g curve down and puts the right people in place ahead of time, ensuring that everyone involved is on the same page.
For the CBS market, the process is abbreviated. The CBS version combines some steps to provide a shorter, less-labor-intensive preliminary process for firms that must conserve work
er-hours spent on the job. The CBS implementation program assumes customers are too busy for a full system analysis.
But this does not mean that the CBS version is incomplete. ASAP can speed implementation, but no one should expect it to come without effort. "We include a questionnaire in the planning process," says Kay Anderson, SAP's director of field services. "With it we discovered that people were not defining their project requirements before they began. Without that, the whole project is shot."
One of the benefits of this program is that it not only plots a course before implementation, but it leaves customers with documentation of how their system works after they've gone live with the product. SAP's Bryan Plug believes six months is the average time to implementation, but he's seen one executed in 67 days. Jean Fulchino saw her company's implementation come off effectively. "I think some teams don't have the knowledge of how a business works," she explains. "We've managed the implementati
on well because we understand our own business needs."
This program is not a universal fix for implementation. It doesn't address reengineering issues, so companies coming from legacy systems need to address issues that this plan doesn't cover.
R3 ASAP
