Large Utility Success Story

The Client

The client is a large public utility based in the southwest.  They selected SAP as their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system of choice to replace their finance, supply chain, and human resources legacy systems.  The project is estimated to cost more than $100 million (internal and external costs) and last about 5 years.

The Project

The client had initially engaged MSS to help select a systems integration vendor (read about that project here). Impressed with MSS’ willingness to go above and beyond, the client decided to simultaneously engage MSS on the Business Process Management (BPM) phase as well.  The BPM project included conducting pre-implementation business process mapping to inventory the processes and systems that would be impacted by the implementation of the - ERP system.

“Our job in the BPM phase was to map the processes – to paint a picture of the current state of the client’s processes and related systems,” explained MSS Consulting Manager Chad Nelson.  “That is critical because the client needs to understand where they are today in order to better understand where they need to go.  The effort helped the client uncover several unforeseen pain points to be addressed during the future state process mapping.”

Consulting Manager Shirley Duran added, “We helped the HR groups identify their processes, identify inefficiencies, and really think about how they would design a system for their own needs.  We then aggregated our findings to create a process map, and made recommendations about the process issues that should be addressed by the new ERP system.”

Focusing on an enterprise-wide perspective of business processes, MSS:

• Identified and defined enterprise-level end-to-end processes
• Identified how the finance, supply chain, and human resources map to the end-to-end processes
• Documented information elements, integration points, and process requirements
• Identified process improvements and opportunities (pain points)

The Challenge(s)

When reviewing the client’s business processes, we realized that there was unorganized and in many cases non-existent “as is” process documentation across the finance, supply chain, and human resources functions.  Yet to be adequately prepared for the future-state SAP implementation – which would dramatically impact processes across those three functions – the client needed to understand the current state of their processes, where gaps existed, who the stakeholders and subject matter experts were, and the impact to the processes across the enterprise.

The MSS Advantage

• By identifying the right problems for the client, MSS was able to help the organization clearly define the criteria needed to address all of the process requirements
• Doing whatever it takes to meet the client’s need, MSS built additional documentation – a transition document and summary document that outlined key risks and recommendations
• Never afraid to try anything new, MSS employed an approach to focus purely on the most relevant information necessary to support the future state.  Instead of mapping the entire workflow diagrams, we created SIPOC communication models to detail the process requirements (inputs, outputs, and upstream/downstream stakeholders).

Learn more

• About Shirley Duran, Consulting Manager
• About MSS Operational Excellence