Case Study: Get Off SAP Stat!
The Problem:
What do you do when the bankruptcy of your parent company leads the court to declare that your new company would have to pay big bucks to use their financial data system?
This was the case with Form+Function when they recovered what had been their corporate assets, sold previously to now-bankrupt divine, Inc.
Attempting to rebuild itself as the new WHITTMANHART, the company faced a monthly charge of $45,000 to access the SAP system that divine used across their many subsidiaries.
This “carve out” was for a portion of the company; divine/Whittman-Hart, and not the rest of the company which were also being sold off. This was not for all of the customers but most.
Add in WIP (Work in Progress), AR, AP, and fixed assets this was not going to be an easy task.
My Solution:
I was one of the finance leads on divine’s SAP installation for their services arm, divine/Whittman-Hart, and so I understood very well what end result F+F management was looking for.
I determined the punch list of key tasks to complete:
1) Reconnect with the founder of Whittman-Hart, Bob, and now with Form+Function (F+F) and their CFO, Scott (former boss), to detail the exact desired deliverables.
2) Meet with the local Great Plains consultant.
3) Relocate some of our accounting and billing staff to F+F.
4) Meet with the current F+F accounting team and set up a flow chart of key tasks to be completed along with the delivery schedule.
5) Meet with the operations team that will be going to F+F and will be running the operational reports at .
6) Do a quick study of Great Plains, FRx, and Crystal.
7) Set up the multiple geographical locations retained from the bankruptcy.
8) Set up the expanded general ledger.
9) Work with upper management to make sure/review the exact parameters of the carve out from assumption of assets from divine.
10) Get all of the financial data off of SAP quickly!
The Results:
In less than 3 months I guided the team at F+F to remove all financial data needed by F+F’s finance, accounting, and operations team off of the divine SAP system, created reports in Great Plains, increased their General ledger, established WIP, AR and AP.
The bankruptcy agreement had F+F paying $45,000 per month to remain on SAP and they earmarked it taking 6 months which would lead to a total cost of $270,000.
All in F+F paid less than $100,000 to implement the move away from the SAP system onto Great Plains. We had a great team of resources to assist in the system move.
And the team at F+F now the new WHITTMANHART used the same Great Plains system for another 7 years, during which time the company completed two major acquisitions.
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