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Topic: My Experience in Tata Motors Impl SAP 4.6C (Read 1,104 times)

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My Experience in Tata Motors Impl SAP 4.6C
« Thread Started on Mar 16, 2004, 12:36pm »

I was associated with one of the largest SAP Implementation in India in Tata Motors Ltd ( www.tatamotors.com) (TML) . It was reimplementation of SAP.

The company had been running on SAP 3.1 having servers at each plant with a seperate company code and several legacy systems in place.

The scope of implementation covered with "Single Server and Single Company Code" and going ahead with Big Bang Approach. All the locations of the company to go live on same day. The objective was to eliminate all the legacy systems and implement various sub-modules of SAP. The total users roughly more than 3000 users across the country.

The challenges in the project was:

1. Change Management and New sub-modules.
2. People were comfortable with their legacy systems.
3. Connectivity and response time across locations. (Some Indian States have poor infrastructure)
4. Hardware Size.
5. Managing the huge size... with a determination to go "Big Bang".

Something that I learned as Consultant:

Change Management

We had a very good, able and far sighted Project Manager who had good Project Management and people management skills. We adopted ASAP
methodology for implementation. It is a proven method for any project to succeed and it guides the consultants, business process owners, project leads and makes everyone's life simpler with templates and other useful stuff.

Change management starts with the financial reporting of the organization particularly deciding what would be the Enterprise Structure viz Controlling Area, Sales Organization, Purchase Organization. Secondly, in design, we have to take into account the Company's Vision and future Road Map.

As expected in our Presentations on New Modules, there were apprehensions from the Business Process Owners regarding our business processes are best ones, Praising the Legacy ie. why should I use SAP,
when my legacy system is working as per my expectations. Many were very enthusiatic to accept changes that SAP 4.6C would bring.

To bring about Change management, our team in Tata Technologies Ltd (we were the implementing company) was involved in giving presentation regarding the new functionalities in SAP 4.6c, user friendliness of the
system, dropping of Z tables to 20% and explaining them these were already available in SAP 4.6c and standard Information System reports
which gives a high level of drill down for reporting. The BPOs and TML were very keen when our team presented with information outlining consequences when old system is terminated and benefits that would
accrue in single company code scenario.

It was a tough task. It requires Top Management support.

Many a times, it is very important to visit a other companies to know how they had solved critical issues and that acts as a learning point.

Some of our team members visited another auto company in Mumbai that has implemented SAP to know how they addressed a complex issues.

We had an issue of how to treat "Bulk Items" in the BOM since SAP does not consider items marked as Bulk in Standard Cost Estimate. If items are not treated as bulk, then those materials have to be issed during
the production. Cost Reporting v/s Time in booking was the factor where Costing Department wanted the reporting whereas Production Dept. did
not want to undertake the extra efforts in Production Booking.

Workaround was suggested after continued discussions.

Initially I was involved in exploring the Material Ledger functionality and explaining to the business about its benefits and how it will make the cost management and inventory valuation accurate. This is a very good functionality in SAP and I feel it should be implemented by every company which has large inventories to manage.

We came to know thru' interaction with SAP India, that this functionality is implemented by all companies in Brazil. But only five companies in India that has implemented it successfully.
Managing the huge size

Tata Motors Ltd has a annual turnover of USD 1800 million with four manufacturing plants, over 50 sales offices, over 20000 employees, over 120 vehicle models and its every increasing variants.

TTL ( www.tatatechnologies.com )implementation team consisted over 100 consultants. Each was devoted for specific small activity e.g. FI-Reports, SD-Authorizations. Small was also very big. At the peak time after Realization everyone had been working overtime.
Team skills plays a very important role. Particularly co-ordination with cross functional team viz. FI-AR Consultants have to understand the business processes of SD, CO Consultants are in line with PP and MM processes and vice versa.
One of the most important skills as a Consultant is to have a knowledge about the industry where he is implementing, an attitude to know more and a good rapport with the business process owners, users and who so ever he encounters in business. That
would change his perspective and he would be able to deliver better solutions.
Training: This is one of the important area, where you open your audience to accept the SAP. As a trainer, you have to explain to users every minute details without being irritated. This way you bring
open attitude and knowledge sharing in your project life cycle. You will find the users will be able to provide you with inputs for solutions or they will provide solutions itself.
Hardware and Network This was one of the challenging task.

For me, the networking was like a Railway Network - Difficult to understand , but beautifully managed.
Persistance & Patience

Any project to be successful, each team member should be patient and persistant. There are many difficulties that you encounter but everything goes with 80/20 approach. We had implemented the Automatic

Automatic Credit Management functionality with expected results only after we went live.

Your client will always like to have something different, but your test as Consultant will only be proven, when you have advised your Customer to implement as far as possible Standard SAP with desired benefits.

Tata Technologies Consultants who were involved in the Tata Motors Project, please share your experiences by replying to this thread.

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