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THE CHALLENGE

Anyone who has been through an ERP (enterprise resource planning) system rollout knows the process is extremely challenging – mostly because of how many dots need to be connected seamlessly. Now, imagine tackling those challenges through the earliest stages of a global pandemic (including team members AND consultants working virtually!) and it’s easy to understand why the Brandenburg team deserves a big congratulations for their recent successful SAP rollout in the early fall of 2020.

The site completed part of the SAP transformation in 2017/2018, but then hit the “pause” button on the full migration to the new system. But by 2020, the system was nearing its end-of-life, so “nice to have” quickly because “need to have.”

“The pandemic began while we were already in the planning stages, but we had to keep rolling,” said Lisa Cucino, Financial Planning & Analysis Manager. “And the stakes became even higher, because we need to be more flexible than ever before, while still delivering high quality and working safely – and we needed a system that would allow us to do that.”

THE APPROACH

“All of our data is intertwined in SAP, so it was critical to get input from all functions,” said Freddy Rivera-Diaz, Continuous Improvement Leader. “We had mapped out the system back in 2017/2018, but of course, we had a lot of work to do as a team to re-map to make sure the ‘go live’ was as smooth as possible.”

The team engaged site employees early in the process – including providing in-depth training on the new system and asking for feedback.

“Employees offered great suggestions for system improvements,” said Freddy. “As an example, the Micro team shared information about how we could tweak the system to better create the sample labels they use.”

“Even through the challenges of the pandemic, we knew it was critical to keep the collaboration going,” added Lisa. “We encouraged testers to TRY to make the system break or glitch, so that we could identify any defects before rollout. We had a daily check in with the team through the process – sometimes three times a day when it got closer – and everybody came prepared with their feedback and observations.”

THE RESULTS AND PATH FORWARD

The SAP integration was a project of countless successes, but here are a few highlighted accomplishments:

• Cleansed, transformed, loaded, and validated thousands of master data records – multiple times
• Loaded hundreds of sales orders and purchase orders – multiple times
• Executed 3000+ transactional steps in IT4 and UAT
• Personalized and validated 200+ training documents
• Executed hundreds of hours in end user training
• Identified and corrected 175+ post go live defects
• Introduced new functionality (Actual Costing, Sampling, Tolling, etc.)
• Implemented new technologies (Fiori, Embedded Analytics, and Adobe Forms)
• Successfully completed the first month end close on time!

Since then, the Brandenburg team has been reaping the benefits of the new SAP system.

“It’s a Windows-based system, which makes it a bit less intimidating than the former system,” said Lisa. “It also allows you to trace transactions better – saving time – and you can see data now in real-time, which is a huge benefit across the site.”

“Let’s face it,” added Lisa, “anything that makes life simpler these days is a big bonus!”

“The success of this project is just one of many wins from 2020 that highlighted what the Monument team is capable of,” said Rick Caines, Executive Consultant. “We saw this project through during an incredibly challenging time, but thanks to the team’s collaboration and flexibility through any hurdles we faced, we can now work together smarter and with more agility, transparency, and quality.”