1

Value and key learnings of ERP

projects in Mid-Market companies

Results of the survey performed by SAP and IBM at Belgian Mid-Market companies in winter 2006/2007

2

Executive Summary Mid-market1 companies are facing challenges that are specific to their segment: their suppliers and customers are mostly larger and more demanding companies with stronger bargaining power. Mid-market companies are thus forced to adopt the level of standards of their business partners (information exchange, JIT deliveries, quality certifications, …) with much less available resources. It is therefore critical for them, in order to remain competitive, to be able to rely on an efficient, well-structured and performing Information System. This study aims at demystifying SAP implementations in the Mid-Market sector as well as providing some key learnings and a common practice to companies that are considering further structuring their business processes. The document outlines the drivers for starting an ERP project from the selection process to the success criteria of the project and goes through the related objectives, allocated resources and achieved results. We have seen a shift in the strategic focus of companies in the past ten years, from cost reduction at the beginning of the decade, to growth a few years ago, and to innovation as enabler of this growth today. The key driver for an ERP system, today as before, is the optimisation of resources (time, money, people), however serving the successive strategic goals outlined above. This is clearly translated into the scope of ERP systems implemented, shifting from back-end support functions (cost-reduction), to core critical industry-specific applications (growth through innovation). Due to ever faster-moving market conditions, C-level executives expect their Information System to support the shifts dictated by the business imperatives (business model, products and services, and effectiveness and efficiency of core processes and functions). Some interesting side consequences have been observed. CEOs are increasingly involved in ERP projects and CIOs report more and more directly to them. The level of maturity of companies towards the ERP concept will directly influence key aspects of the project. Our study shows that ERP systems, and more specifically SAP, are not as expensive, as slow to implement, or as rigid as commonly believed. Our respondents highlighted that even though there is a substantial entry ticket for the smaller companies to implement SAP, the level of maturity of the solution and of their own company allowed most of them to respect original budget, schedule and scope, which led them to consider the implementation as a success. Nevertheless, they widely reported difficulties in measuring the achieved business benefits, either because they lacked baseline information needed to compare actual performance and/or due to exogenous factors that slightly modified these baselines. Guy Tricot Lawrence Steeman IBM SMB SAP leader SAP SMB Manager

1 Mid-market is defined as the set of companies with a turnover comprised between 20 and 500 million

euros, and with 100 to 2500 employees, with their main decision centre located in Belgium.

3

Table of contents

Executive Summary.......................................................................................................2

1 Introduction .............................................................................................................4

2 SAP: an IT project, a Business project or both? .................................................6

2.1 Business Thinking ..........................................................................................6

2.2 IT Thinking ......................................................................................................7

2.2.1 Information System responsible............................................................8

2.2.2 Information System structure ................................................................9

2.2.3 Information System budget..................................................................10

2.3 Drivers for implementing an ERP solution .................................................11

2.4 Decision and selection process ..................................................................13

2.5 Selection criteria ...........................................................................................15

2.6 Scope of the SAP project ............................................................................18

2.7 SAP evolution ...............................................................................................21

2.8 SAP Implementation and integration..........................................................22

2.8.1 Achieved Schedule – Budget – Scope ...............................................22

2.8.2 Project success factors ........................................................................24

2.8.3 Change management...........................................................................25

2.8.4 Implementation rating...........................................................................26

3 Expected Benefits and success criteria for the project ....................................27

3.1 Expected vs. achieved benefits ..................................................................27

3.1.1 Enhance operational efficiency ...........................................................28

3.1.2 Lower risk ..............................................................................................30

3.2 Success criteria ............................................................................................32

4 Conclusion: ...........................................................................................................33

Table of figures ............................................................................................................35

Contacts........................................................................................................................36

4

1 Introduction IBM and SAP have conducted a joint multi-client study of the value brought to their business by implementing SAP. This study is directed at Belgian Mid-Market companies with their main decision centre in Belgium, falling in the highlighted SAP market segmentation shown in the diagram below.

Large

Enterprises

Mid Market

Small Enterprises1-20m€ turnover

1-99 employees

20-500m€ turnover

100-2,500 employees

>500m€ turnover

>2,500 employees

The objective of our study is threefold:

� Demystify Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and more specially SAP implementations in midsize companies

� Provide key learning’s about duration, investment, and ROI of similar companies (size, functional and geographical scope)

� Serve as the basis for reflection using experience from both SAP and IBM

Characteristics of the respondents

� This study does not aim to be statistical, but rather to illustrate the experience of the different respondents with implementing SAP. The questionnaire included sections about success criteria, change management tools, decision criteria, …

� SAP and IBM have had face-to-face interviews with eight companies in the target segment of the study. While their main activity is evenly spread amongst the different segments of the private sector, it is to be noted that most companies had activities in more than one segment. The public sector was intentionally left out of this study.

