Today, news about unsuccessful IT projects fills the headlines of IT and business publications. One of the main reasons for these failures can be that projects often emphasize the technology dimension, while the business and organizational dimension are not considered. The challenges of internationalization, competition, and cost pressures incurred by new business processes and changes in the organization can lead to friction and productivity loss. You can overcome these challenges with more efficient processes that will help your organization attain higher flexibility. 

In this article, we focus on aspects of an SAP CRM implementation in both IT and non-IT dimensions, evaluating and presenting success factors and lessons learned from various projects for your consideration.

The Problem Defined

Major challenges managements face when embarking on IT projects generally can be:

• Obtaining approval and funding
• Lack of engagement from the business in important activities such as requirements gathering, testing, and training
• The solution may not be fully used after implementation or does not meet “real” business needs

Management has the responsibility to ensure that IT programs such as SAP CRM are not simply set up from the bottom up by the IT department. To facilitate this, management should give precise direction, define goals, and be aware of the interdependencies between business, organizational, and IT requirements.

Our specific focus throughout this article is on the following pillars of a global SAP program:

• Business strategy
• Possible implementation scenarios
• Business considerations
• IT considerations
• Change management
• Financing
• Risk management

Business Strategy

The corporate IT landscape should support the company’s overall business strategy. Introducing a corporate IT template can have a major impact on the organization and the people involved, so there is often resistance to changes introduced by IT.

The leading way to address the fears that cause resistance may be to align the business strategy and IT’s expected benefits for introducing a global SAP program, and to help define the top business requirements likely to be supported by the executive board up front. The alignment of the program strategy with your organization’s vision, mission, and values can help you attain commitment from the organization.

Possible Implementation Scenarios

In principle, the implementation of an SAP CRM project can be possible in a big bang approach or a phased approach. The decision for the prevailing strategy may depend on your objectives, the specific situation your organization is in, and your organization’s capability to support a large transformation program.

The Big-Bang Approach

A big-bang approach describes an implementation strategy with a qualifying date when the changeover is made, and it has a large impact. This impact can be organizational, technical, or both. The “application big bang” occurs when SAP components are started at a qualifying date without limits. The biggest theoretical big bang would be a companywide start with components in one push. This is an immense task for the project itself.

The Phased Approach

Usually, a phased approach for an SAP program is suggested because it can have several advantages. Significantly, the scope of the individual phases is easier to manage. Short project cycles propose continuous improvement and progress, which helps to keep the project team motivated. For management, the phased approach can be an advantage because it offers better controllability and more manageable budgets. Decisions are adopted according to each phase’s results.

For a global SAP CRM program, a phased approach is employed for the release development and for the introduction to your organization. The main reason we advise this is because in our experience in IT over the past several years, we have seen most big bang project approaches fail. On the other hand, it is demonstrated that a phased approach offers the advantages of better stability, cost savings, risk minimization, and more manageable projects.

Business Considerations

As you define a strategy and communicate specific performance indicators to your organization, the next step should be to harmonize and standardize the processes. Alignment of processes can be one of the most challenging tasks you will face. Most stakeholders insist that their processes are individual and not comparable to other businesses’ or department’s processes. In our experience on past projects, we saw that when teams defined harmonized and standardized processes in workshops, they often find out that they have more commonality than initially assumed.

Reasons to undertake process harmonization and standardization can be to help:

• Find savings potentials
• Allow for overarching benchmarking and leading practice sharing
• Promote a common language and common understanding of processes within your organization
• Configuration and design of business-specific end-to-end processes

Corporate strategy also plays an important role in the discussion of harmonizing and standardizing processes. The overall strategy and monetary targets can only be achieved if each business unit commits to process alignment. If even one business unit refuses to cooperate, it may result in twice the costs for your organization thanks to double development time and missed synergies.

IT Considerations

For a global SAP CRM implementation, an important IT consideration is to set up an architecture that best supports the business and delivers of the IT solution. Projects that run over several years should not only meet today’s needs, but also the needs of many years from now. Important steps you should take include:

• Compile and evaluate your architecture scenarios
• Create IT governance to take a balanced and holistic view of the implementation
• Derive a target architecture (total landscape) with considerations for:
  • Relevant enterprise and business units
  • The software platform strategy
  • Cooperation across organizational borders
  • Flexibility for adjustment to changes of the organization
  • Technical restrictions and safety aspects

Change Management

The deployment of a global SAP CRM program can have a significant impact on all employees. They will be required to adapt to changed processes and behaviors and to use the new application. To build a positive climate for change, it is critical that people understand and support the reasons for the change and realize how they can personally benefit from it.

Change management helps to define learning objectives and the methods used to enable affected employees to work effectively in the changed environment. Individuals affected by the change should perceive a key executive endorsement of the change, and the endorsement should cascade down throughout the organization. Effective sponsorship can help minimize end user resistance and cynicism and increase acceptance throughout the program. People may adapt to change more quickly if they are involved in planning the effort and feel personally responsible for its success.

Financing

Budgeting a global SAP CRM program raises the question of who will finance the initiative. Usually, the business unit that requests SAP CRM would pay for its deployment, but because a global program is best introduced in a phased approach, it can be unreasonable for the early adopters alone to shoulder the burden of the initial development costs. Business units who will deploy the SAP CRM solution at a later phase may also realize its benefits and should share its costs.

The first item you should analyze when defining a financing model is the program scope. Trimming the scope to a reasonably limited range at the beginning of the project can make the program more affordable to all business units.

For most organizations, we suggest that you initially establish central funding for the implementation of core SAP CRM functionality. Such a process (i.e., getting approval for and establishing initial funding) can increase the chance that most business units will accept the solution. It can also decrease the time needed to blueprint and initially configure and build the global SAP CRM solution with central financial backing.

In the future, the business unit that is requesting a change should provide funding for developments. Indefinite central funding can result in an ever-growing functionality wish list. There will be motivation to streamline configuration and adhere to SAP standards only if financing is done out of the requesting business unit’s budget.

Risk Management

For a global SAP CRM program, risk management is a core business activity function with the goal of minimizing risks and increasing business value. Your organization should create transparency about risks throughout the program as a basis for decision making. Risk management is designed to help reduce reaction times and help your organization handle issues proactively, minimizing their impact and the likelihood of occurrence.

Takeaways

SAP CRM implementations are not new to anyone in the business world—what is new is the way in which companies are using SAP to help change their business in fundamental ways, as well as the speed at which they are doing so. These companies are relying heavily on efficient implementation strategies and technologies as they address new opportunities and bring value propositions to the front lines of the business. Considering all of the implementation dimensions described above will help determine the success of your next SAP CRM program.

Deloitte, its affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person or organization that relies on this publication. As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

Peter Grottendieck

Peter Grottendieck, Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP in Atlanta, Georgia, helps clients leverage IT as an enabler for mergers and acquisitions and restructuring using SAP technology. He has deep expertise in serving global clients, driving business transformations, creating enterprise value by focusing on improving standardization of processes and systems, and enabling an integrated and consolidated approach across organizations and locations. Peter has managed projects on five continents and is well versed with the cultural and technical challenges of large and complex transformation programs. He has an MBA from St. Gallen University in Switzerland.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.

Sharmila George

Sharmila George, Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP in Dallas, Texas, provides technology advisory and project-related services. In her 12 years of SAP experience, she has managed multi-cultural and continent-spanning teams during a wide range of assignments, from IT strategy to business process design, roll-out, and service delivery management. Sharmila has an MBA from Baylor University in Texas.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.