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Growing Fast and Leaving Zombie Implementations BehindAllbirds is digitally native, global, and omnichannel. There’s a good chance you’ve encountered its iconic Wool Runners while online. But it’s also a recent SAP customer that chose SAP S/4HANA on the cloud for its first ERP system and implemented it in only 16 weeks—just in time for holiday sales to ramp up on Black Friday 2017.

Ann Marie Gray, vice president of content at ASUG, had the opportunity to speak with Jeneen Minter, CFO for Allbirds. This remarkable SAP S/4HANA implementation wouldn’t have been possible without help from Blue Marble Consulting Inc., so our conversation included Sabrina Sigourney, the founder and CEO.

Ann Marie (ASUG): I’m extremely impressed that you were able to go live in the cloud, on budget, in 16 weeks. Could you tell us a little bit about the prep work you did to be ready for that accelerated transition? What processes helped support that kind of speed to market?

Sabrina (Blue Marble Consulting): We were able to go live in 16 weeks, really by making SAP simple and taking a simple approach. We’ve always believed that SAP S/4HANA enterprise management fits all sizes of companies

Being a startup, Allbirds has a nimble mindset and is committed to growing. We wanted to do what we could to move mountains and go on this adventure with them. The timeline was aggressive, but we wanted to meet the budget and the need to be ready by Black Friday. Jeneen and I sat down and said, “Here’s what this will take,” and we went for it.

Jeneen (Allbirds): Before the project began, our internal group of cross-functional stakeholders got really clear about what the scope of the initial implementation project would be and what it would not be. You don’t put an ERP system in on day one that looks exactly the same in year 50. Businesses grow and evolve. So, we adopted the mindset that we would iterate, building in an easily scalable way, solving the most critical opportunities for the next few years in such a way that we could keep building rooms onto the house the way we envisioned it would look in 10 years. Before we began, we also had outlined the major design tenets of how we wanted to architect our master data and solve key workflows and control points. Our major stakeholders were on the same page before day one.

Eco-Friendly Footwear Brand Builds a Home on SAP S/4HANA An interview with Jeneen Minter and Sabrina SigourneyMerino wool, eucalyptus tree pulp, castor bean oil, and sugar cane. These are just a few of the unexpected natural materials that San Francisco-based Allbirds uses in its products. In fewer than three years, Allbirds established itself as a leading sustainable brand, with more than a million customers who have purchased a pair of the company’s sleekly designed, environmentally friendly shoes.

It’s the type of story that inventors dream of. Back in his native New Zealand, co-founder Tim Brown developed a prototype wool sneaker while he was playing professional soccer, initially introducing it to the world through a Kickstarter campaign. After teaming up with renewables expert Joey Zwillinger, the two launched Allbirds in 2016. Now it boasts a range of shoes for men, women, and children—sold online and through brick-and-mortar stores in New York and San Francisco.

Jeneen Minter CFO, Allbirds

Jeneen Minter, officially in “finance,” unofficially enjoys wearing hats that create optimized futures for businesses and humans. Her background includes finance, accounting, people ops, operations, systems, analytics, business intelligence, and strategy in a career spanning Ball, Molson Coors, Zappos/Amazon, Revolve, and several startups. She’s with Allbirds, a young B Corporation committed to making better things in a better way, proving that comfort, design, and sustainability can coexist. Allbirds makes sustainable footwear using premium natural materials, designed for everyday life.

We’ve always believed that SAP S/4HANA enterprise management fits all sizes of companies. ~ Sabrina Sigourney, Blue Marble

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We knew if we went with a mid-market ERP offering, in probably two to three years, we’d be looking for a bigger ERP solution again. ~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds

Ann Marie: That’s a really great strategy. Rather than go for the big-bang launch that takes months and months to get going, instead you simplify your launch and iterate over time. Did you—even in that compressed timeframe of 16 weeks—encounter any unanticipated issues? If so, how were you able to pivot and manage them to meet your deadline?

Jeneen: I think every project—no matter how big or small or well-planned, or how many people you put

on it—will always have unanticipated issues. We managed these issues by knowing that we didn’t know everything, staying loose, and building slack into our schedule where we could. If we had to shift priorities, we were willing to shift them.

We also stayed tightly integrated as a team. In fact, the Blue Marble team sat with us on-site throughout the entire project. We were literally staring at each other’s faces the whole time—morning to night, sometimes seven days a week if we needed to push through a deadline. I think the reason why companies do well or don’t do well when moving through unanticipated issues is simply the frame of mind or the attitude they have about it. You can either get grumpy and let these issues make you a deer in the headlights, or you can roll up your sleeves and crank. We chose the latter.

Ann Marie: What were some of the benefits that SAP S/4HANA brought over any previous solutions that you had in place? It’s generally something that’s used by gigantic organizations rather than smaller, leaner startups. What did it solve for you?