5

� Yearly turnover of the

interviewed companies follows a normal distribution, with the majority comprised between 100 and 200 million euros per year and the rest equally spread above and below those limits

� One half of the companies

employ between 14 and 500 employees and the other half employ between 500 and 2000 employees.

� This combination of turnover

and workforce is representative of SAP’s criteria for defining the Mid Market segment.

Figure 1: This figure shows the repartition of the respondents in different sectors.

� The majority of the respondents have international activities largely focusing on

the neighbouring countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands), but are extending their reach to Asia and America, mostly via sales offices or partnerships with local players. It is interesting to note that, except for one company, SAP was only implemented in one central location.

� None of the interviewed companies had implemented SAP before and half of the

implementations took place in the past two years.

ServicesCPG

Process

Industries

Discrete

Manufacturing

Industries

6

2 SAP: an IT project, a Business project or both?

2.1 Business Thinking

As further demonstrated in our survey, it is nowadays a well-accepted fact that the purpose of an ERP solution is more than ever to support business strategies and objectives rather than a sole IT solution.

4,8

4,8

6,5

7,3

7,8

2,8

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Lower risk

Move to a componentized

business model allowing

for business externalisation

Have a better view

Build new external

collaborations

Provide Innovation

Bring Innovation in your

business model

Figure 2: This figure shows the importance of some key points in the business model. The values are the mean of all the respondents (maximum being 10).

The results shown in the above diagram confirm this, demonstrating that innovation is the key strategic focus of the interviewed companies either in providing it to their customers or in applying it to themselves. Such innovation processes can be categorized as follows:

� Business model – Innovation in the structure and/or financial model of the business

� Operational – Innovation that improves the effectiveness and efficiency of core processes and functions

� Products/services/markets – Innovation applied to products or services or “go-to-market” activities.

According to the 2006 IBM CEO survey, one CEO suggested that “the three areas are essential, equally important and inseparable from each other.” To support this, one respondent mentioned that while they were innovating in the way they interact with their customers, they were also making major changes to their business model, focusing on core activities and reshuffling their organization. However, Innovation does not always need to be as complex as the example above (albeit with lesser results): for one of the respondent, using standard electronic exchange

7

formats as a means of exchanging data with customers and suppliers is seen as a new manner of collaborating with business partners. It is important to note that only one respondent considered innovation as not important at this stage, as their focus is mainly on reducing costs by optimising their distribution network.

2.2 IT Thinking

6,0

6,8

9,5

5,0

6,0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Move to a Service Oriented

Architecture

Support business needs and

evolution

Think web-based

Ensure resilience

Be reliable

Figure 3: This figure shows the importance of some IT characteristics. The values are the mean of all the respondents (maximum being 10).

When asked about the attributes of an efficient ERP system, most respondents have singled out reliability as the most important characteristic, mostly in terms of consistency of data across the different functions, as the basis of the integration of their systems and business processes. Resilience is defined as the ability to guarantee the continuity and integrity of the business processes should major and unexpected changes occur. This is closely linked to the imperative of supporting business needs and evolution. It must be noted that while respondents were originally not given the possibility to select this answer in the survey, we have decided to add this characteristic to our results, as the majority of them expressed this last point as being the key mission of IT during the interviews. “The IT mission is the support of all processes allowing growth geographically as well as of the number of products sold. “To deliver on time the right information to the right people in the right format at the right moment.” Such unanimity shows a key evolution of the CIO‘s mission, as well as the perception they have themselves of it, demonstrating a strong shift from IT technology to business focus. Web-based thinking also scored rather high on the agenda of the people we interviewed, but can be interpreted in two different manners:

� For the majority of the respondents “think web-based” means providing information to their customers via web pages. Their Extranet or Intranet set up mainly serves as an informative support. These companies actually do not plan to expand the scope to business exchange platform.

