Bussiness point of view in a master data governance project

Lidl stopped a 500-million-euro SAP project

You probably have heard or read about this story almost 3 years ago. Lidl stated that the strategic objectives originally defined for this project could not be achieved without spending more than originally wanted. So, they stopped the project.

In an article from Lemagit (1), Derek Prior, a former SAP analyst at Gartner, explained that a common factor for many companies that have not benefited from an SAP project is that they cannot match the implementation with their business needs.

"Business is not involved enough in this kind of project," he said. "They often haven't chosen the right people to evaluate operational results, and the upstream business analysis is left aside.”

According to PMI (Project Management Institute), projects most commonly fail because there is a lack of attention and effort being applied to seven project performance factors (2). To make a project successful, a clear link between the project and the organization's key strategic practices needs to be established. From a project point of view, the project plan needs to cover the planned delivery, the required business change, and the means of benefit realization.

Demonstrate benefit realization

According to Ivy Exec’s top executive coach, Dr. Susan Bernstein, the 5 key business drivers that leaders focus on the most are as follows (3):

• Profitability: are we continuously driving revenue up and costs down?
• Productivity: are we producing our goods and services in a way that is ever-more efficient and effective?
• Time to market: are we moving from concept to sale fast enough to keep a competitive edge?
• Customer satisfaction: are we making our customers happy enough to become and remain loyal fans?
• Stakeholder Impact: are we performing in a way that benefits stakeholders at all levels?

Consider the Master Data Governance project within your company: what key business drivers are impacted by implementing SAP MDG?

When doing a SAP MDG project, emphasize the measurable effect it will have on profitability, productivity, time to market, customer satisfaction or stakeholder impact. That’s what leaders really care about — and that’s how to position MDG as a strategic initiative within the company. And it drives the project performance, acceptance, and success rate.

The workshop approach

The Idea Generation workshop, as described by Franco London, is a good approach to discover the strategic objectives of the company, the business needs, and the problems business departments currently run into.

As shown in the scheme below, the workshop consists of 3 main phases: divergent thinking, the turning point and convergent thinking (4).

During the divergent phase you’re in classic ‘brainstorming’ mode. The emphasis is on generating a high volume of fresh new ideas. People capture ideas individually on post-its. Then, after the individual ‘brain bank’, the emphasis is very much on forcing and encouraging further lateral connections.

During the turning point, people ‘spot ideas with most potential’. In this part of the session, group and cluster these ideas into similar ‘themes’ to make sense of them.

During the convergent phase, the focus is making ideas more tangible and concrete.

During the divergent phase you’re in classic ‘brainstorming’ mode. The emphasis is on generating a high volume of fresh new ideas. People capture ideas individually on post-its. Then, after the individual ‘brain bank’, the emphasis is very much on forcing and encouraging further lateral connections.

During the turning point, people ‘spot ideas with most potential’. In this part of the session, group and cluster these ideas into similar ‘themes’ to make sense of them.

During the convergent phase, the focus is making ideas more tangible and concrete.