Corporate Strategy and KPI's

The next two or three posts are going to touch on business intelligence and business process management as they relate to ERP and training issues.

Folks who have attended my presentations about BI and assessing organizational readiness have heard me say, "Managers must dance to the corporate strategy and use metrics and business intelligence (BI) to guide them." To give this idea a more personal viewpoint, let's consider the following.

If my mission is to have a healthy existence and my strategy for accomplishing that is to eat properly, get appropriate rest, and exercise. I might want a collection of easy to read indicators, i.e., a dashboard, which contains metrics, such as those listed below, to guide me in measuring how well my strategy is working.

• Bar chart that indicates daily calories consumed, including monitoring of fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and protein percentages
• Line graph showing number of hours slept each evening
• Pie chart that illustrates hours of exercise each week, including percentage of cardio and strength building (I need both in varying percentages)
• Daily graphs showing:

walking distance covered over specific times

resting heart rate

active heart rate

blood pressure

An organization can (and I believe, should) follow the same approach. Sure it's easy to just follow the herd and use the key performance indicators (KPIs) that everyone else in the industry uses, in which case your organization will simply be one of many average competitors in your industry. To be a truly exceptional, and seriously competitive, organization, the KPIs used should be unique to your organization's strategy with metrics that ensure your organization is operating in alignment with its stated strategy and that the strategy is working.

Business intelligence software sales personnel may speak glowingly of the volumes of pre-built KPIs that come with their software or how simply their product can be installed and producing information for analysis. Use their pre-built KPIs and be one of the herd or strive to be the exceptional organization and engage in the hard work of developing KPIs that will guide your organization to alignment and excellence.

Calling All ERP Experts (both inhouse and consultants)!

Recently a colleague called me with a story involving a client.

It seems that a new client requested assistance with a problem regarding its ERP installation. My colleague, let’s say his name is Joe, charged two of his consultants with the assignment of preparing a detailed task list that would form the basis for a project plan. Their list was to be based upon the scope and statement of work provided by the client.

The consultants told Joe they had several questions to pose to the client before they could finish the plan. Joe went back to the client with the queries and received additional information regarding a hard deadline for the project’s completion. Joe cautioned the client about responding to the consultants’ questions, indicating that the aggressive deadline meant that answers to their questions had to be available within 24 hours or the deadline couldn’t be met.

Joe waited 24 hours for a response from the client, no e-mails and no phone calls. He sent an e-mail to the client contact reiterating the dwindling time available for the project and that the risk for timely completion had increased. Then 48 hours passed with no word; Joe sent another urgent e-mail. Then 72 hours passed with no word; Joe sent a more strongly worded e-mail.

Finally, the client responded, after a week had passed, with the necessary information, but there wasn’t enough time to complete the project by the hard deadline.

What would you advise Joe to do? I’ll let you know what I did next week.

What I Learned On My Vacation Away from the Office (DevLearn 2008 #3)

I left DevLearn 2008 on Friday and managed to take the weekend to spend with friends and family instead of working, which I usually do. The advantage to removing myself from work and work focussed topics is that I had time to reflect on the workshop and sessions I attended, as well as reflect on my experiences at DemoFest, which provided an enormous amount of food for thought. DemoFest was an incredible experience. I have not participated in anything like it before. The hall contained easily 20 tables maybe more, I'm not certain. On each table were computers with various kinds of online training samples that were created by elearning professionals, many of whom were employed by companies that wanted the content for compliance or skill development or technical training purposes.

One of the most sophisticated uses of elearning that I observed was designed to train salespeople in the pharma industry about compliance issues. The simulation had the learner "travel through" a week in the life of a pharmaceutical sales representative. It included typical received e-mails, conversations with physicians, managers, and co-workers. The level of detail and complexity of this training was impressive. It was very easy to gain a sense of the subtle and complicated ethical challenges that occur daily in this field of work. In addition, the learner was given the opportunity to experience the consequences of good and poor decision making. What became apparent to me as I watched this and other demonstrations and training samples at DemoFest was that enterprise software training as it is currently delivered through online channels IS BORING and nearly mind numbing.

