The success of any project lies not only in its accomplishments but also in the valuable lessons learned along the way. In this conversation between D4M and Raj, the conversation picks up from where it left off with Hyperscalers, and they reflect on their experience working with Volkswagen Truck and Business Company, where the implementation of AWS hosting and S/4HANA proved to be a resounding success.
Jean: Continuing where we left off about AWS Hyperscalers, do you have any other thoughts about this project, about cloud, AWS?
Raj: Yeah. Like every project, at the end, with Volkswagen Truck and Business Company we were very successful, no doubt. But like every other project we also did learn a few lessons and I would really like to share the benefits, what we got, and also the lessons learned as part of this project.
Raj: So one is, as I mentioned before, is regarding S/4HANA. The first thing in the Volkswagen Truck and Business Company we proved that S/4HANA is a feasible solution for them and it was able to address all their major concerns from a business process perspective. And so this was a great proof of concept and now they are extending this to other location. And in fact, one of the reasons from their point of view, they benefited in this one because they selected the right partner which is D4M. But now let me briefly tell you few lessons that we learned.
Raj: One thing is, we were trying our best to get the key users trained on S4 as soon as possible. So it’s one of the important lessons learned that we have to make sure all the key users that are dedicated for this project are at least exposed to S/4HANA concepts and they are trained to some extent on the basics of S/4HANA.
Raj: Now in addition to that, we started data cleansing as soon as possible. So that’s definitely something that I would recommend every project to go for to make sure that they start with the data cleansing. And data cleansing has to be done by the business key users so they have to start on that as soon as possible.
Raj: And, also make sure the key users – who are usually not only crucial for the project but also for the day-to-day operation – are backfilled with the right users. Because we don’t want to have a situation where a key user is involved in a project and get distracted by day-to-day operation.
Raj: So the key users have to be properly backfilled and also make sure that you take into account on change management. Because even though S/4HANA, for the most part can be as standard as possible, for business users there could be some impact on change management.
Raj: In particular, with the Fiori portal, we had some change management issues but then we were able to come out of it and became very successful in that. It’s extremely important with S/4HANA as there are going to be some changes in responsibility and the user roles. Make sure that you have a clear understanding of how the roles are going to change and have a clear-cut responsibility, metrics and segregation of duties, everything taken care of.
Raj: So that way there is no surprise. and there are no delays because of this. If we follow all these, the project will be successful.
Jean: These are points that I’m hearing more and more that I interview tech experts at D4M, especially the change in management one seems to be a big issue people keep bringing up.
Raj: Yes. Change management is something that we cannot overlook. And if you think that change management is not important, for many projects, you will be wrong. So please make sure you take into account change management and make sure that you include that in your overall planning.
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