8

� However for some of the respondents, “think web-based” means much more. It is in their view a way of exchanging transactional data in different forms (orders, invoices, co-design documents) with different kinds of business partners, be it channels, customers, suppliers or regulatory bodies. It is notable that the same respondents gave a high ranking to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Nevertheless, it is to be noted that there is a large disparity in the rating. The largest companies participating in the survey have practical plans built up to implement an SOA architecture. For the others, it is merely an interesting concept to follow up.

From our point of view, it clearly demonstrates that SOA is not just another technological ‘buzz’ concept. It corresponds to a strong demand from the business for adapting the overall Information Systems architecture to increase evolving market and business pressures. Creating an IT architecture, where components may easily and quickly be turned into services that are filled in by business partners, becomes of utmost importance for the companies that are engaged into globalization and though competition. Typical areas where “Think Web-based” combines web access with capabilities to exchange intelligent formats are:

� Collaborative product design: Technical characteristics are exchanged between the main manufacturer and its subcontractors in order for them to effectively “joint design” their specific parts. The exchange needs include back and forth transfer of technical product data together with CAO 3-D models completed by specific product configuration data (serial number, bill of material,…).

� Customer services: online helpdesk and services allowing customers to process requests via web-based forms.

2.2.1 Information System responsible

When looking at the position of the person(s) responsible for the company’s information system, we have noticed an interesting evolution. Only one of the respondents reports to the CFO. All others report to the CEO or COO, demonstrating the point we were making earlier that IT is no longer exclusively used as a tool to bring financial structure and control but also to underpin all other operational aspects (Transport, Production, Warehouse, Customer information, Human resource). Further confirming this evolution of their role, nearly all of the respondents have IS objectives linked to the strategic directions dictated by the business. In some of the smaller companies, the respondents are cumulating their IS responsibility with an operational task (supply chain responsible, financial director, CFO).

9

2.2.2 Information System structure

Maturity of IS structure before the ERP implementation

13%

63%

63%

88%

88%

Extranet

ERP/Point solutions

Intranet

Network

Server

Figure 4: This figure shows which IS elements existed in the respondent companies before the SAP implementation. The percentages indicate that x% of the respondent had the referenced elements.

� Nearly all the respondents had a network and server before implementing their ERP

system. This can be interpreted as a first step of maturity in the IT technology. It is indeed a prerequisite before the implementation of an ERP.

� Today’s lower IT cost and simplified technologies facilitate the usage of IT basic

elements and free up internal resources for added value project like ERP implementations.

� Prior to implementing their ERP system, nearly all the respondents had put in place

some point solutions in order to streamline some of their internal processes (finance controlling and logistics). For almost all of them, it was their first ERP implementation replacing their patchwork of systems. As such most of the respondents considered an ERP system as the natural evolution towards building synergies between the different business units or countries and breaking down silos that have gradually built up between parts of the organisation as a result of unmanaged growth.

� Point solutions were a structured commercial application, or as often seen in Mid-

Market companies, a home-grown solution developed by an individual in the business (automated queries in an Access® database,…).

“The difficulty was that each department looked for its own objectives/challenges. ERP was going across the different organisational silos. “

10

2.2.3 Information System budget

In half of the companies interviewed, the annual IT budget represents over 3% of their total annual revenue. For the other half, IT budget falls between 1 and 3% of their annual revenue. This budget includes the IT investments (capex) as well as the operational cost (opex). There is a notable difference between larger and smaller companies when considering IT budgets. Not only is the IT budget of larger companies higher in absolute terms, but also when measured as a percentage of their total turnover. This is the translation of the increased complexity of the model and thus of a greater need for an ERP system, structured tools to support the processes and communication, even within their organisations. Furthermore, we have noticed that while larger companies run them in a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction mode, smaller companies tend to run ERP projects in a more “Business case/ROI” mode. Generally, the budget for an ERP implementation is considered as an exceptional investment next to ongoing IT operations. To our surprise, most of the respondents’ budget is not including the business reengineering effort and the time spent by end-users. According to our knowledge, the involvement of the end-users is lower in Mid-Market companies (due to their availability) than in larger companies. Key-users in this segment are assigned to the ERP project on top of their daily activities. For one respondent, the IT spending was above 10%. In this very specific case, the solutions provided by SAP are an integral part of the portfolio they are offering to their customers. The IT spending of our panel is in line with the results from The “Western Europe IT spending and staffing survey 2005 of Gartner”. Indeed, the average IT spending as of percentage of revenue is about 9 % in the services area and from 2.5 to 5 in the manufacturing sector.

