An organisation who wish to make significant business changes often face a situation where the strategic objective may be clear (for example enter a new market or integrate upstream or downstream in their supply chain or implement a new business system), but the implications at the detail level is a source of confusion and argument. There may, for example, be differences of opinion in different parts of the organisation as to which business processes would have to change to achieve the strategic objective; there may be disagreements on the specifics of such required changes, and there may indeed be plans afoot to implement changes independently and in a haphazard fashion; which will at best lead to wasted effort and at worst will lead to misalignment and even paralysis.
iPlan regularly create a Business Process Blueprint for a client wishing to formalise a common vision of the way that the business intend to function in the future. It is a "To-Be" blueprint rather than a description of current processes; the business process equivalent of ensuring agreement on the plans for a building before construction starts. The Business Process Blueprint describe how the business will conduct its affairs when the change is achieved. It is expressed in terms of specific business processes such as procurement, planning, costing, distribution and so forth. For each business process, the methods and techniques are described in terms of the sequence of events and the business rules that will apply, the proposed organisational responsibilities of the people involved are mapped, and the data and system functionality required to support this process is identified. |
Implementation of a new business system, often consisting of an ERP platform with customisation and add-on software to provide for specific needs, is a huge change project for any organisation. There are usually compelling reasons for launching the implementation project, but there are also considerable risks and the costs run in the millions.
iPlan has a proud reputation with many clients whom we served as their professional Project Managers for new business system implementations. In this role, we frequently first develop a Business Process Blueprint to establish the requirements that the new system must meet, then we manage a software selection process (against the Blueprint specifications), and then we manage the implementation of the selected system - possibly with add-on applications, bespoke development and integration of them all. On behalf of our cliente manage the project team that may consist of client personnel assigned to the project, iPlan engineers, financial experts and IT specialists, and third party service providers.
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The magnitude of the risks, the costs and the lengthy time-line when an organisation is considering a major change which simultaneously requires new systems, reorganising people and re-designing business processes sometimes make it difficult to justify a "leap of faith" decision to go ahead.
iPlan have enabled many executive teams to make rational go /no-go decisions by building for our client a high-level, scaled-down version of the intended solution. We rapidly classify the organisation's business processes into those that are fairly standard and those that are unique. Standard processes (for example: accounts payable is usually much the same process in very different organisations) should be run on standard systems and follow industry best practices; there is little risk and the cost/benefit considerations are favourable. Unique processes by definition do not follow best practices and therefore require customisation, modification and custom-built systems. A proof-of-concept model demonstrate the magnitude of the latter versus the former, identify how the unique processes requirements will be addressed, and motivate appropriate decisions, budgets and time lines. |
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