Deploying IT resources (MIS 533)

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Deploying IT resources(MIS 533)

• MBS in Management Information Systems and
  Managerial Accounting Systems
• (2006 / 2007)

Fergal Carton Business Information Systems
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Last week

• Single instance
• Zara example
• Client server application vs. web application
• Drivers towards a networked architecture
• Hardware performance
• Network capacity
• Security
• Cisco handout
• Research on Cisco ERP

3
This week

• Team creation
• ERP support post go-live
• Requirements analysis
• Projects issues
• Resources
• Data

4
Team creation

• Multi-disciplinary
• Full time
• Decision making power
• Budget
• Representative team leads
• Balance between allegiance to team and to area of
  competence
• Team spirit
• Team awareness
• Must have support from organisation

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Team Characteristics

• Typical size 25 to 60 FTE
• Team leads 10 to 20
• Functional area experts
• Special roles
• Project manager
• Integration manager
• Data conversion and migration
• Training manager
• Hardware / IT specialist
• Platform expert
• Communication about project (internal external)

6
Collecting requirements

• Interviews with key individuals
• Observation of activities
• Consultation of documentation
• Surveys
• Targets
• Staff
• Suppliers
• Customers
• Other constituencies when needed (eg vendors)

As-Is New requirements
Brown papers
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What can go wrong data

• Data not available
• feature activated from implementation onwards
• Massive manual data entry (?)
• Eg different account structure
• Incomplete data
• Some fields are missing
• Inconsistent data (eg engineering vs accounts)
• Wrong level of granularity
• Data not clean - incorrect
• Most new system requires changes due to their
  different data structure / activity system

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Resources Technical (data)

• Data clean-up team
• Data conversion team
• Data conversion programmer
• Legacy data team
• Data quality testing and maintenance

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What is the common data model?

• Products
• Marketing
• Products for Sales orders
• Inventory availability for commit dates
• Up to date prices
• Production planning
• Logisitics and distribution
• Customers
• Marketing
• Sales orders
• Logisitics and distribution
• Money
• Invoicing
• Revenue reporting
• Cost forecasting and control

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Hardwiring business processes

• Human decisions replaced by data and interfaces
• An approved sales order triggers the creation of
  an invoice (running Accounts Receivable
  interface)
• Business processes management by exception
• Controlling AR interface error report
• Pushing fix back to point of data entry,
  re-running interface

Increased focus on data!
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Data issues

• Getting and maintaining clean data
• When creating a new customer, who has control?
• 42 occurrences of Siemens in your customer
  database, what do you do?
• Customers exist in ERP core database, but also in
  several legacy systems. How do you make sure they
  are in synch?

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Data cleaning must address

• Different department record same info under
  different codes
• Multiple records of same company (under different
  names)
• Fields missing in input tables (eg a/c )
• Different depts. Record different addresses for
  same customer
• Use of different units for time periods

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Data Upload

• Several rounds
• Trials
• Static data
• Open items
• Dynamic data - transactions
• Balances
• Staging areas
• Local initially
• Then central area
• Upload into live system
• Specific predefined sequence (RDB)
• Extract, translate, load
• Rental of platform specific tools from vendor

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Database issues

• Guaranteeing high availability
• How often should Test be refreshed?
• How many environments should I have
• Test
• Production
• Development
• Training
• Business Simulation
• If I implement a change to Production, do I need
  to implement the same change across all
  environments?
• 20 programmers developing / testing new code
  every day how do I track releases to production?

JB McCarthy Testing on live system
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Project issues resources

• Availability of team members / users
• Decision making processes
• Developing workarounds
• Timeline too tight to allow resolution of issues
• Massive learning curve for team
• Expectation management
• Retaining ownership of process related decisions

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Resources Technical (IT ops)

• Database administrator
• Systems administrator
• Operators core apps
• Server operators
• Storage technicians
• HelpDesk

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Project handover to HelpDesk

• Prior to go-live, implement procedures for
• Logging calls such that it will be routed to the
  right person and tracked, reported on and
  escalated
• Training for HelpDesk to be able to ask the right
  questions concering an application issue
• Troubleshooting application issues to be able to
  deal with simple fixes
• Ongoing consultation with application team
  regarding new functionality being rolled out,
  common errors, planned outages,

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Systems admin issues

• Ensuring system access for users
• New users
• Changes to existing profiles
• System downtime for maintenance
• Forcing users out of system
• Tracking source of corrupt data to user profile

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HelpDesk issues

• Calls arriving at HelpDesk are either
• Forgotten password
• New user
• Changes to user profile
• Printing problems
• Connectivity problems
• Response time problems
• System crashes
• System error messages
• PC problems
• I need more training

20
HelpDesk issues

• or
• Functionality questions (how do I transact an
  invoice?)
• Process questions (when should I post to GL?)
• Reporting (I need a revenue report)

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Post Go Live

• Team is disbanded
• Back into business
• Promoted
• Next wave of roll out
• Structure is permanently altered eg shared
  services
• ERP team put in place
• Data experts / maintenance
• Application experts on-going developments and
  fixes
• Platform experts uptime
• Business analysts look to future releases and
  future requirements
• Typical size 20 /25 staff full time for a
  multinational
• Various names used eg knowledge centre

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Post Go Live

• Yes, but the point Im making at the moment, is
  that the solutions to the problems we have right
  now is for the business to change, for us to
  change, not for IT to put fixes in place thats
  not always feasible because it impacts your
  customer, it impacts yourself, and its not
  taking into account really whats taking so long.

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Post Go Live

• The technical support offsite is atrocious. We
  are very very disappointed with that.
• Since the core team moved away, and since the
  next wave started for SAP implementation, they
  lost interest

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Post go-live example

• There was an awful lot of resources thrown at
  go-live, most of those resources were gone after
  go-live. Trying to get something fixed, it
  wouldnt happen.
• In order to actually utilize it in a way that
  actually improves our lot, took, is still taking,
  quite a long time, and if you cant do it
  yourself, its even worse, because you cant get
  IS available, at times to do the work.