Jeneen: At the time we were talking about getting a big ERP system, we had a pretty healthy growth rate and we already had a number of complexities that larger retailers have. We were omnichannel in multiple countries with multiple currencies, multiple company codes, and multiple distribution centers. We needed to view our business from different angles (e.g., business segments, tax and legal entities, budget owners, product lines, projects and programs,

etc.). We saw a lot of growth potential in our future. We knew if we went with a mid-market ERP offering, in probably two to three years, we’d be looking for a bigger ERP solution again. Our level of complexity dictated that we needed an integrated system that could meet us where we are now and take us where we wanted to go. As we learned more deeply about our various options, we felt that SAP HANA was the best choice.

Ann Marie: You mentioned having the Blue Marble team sitting across the table, staring at you and keeping you honest along the way. How else did they help you with your transition? Could you describe your relationship?

Sabrina: Jeneen brings up a really good point around rolling up your sleeves and getting in there, right? That’s exactly what we did. We encountered the same types of obstacles we would in a longer, more traditional project. We just had to mitigate and manage these risks at a faster pace. We were willing to do that, as uncomfortable as that was sometimes. One great thing about this project was that Jeneen acting as a central decision-maker streamlined the project, as opposed to a traditional situation where you have multiple stakeholders who give you different, sometimes conflicting requirements.

We also used a collaborative web tool that gave us all full transparency in terms of delivery. Everyone knew who was doing what, where, when, why, and how. Again, not always comfortable, but always transparent. If we were making mistakes, the customer saw it right away because it was all in the tool. Additionally, when we had a deliverable that the customer needed to test, we knew that they had received it, and everyone knew we were waiting on

You can either get grumpy and let these issues make you a deer in the headlights, or you can roll up your sleeves and crank.~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds

Everyone knew who was doing what, where, when, why, and how.~ Sabrina Sigourney, Blue Marble

Sabrina Sigourney Founder and CEO, Blue Marble Consulting Inc.

Sabrina is responsible for delivery excellence and value assurance for Blue Marble Consulting, a boutique value added reseller of SAP products. Since 1997, Sabrina has actively staffed, supported, or aided in the delivery of 90 SAP projects with a 100 percent reference rate.

Sabrina is a Certified SAP S/4HANA Solution Consultant, a Pre-Sales Certified Professional, and is an SAP solution architect for best practices and delivery services. She has delivered more than 250 days of training as an SAP substitute instructor or in custom-developed intensive boot camps.

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them. It was about removing barriers, talking about who’s blocking whom, what constraints we might face, and just going through them.

Jeneen: When you’re small, running a skeletal crew, and growing fast while trying to implement something like an SAP ERP system, you have to stay focused. This is where getting the right partner to help is important. Relationship is the key word—we were careful about who we chose. We trusted one another, had full honesty and authenticity, and removed bureaucracy to eliminate the typical project barriers. That allowed us to move quickly.

For any company thinking about implementing as quickly as we did, you’ve got to get your implementation partner right. First and foremost, the strength of the relationship means the world.

Ann Marie: I’m curious about how Blue Marble specializes in disrupting what it calls “zombie” implementation projects. Can you explain how this worked for Allbirds?

Jeneen: There would be times where we would hear the siren call to add a bell or whistle that we really could live without for at least another year or two. Sabrina would hold a mirror up to us and ask, “Do we really need that right this second, or do you need this other really big, important thing? Let’s just focus on that.” I credit Blue Marble with helping to keep us tightly focused on the scope we signed up for.

Ann Marie: Focus and prioritization—two incredibly important words in big projects like this. So why did you choose to go live in the cloud? What are some of the benefits that you’re seeing from this decision? Jeneen: I don’t even think it was a question to not be in the cloud. It just was always what we were going to do. We’re a direct-to-consumer company. We live in the technology space. It was critical for us to have

a reliable, secure, turnkey solution with experts thinking about our capacity needs, performance, physical and digital security, backup and disaster-recovery protocols, and more. We didn’t need to directly invest in expensive infrastructure. Cloud offerings exist to give you that scalability, flexibility, and security. Monocle Systems, who also knows SAP products well, was the right partner to focus on those things for us so that we could concentrate on driving the software implementation and building our business.

Ann Marie: In an earlier question, you mentioned your supply chain. I know you have a sustainability ethos woven in with your brand. Did you consider that as you were building this ERP system? And how will it help you keep the sustainability in your supply chain? Jeneen: One of the main opportunities we were solving for in the implementation phase is to accurately purchase, pay, track, and value our inventory from manufacturing throughout our entire global distribution center and store network. We’re in service to our customers to make better things in

I credit Blue Marble with helping to keep us tightly focused on the scope we signed up for. ~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds

We’re in service to our customers to make better things in a better way. Systems that give us better optics help us deliver on our promise. ~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds

Photography courtesy of Allbirds

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a better way. Systems that give us better optics help us deliver on our promise.

Ann Marie: For Blue Marble, what was different or interesting about the implementation you did for Allbirds? Did you take any unique approaches with this project?

Sabrina: This project gave us the opportunity to take a customer from a small-company accounting platform onto the latest and greatest SAP S/4HANA enterprise management system for retail. It wasn’t going to get any easier or cheaper had Allbirds waited.

