business and technical lessons learned from post merger p6 integration project ppt
TRANSCRIPT
Business and Technical Lessons Learned from a Post-Merger P6 Integration Project
Patricia Champagne, PMPGreg Hunt, PMPGenOn Energy
GenOn Profile: Who We Are Today–GenOn is a competitive energy company that produces and sells electricity in the United States.
– The company operates an asset management and energy marketing organization from its headquarters in Houston.
Background
GenOn at a Glance
Corporate HQ: Houston, TX Located in: 12 States Number of Employees: ~3,400Generating Capacity: 23,692 MWGenerating Stations: 47
Background
Customers include:Utilities: Generate, transmit, and distribute power to retail or wholesale customers.
Municipal systems: Owned and/or operated by a city that generates and/or purchases electricity.
Aggregators: Marketers who pool customers to buy large volumes of power.
Electric-cooperative utilities: Utilities owned by and operated for the benefit of those using the service. The utility company generates, transmits, and/or distributes supplies of power to a specified area not being serviced by another utility.
Generators: Produce electricity intended to be sold at wholesale. Marketers: Entities that become an owner or controller of power for the purpose of buying and selling the power at wholesale.
Background
BackgroundThe MergerIn December 2010, GenOn Energy was formed through the merger of Mirant and RRI Energy.The two companies were very similar in size and business model.
Background
The strategic rationale for the merger included:• Significant near‐term value creation driven by annual cost savings of $150 million
• Strengthened balance sheet and enhanced financial flexibility
• Increased scale and geographic diversity across key regions
• Well positioned to benefit from improvement in market fundamentals
BackgroundCost Savings was a particularly important goal:• $150 million in annual cost savings• Achieved through reduction in corporate overhead and G&A, including:– Consolidating two headquarters– Accounting, finance, human resources, administrative– IT systems– Costs to achieve of $125 million
• Expected run‐rate cost savings fully realized starting in January 2012
• Consolidating the two headquarters would result in the elimination of the headquarters and data center in Atlanta.
BackgroundThis was one of merger’s integration projects. It’s goals:– Merge P6 Databases into a Single Database & Environment– Provide a 2‐way Interface between SAP and P6– Minimize Loss of Capability for Either User Group
What Follows
Approximately 75 Things we learned in managing this project. These address:
– IT & Business Culture– Staffing– Project Planning– Technical
Culture
• Don’t assume what didn’t work in one company won’t work in the new one.
• Expect decisions to take longer.
Staffing
• Find out who your sales rep is early. Oracle may want to change them.
• Assign a new Oracle Support Administrator BEFORE the current ones are gone!
• Get everybody on a common Oracle Support CIS early.
Staffing
• Find out who is relocating and allow time for that. Also allow for trips home, etc.
• If you have retirement eligible workers on staff, expect some of them to chose that over the new company.
• Define Roles & Responsibilities
Staffing
• Make sure some people staying with the company go to the integration meetings.
• Include BOTH technical and business application owners in the integration meetings.
• Make sure every application has an IT owner from day 1.
Staffing
• Be flexible on severance dates.• Attitude is just as important as Business and technical knowledge when selecting severance dates.
• Use Outgoing staff for Infrastructure Work, One‐time work, Knowledge Transfer & Documentation
• Use Retained Staff for Application Work
Staffing
• Use contractors. But mostly for 1‐time tasks & knowledge transfer (do with you, not for you).
• Go to the other person’s location.• Create a merger PMO office prior to the merger
Planning
• Build a CPM schedule for merger activities• Know the Schedule for Moving Other Apps• Plan around Infrastructure Moves
Planning
• Time conversions based on business considerations.
• Allow Extra Time for Hardware & Other Setup Requests
Planning
• If you are moving to Primavera release 8.0 or 8.1, give yourself time with P6 Web.
• Figure out how you are going to move servers with minimal outage time.
Planning
• If a decision requires a committee – form that immediately!
• If you don’t have dev/test environments & processes, fix that first.
Planning
• If a Decision Requires a Committee – Form that Immediately!
• If you don’t have dev/test environments, you need to build them.
Planning
• If you are going to integrate systems, train people on them first.
• If systems are to be integrated, plan well in advance for synchronized test data.
• First, get on one system and minimize change backwards or forwards.
Technical• Get IT on a common Oracle account• Log every issue with Oracle while trying to solve it
DO THIS NOT THIS
Technical
If you are an MS Access fan• Install P6 Stand‐alone with MS SQL on your 2nd PC and create 2
databases.• In each production DB, create a project with one calendar for
each activity, export it, and import it into a MS‐SQL database.• You can now easily read the calendar blob field and find
duplicate calendars.
Technical
Other things I used MS Access for• Making a global calendar a project‐level calendar• Swapping out one calendar for another (e.g. a duplicate for the
original so that I can then delete the duplicate).• Making a global activity code a project‐level activity code• Merging activity codes• Swapping out the Maximo‐centric activity IDs with their SAP
IDs.
Technical
• Get the IT components in synch• Prioritize correction of performance issues• If you aren’t merging domains quickly, disable LDAP right away
• If you migrate projects via export/import, make sure Citrix is mapped to a drive in th data center
Technical
• Don’t Bring over Everything• Use Codes to Flag Projects for Migration• Create Integration Check Layouts
Technical
• Have Cleanup Databases• Pay attention to Citrix home directories• Get as‐built documentation from the vendors