I thought back to the classroom training I had observed over the years with enterprise software. One trainer, I recall, staged "Family Feud" contests to help students remember what they had learned during the sessions. Another trainer sang Mr. Rogers' "Welcome to the Neighborhood" with special lyrics talking about the enterprise software. I remember still another trainer letting her students make "wrong" decisions and choices with exercises and lab sessions in the classroom and use the consequences to teach them how to fix errors in the software system. Bottom line these gifted trainers had the ability to make learning about enterprise software - FUN!

Aside from one very savvy client, I haven't heard anyone in the enterprise software arena use the words "training" and "fun" together. The expectation is that a company's users are supposed to understand that this mission critical software is vital to the organization's existence, and that should be motivation enough to get them online or in the classroom to learn the new business processes and application mechanics. This is serious business and we are supposed to be serious about it, right?

The challenge is to find a means for creating online asynchronous training sessions that engage learners in a similar fashion as those gifted trainers without "breaking the project budget" for the implementation or upgrade.

If a plant manager could "take a walk through his day" with the new business processes and applications to get a better understanding of what he will be doing when the new enterprise software is "live," how well would he appreciate the changes? How well would he retain the information? How motivated might he be to change his behavior?

DevLearn 2008 #2

There is nothing like attending a conference and wishing that you could clone yourself!

Yesterday at DevLearn 2008 was like that for me and today's sessions look to be just as compelling. In the afternoon, I attended a session where the presenter discussed his view of training's purpose - to teach and embed behavior change. In addition, he discussed training in terms of a business function and a process. Then he continued his presentation by talking about why and how training efforts failed so miserably in fulfilling the promise of creating business value. He certainly started me thinking about all the times I've watched enterprise software implementations address the business process transformation and automation issues without the consideration that the education and training around that effort is also a process that must deliver business value.

Another presentation I attended was more a demonstration of various learning technology tools and how they are being used, very creatively, by the Department of Defense. I saw a field treatment guide for a non-medical soldier on an iPod. Literally all the soldier had to do was look at the image of a clothed body on the screen and touch the portion were an injury occurred. The iPod application launched a series of questions that, when answered, guided the soldier to a solution for addressing the problem in the field until medical assistance could be found, simply amazing!

Finally, some of you who read this blog know that I wrote a white paper earlier this year about rapid elearning development tools and their appropriate use in enterprise software implementations and upgrades. Many of the tools that I covered in the white paper have users and representatives here at DevLearn. Needless to say, I have been collecting feedback and stories from users and product direction information from the company representatives so that a new, updated edition of the white paper should be ready in January 2009.

DevLearn 2008

I have taken a small break from chapter writing to rediscover what is happening in the world, especially as it pertains to training and performance issues. So here I am in San Jose at DevLearn 2008. The entire conference is focussed on Web 2.0 applications and their usefulness for performance support and learning.

All of yesterday was spent in a seminar about using Second Life (an "open" virtual world - anyone can join) as a tool for engaging learners in change, performance support, and training.

I know, I heard those stories too about 2nd Life being used for all sorts of nefarious endeavors, and such. Did you know, however, that Princeton, Stanford, Elon, and San Jose State have sizable presences in 2nd Life? In addition you will find Coldwell Banker, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. What are they doing there? Yesterday I found out.

They are using Second Life to have classes, interview applicants, onboard new employees, conduct meetings, deliver training, and that is just the beginning. I even found a hospital that is experimenting with 2nd Life as a communication channel.

OK why does this matter?

Virtual worlds offer the possibility of a richer and more retentive learning experience than what we have today. Imagine having the ability to take a new employee on a tour of your company's facility or learning about steel production (and visiting a blast furnace) without OSHA concerns or learning about how your organization will function in the future due to business process transformation. All of these scenarios are feasible in a virtual world.

