Rolls Royce's ERP Implementation

TM 1 ENTERPRISE SYSTEM

 Kelas: LH11

Case 1 : Roll Royce's ERP implementation

 Nama Kelompok 2: 

- Kevin Alexander 1801374412

- Imelda Ellisa 1801440225

- Adinda Fitria Utami 1801433743

- Muhammad Syaogi Alaydroes 1801383133 

- Wita Narensa Anggraeni 1801410771

- Ruben Abram 1801377793

- Dony Maulana Iskandar 1801438006

- Berlino Rahmat Chendramata 1801427274

 

1a. What do you think of RR’s ERP implementation project?

Roll Royce’s ERP implementation project was well planned and covered the cultural, business as well as technical issue. The all rounded plan allowed Roll Royce to reduce the implementation risk to a minimum level and increase the chance of success.

For the project team aspect, Roll Royce’s project team included major stakeholder to collect the concern and knowledge from different aspect. Moreover, this can also reduce the resistance and increase the buy-in of the project. The team member was listed as below:

a.       Specialists from EDS: handle 90% of Roll Royce’s IT function

b.      SAP consultants: contribute SAP technical knowledge and SAP implementation knowhow

c.       Internal staff: contribute knowledge of cross-functional business relationship

d.      Subject matter experts: contribute experience of the old legacy systems

For the project implementation project, Roll Royce tackled the predictable problem by covering the below aspects:

1.      Cultural category: This category acted as the role of change management. Project team explained the benefit of implementing SAP to the company to reduce to resistance. Moreover, a clear structure of training system allowed project team deliver SAP knowledge to each level of users.

2.      Business category: This category handled the business process reengineering. Business team not only identified the different between existing business processes and the SAP standard process, but also illustrated the step by step changing approach to the Roll Royce’s employee to support the existing business processes and the new business processes.

3.      Technical category: This category handled the data integration issue. Without conduct a data cleansing process, the data from old legacy system cannot extract, transform and load to the SAP/R3 system. 

1b. Did they select the right implementation strategy?

Yes, Roll Royce correctly applied a step by step implementation approach instead of a big-band approach. Roll Royce SAP project included three phases and they were implemented in sequence to reduce the risk and cost of failure.

According to Stanley (1998), applied a step-by-step approach can allow Roll Royce to validate the test data and the data from old legacy system before loading to SAP R/3 system. Moreover, it can reduce the down time of the legacy system. The most important benefit is allowing the new system to phase in step by step without hurting the old legacy system and daily business process.

2. Discuss the critical success factors of RR’s implementation strategy and the role of SMEs in the Project.

Critical success factors are the major elements that need to fulfill to successfully implement the project. Organizational resistance to change is one of the critical successful factors. It measures about the acceptance level of the Roll Royce’s employee toward the SAP R/3 implementation project. Existing Roll Royce’s employee with sound technical knowledge and higher willingness to learn and change can reduce the resistance to this critical success factor. In contrast, if the employee predicts the SAP will change the existing business process dramatically without generating any significant benefit or affecting employee’s position, a high level of resistance can be generated. In addition, RR internal staff will generate a high level of resistance if the new SAP system cannot fulfill the current business processes.

“Go Live” is another critical success factor. No matter how detail the project plan, the practical implementation plan (Go Live) is the critical step to turn paper work to real work. RR’s two waves implementation approach provide a higher opportunity of success.

The role of SME was to provide knowledge of the current business processes of different functions and different business units. SME ensured SAP project team can fully understand and apply correct modifications to the existing business processes. Moreover, SME supported the change management by providing training towards different operational business units to reduce the resistance and uncertain of the project.

3. What advice can you give to RR’s technical team on their approach of migrating legacy system with the SAP software?

Roll Royce reduced the implementation cost by modifying the current business processes to fit in the SAP best practice. However, Roll Royce is one of the giants in engineering industry which contains different business needs and different business competitive advantages with competitors. The highly standardized business process may help the Roll Royce to reduce running cost and increase the production efficient. However, the research and development department of Roll Royce requires a higher freedom to generate high quality idea. Thus, Roll Royce is recommended to review the R&D system of SAP before migrating existing legacy system. The SAP R/3 should provide enough data and freedom for R&D department to generate insight without affecting the integration of the whole organization.