What was really fun was working within this timeframe—which I’m now addicted to because we were so hyper-focused, and we were able to avoid the muddied water that sometimes happens in longer, more traditional implementations. I love the fact that we were able to fine-tune our methodology to stay on course as we established the core financial and logistics footprint that Jeneen mentioned earlier. Start building the house, build the foundation, and you can always add on, right? Allbirds will never outgrow SAP S/4HANA enterprise management. Had they chosen another platform as an interim solution, they would have eventually outgrown because they’re evolving so quickly. It was great to prove the point that it is possible and realistic to deliver SAP S/4HANA for an organization of any size.

Ann Marie: What advice would you give to others who are on the fence about purchasing or implementing SAP S/4HANA?

Sabrina: It may seem scary—but look—the software’s pretty darn good. I’ve heard people say they’d rather have a root canal than implement ERP. It all comes down to the people you work with and the implementation process. At Blue Marble, we have a really great group of people. We’re big enough to know how to get things done, but we’re small enough to care. That’s our sweet spot.

Sadly, most of our revenue comes from cleaning up or optimizing customers who have already gone on the journey with other partners. We’re good at that, but we want to have more successful implementation stories like Allbirds because the story’s so great. Hey, we brought in a best-in-class, kick-ass SAP S/4HANA solution. And oh, by the way, we implemented it on time and

on budget, and Allbirds experienced a return on investment almost immediately. How cool is that? We still have that happy feeling. But it can be hard and scary at times, and that’s why we’re here to help customers through the process.

Jeneen: First, I would ask, why are they on the fence? Decision criteria is custom to each company’s needs. If fear is what’s preventing a company from moving (and fear gets masked in a lot of ways), there’s nothing to be afraid of. If you have a great

Start building the house, build the foundation, and you can always add on, right? Allbirds will never outgrow SAP S/4HANA enterprise management.~ Sabrina Sigourney, Blue Marble

Once you’ve sped away from the launch moment and you’re about six months out looking in the rearview mirror, you’ll be grateful.~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds

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relationship with the people who are going to help you take this journey and if you all commit together to a scope and a timeline, there’s really no reason to hold back. Once you’ve sped away from the launch moment and you’re about six months out looking in the rearview mirror, you’ll be grateful.

Ann Marie: How did your perspective as the CFO help you get the project done in a smart and affordable way?

Jeneen: Throughout my career, I’ve tended to have a night job working on systems projects in addition to my day job in finance, accounting, and analytics. I’ve worked with several homemade, commercially available, and hybrid ERPs.

Coming from a merged systems and finance vantage point, in the Allbirds case, I was thinking about what the right timing would be to take on a big ERP product. I wanted to know how this product will be good for us now and in the future. What would it take to evolve it, both financially and team-wise? Will it help our audit and close move faster? What would it be like for our accounting team to use day-to-day? How would it affect our supply chain team? Will it give us the various optics we need? Will it have excellent built-in controls that strengthen our confidence in the financials we report to our CEOs, our board, and other stakeholders? And many more questions. Ultimately, the

investment we were making had to deliver a return on investment across several planks.

Ann Marie: What advantages have you seen since switching over? Jeneen: An easy example that comes to mind is around audit efficiencies. We’ve had two-and-a-half years of operating life and we’ve had two years of financial statement audits from a Big Four auditor. On the topic of inventory, year one versus year two went entirely differently because we had SAP live by the end of year two. What took three months off and on to audit in the first year squeezed down to a few weeks the second year.

Ann Marie: Wow, that’s a big difference.

Jeneen: And there are other things we’ve noticed. We are tracking the movement of every single unit of inventory as it enters and exits our possession. Because we know everything about it every step of the way, we have found efficiency opportunities. Now that we’ve got better insight into the cost of orchestrating a supply chain footprint that looks a certain way, we can make changes to serve customers faster and have the right product, at the right place, at the right time. Our SAP system has given us optics that get us more of those types of insights faster.

Ann Marie: What’s on the list to tackle next? Jeneen: We’re expanding our brick- and-mortar channel. We’re also expanding geographically. We’ve

got various projects lined up around concepts like transfer pricing, foreign exchange capabilities, planning and forecasting, reporting enhancements, and more. Process and info exchange automation is also a key theme. We probably have 50 projects on our list that we just continue to chip away at, at our own pace. The system meets our needs, we want to invest in it, and everything we do is with a partner we’re grateful to have.

Ann Marie: I have a bonus question for you. Where did the name Allbirds come from?

Jeneen: One of our co-founders is from New Zealand, where sheep outnumber humans. That’s where he got the idea for our first product, our Wool Runner. Having been a professional soccer player, he was very familiar with performance and casual athletic wear. The lore is that when New Zealand was discovered, all birds and only birds were living there. Our name also honors our commitment to sustainability and our mission to make better things in a better way. If you take care of the birds, you take care of the earth.

Ann Marie: That’s a great story. Thank you so much, Jeneen and Sabrina, for sharing your experiences with us and the SAP community.

Join us to hear the Allbirds story in person at the Customer Experience Innovation Forum, our newest event where retailers, consumer products companies, and wholesalers learn innovative ways to delight customers.

On the topic of inventory, year one versus year two went entirely differently because we had SAP live by the end of year two. ~ Jeneen Minter, Allbirds