experienced.

To further ensure optimal performance by system users, the business readiness team created an online quick reference resource using a tool closely aligned with SAP, to enable users to receive context-specific support as they performed the new processes in SAP R/3. The business readiness team also handled the security specifications for each user. The team defined the security levels necessary for each role, which were then implemented by the technical team. This approach enabled users to perform effectively on day one without delays or problems involving security levels and protocols.

Pharmaceutical company executives and the joint client/Accenture team looked eagerly to the cutover date—when the company locations implementing the systems would switch to the new SAP R/3 system and Ariba applications. Thanks to a rigorous testing phase, and to a test run of the cutover phase—which went off with great success—the team was confident they were ready.

In October 2004 the new system went live. The months of hard work by the technical and business readiness teams paid off, as the business operated smoothly with minimal disruption to operations, to users or to customers. Thanks to programs in change management, learning and communications, the company experienced high levels of performance from users on day one.

Working together, the experienced Accenture and client team created for this company the means to excel immediately, and then to achieve high performance in the long run: a package of targeted quantifiable benefits totaling nearly $200 million over five years.