I am excited about how virtual worlds could change our thinking about organizational change, business process transformation, and training. What about you? What do you think of virtual worlds?

Second Life

DevLearn 2008

Stay tuned for discoveries that I make during today's sessions!

Project and Resource Planning

Throughout more than 15 years of consulting I’ve come across consistent issues during project planning. One of them I would like to address is project resource planning.

Perhaps you are running an ERP project implementation. Maybe you are running an internal IT department and you have a new requirement, which comes from your company's CEO or from your consulting Sr. Vice President or from the Senior V.P. Client Sponsor. It is mission critical, with time deadlines and penalties (and yes money), if you do not hit the target date. The new project requires over 20 dedicated resources that are already 100 percent allocated to other projects or tasks. So what do you do?

a. Add a new project without adding resources, thereby delaying everything else, and ignoring the impacts?

b. Add a new project without adding resources, but, carefully plan the existing workloads and tasks for your team, thereby giving you the ability to inform your management of the likely impacts?

c. Add a new project, plan the required resources; add additional resources as a means to mitigate the likely impact to your other projects?

Too often I see project managers (PM) choosing option A, seriously. To add injury to insult, these same PM's create deadlines without sufficient milestones to measure progress or to gauge the amount of risk absorbed along the way.


How Does This Happen?

An ERP project will have scope creep. Add another module; increase the number of business processes to address; or increase the complexity of the task by training, not 500 people, but 5000 people. Maybe your company buys a new division from another company. You have until Christmas to migrate the other company’s ERP applications on to your company's production ERP system. Yes, all of these things have happened and continue to happen.

So what should the response be from Project Management? You may have no choice. It could be that you must complete these new tasks. However, without proper task planning (project plans, milestones and enough system/people test cycles) you are doomed to fail. How so? Missing deadlines is one common occurrence. If you go live, critical business processes might be unable to function at "Go Live", thereby costing your company much more than the monies saved by a one or two month delay. (The cost of failure is almost always more expensive than the cost of success.)

The proper response should be calculating the required resources needed and estimating the impact to your existing projects and tasks, assuming no increase to the available resources. Bear in mind that resources are not interchangeable. If you add a relatively inexperienced resource, that person will not replace the your senior resource you just committed to the new project. By completing this exercise, you can tell your management what the likely impacts are to existing projects, for both time lines and cost, as well as the non-monetary impacts such as employee frustration, long hours, mistakes, project and company morale.

In a coming chapter for our book we will discuss the basics of project planning and techniques on avoid the above problems, and how to inform management, even when they don’t want to listen or understand the pitfalls for poor planning.

Who Does What? #3

This is the third and final discussion about who does what on an enterprise software implementation or upgrade project. After this post, I plan to focus on other topics we have been "batting about" in our conversations.

Business Process Analyst
Business Process Analysts (BPA) work with the BP Leads, process owners, and team members to facilitate the business process transformation work. BPA’s frequently come from the implementing organization because they know how the organization’s various business processes are performed under the legacy system(s). They also, in most cases, have the tribal knowledge regarding how an organization’s business process came into existence. This tribal knowledge helps the project and BPTT team determine the size of the business process gaps (current processes to desired processes), the company culture for initiating and accepting change and the underlying motivations and reasons for the current business practices.

Key qualities for BPAs:

• Thorough knowledge of existing processes or the ability to find someone who has that knowledge
• Respected by their peers, not a 2nd or 3rd string player
• Desire to improve conditions and not necessarily married exclusively to the past practices
• Able to see a larger picture, sometimes with ERP and process transformation some features or efficiencies are lost but overall the organization should gain efficiencies across the entire end-to-end process

Even more significant than the above key qualities, are the following questions:

• Who will be your key business support people (note that business, not ERP, support is mentioned)? After you have gone live and the consultants have left (or you have redeployed your staff) who will support the end users and their respective departments?
• Who will be responsible for the thinking about and planning regarding the future support team that will run the new business processes? Your BPAs should be considered as potential resources for these requirements. Select them carefully.

However, as noted with the organization’s BT Lead similar conditions apply to the BPA’s sent as members for the project team. They may not be the division or department’s top performers. This usually means that the BP Leads must motivate and mentor these individuals to ensure that all the work is completed. The gating factor for getting the best resources stems from the conflicts over the short-term “running the business now” vs. the longer-term consequences for “running the business later”. A more complete examination about this topic occurs later, when resource planning is discussed.

Training Materials Developer
Frequently an overlooked and unappreciated role, the Training Material Developer helps set the stage for how well an organization’s employees will accept the new business processes and systems. For most people the first time they see the system is during the user training sessions. Training should be appropriate for the audience, from both a difficulty level and a delivery method. Even with the best trainers, ineffective training materials limit how well the user community will learn the new business processes and systems.

The primary responsibilities for the Training Material Developer are:

• Working with the Training Lead to use the selected delivery training channels for the target audience
• Preparing the materials in advance of classes
• Verifying the training materials meet the project standards, established by the Training Lead, Trainers, Business Transformation Lead and Business Process Analysts in advance of the training classes.
• Revising the materials after the initial training sessions as needed.

NOTE: Many ERP implementation providers provide their own training materials (such as SAP Tutor or Oracle User Productivity Kit, for example) claiming the materials are “pre-built” and ready to use. Caveat emptor! Frequently these materials are merely role-based training materials, designed to illustrate the narrow focus within a user’s specific job functions. Training material developed in this manner does not provide the user community the necessary background for how the business processes work or the understanding necessary for when things go wrong or for when the initial business conditions change over time.

Sometimes combined with the Training Materials Developer or with the Business Process Analysts, the Trainer’s key task is to teach the user community how the new business processes and related systems work, with the goal of enabling them to perform their day-to-day tasks when the system goes live. Trainers should be familiar with the overall business processes and day-to-day tasks and how this relates to the ERP systems. Qualities to look for in a Trainer:

• Have they delivered this training before? Do they understand the business processes and the ERP systems class participants will use?
• Did they have similar or related roles in Industry or Government thus giving them the ability to relate to the class members?
• Are they patient with class questions and able to answer when appropriate or table questions as needed?
• How well do they communicate?

Trainer
Not all Business Process Analysts can teach. Depending on the staff’s capabilities and availability an organization’s wiser choice might be separate or contract trainers. When using trainers ensure they understand enough of the existing (As-Is) and thoroughly understand the future (To-Be) business processes so that they can impart this knowledge to class participants. Do not expect to be able to “parachute-in” trainers at the last moment and at the same time, have users receive quality relevant training; getting trainers on-board takes time.

NOTE: Typically a trainer is not responsible for teaching an organization’s users the fundamentals of their job tasks, such as Accounting Concepts for the Controller’s department or Inventory Record Accuracy considerations for the Warehouse staff. During the analysis of the training requirements and staff skill levels, the Business Process Lead and Training Lead should make this determination in advance and plan accordingly.

Training Coordinator
The Training Coordinator is responsible for all logistics for training. Sometimes this position is referred to as the BPTT team coordinator, in which case, this person handles all logistics related to business process transformation, communication, and training activities. Given the complexity on larger projects this role requires a highly organized person, flexible with frequent changes yet firm enough to be taken seriously by the other team members.

And although this position is usually staffed by a junior or less experienced person we cannot overstate the importance of this role. Without it, users will not be trained or, at best, trained poorly. And unless the project is small, do not expect the Business Process Analysts to do their own training schedules, as many classes should be scheduled in logical groups or sequences across business processes. Additionally, some class participants may need to take sessions across multiple business processes. The Training Coordinator can minimize the schedule conflicts and help give the training events the detailed attention that it deserves.