11

2.3 Drivers for implementing an ERP solution

13%

25%

25%

25%

25%

38%

50%

50%

63%

63%

63%

75%

75%

13%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

IT cost reduction

Y2K problem

Innovation that matters to your company

Business strategy and IT linking

Key process performance optimisation

Global performance optimisation

Governance & Risk Management

Financial consolidation & reporting

Increased control

System consolidation

Faster access to shared information

Increased productivity

Technology modernisation

Cost control/efficiency

Figure 5: This figure shows which drivers were considered by the respondents for implementing an ERP package. The percentages indicate that the corresponding driver has been taken into account by x% of the respondents.

It is interesting to note that while innovation scores high on the agenda of companies, it plays almost no part in the decision criteria that were applied to the selection of an ERP system. This is supported by the findings of IBM’s 2002/2003 CEO survey showing that at the time when the respondents of this study were selecting an ERP package, the strategic focus of companies was mostly on cost reduction. In all of the cases, it is not one or two, but a combination of several drivers that led to the ERP project. On average, the respondents mentioned 6 drivers as key selection criteria. This reflects the diversity of the challenges the interviewed companies had to face at that moment in time. Also, many different drivers are needed to mobilise the key people and gain the focus of the management to help prioritise ERP projects, necessary due to the proportion of resources allocated to those projects (in terms of key experienced resources and financial budget). These drivers can be classified in the following categories:

� IT driven: system consolidation, Y2K problem, IT cost reduction, technology modernisation, faster access to shared information,

� Business operational driven: cost control/efficiency, key process performance optimisation, financial consolidation and reporting, governance and risk management, increase productivity.

� Business innovative driven: innovation that matters, new external collaboration, business strategy and IT linking, global performance optimisation

According to the respondents input, the focus stays on increasing the operational efficiency and optimising the cost linked to it (as the acronym ERP says it: Resource

12

Planning). This is again in line with the drivers identified in the 2002-2003 CEO survey, while today’s focus is on growth through innovation for largest companies. One can consider this as a “domino effect” starting with Multinationals, going to large Mid-Market players and reaching now the core of the middle market companies. In line with this “domino effect”, we expect that innovation will lead to different projects within the Mid-Market in a future stage. This innovation will also have further impact on operational cost. For the most of the companies, implementing an ERP was the only solution considered to achieve the here above results. Point solutions or own development were quickly out of scope. “It was not realistic to develop and implement our own solution considering the necessary time to market and available resources.” “The main driver for an ERP was enhancing control & reporting”. “The solution offered numerous functionalities, was used by a large number of companies in our sector, there was a large pool of available consultants with good knowledge of our sector and related processes”.

13

2.4 Decision and selection process The CFO is very often the ultimate decision-taker for the launch of the ERP project; but the CEO has also been involved in this process by the quasi totality of the respondents, illustrating the growing importance of ERP in the Mid-Market, where the focus goes beyond the support of the financial flows. Apart from top executives, an SAP project involves business and IT managers. We see that the following departments are often involved: purchasing, logistics, warehouse, finance, sales and IT, subject to the scope of the project. The business is involved from the beginning of the project, by building up the business case and designing the to-be processes. In 25% of the cases, this process was supported by an external partner.

12,5%

12,5%

12,5%

37,5%

37,5%

62,5%

75%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Blue print high

level

RFI implementator

RFP implementator

Short list package

(RFI)

References

Software package

selection (RFP)

Demo

Figure 6: This figure shows the percentage of the respondents who used a particular selection process.

The nature of an ERP project is such that it is, rightly, treated as a full fledged investment and represents a strategic choice. There is a large variety of the different steps that can be undertaken when starting an ERP project:

� Separate the choice of the package from the choice of the implementer

� Go through a RFI/RFP process

� Request for a tailored demo and references in the same sector We have found that the software and the implementer are often selected at the same time in Mid-Market companies. For those companies, one-stop shopping is more critical as they do not have the necessary resources available to deal with several parties and do not want to manage this risk. This gives the companies the opportunity to evaluate the business expertise of the different intervening parties. Depending on the chosen steps, the selection process of the respondents varied from 3 to 12 months. According to SAP/IBM experience, this is mainly related to the level of

14

maturity within the company towards the ERP concept and also reflects the variety of goals that companies want to achieve in this selection process:

� Making sure all the involved parties (software, implementer, different business units in the organisation) understand the core challenges of their company

� Start thinking end-to-end

� Identify and commit all key resources (all champions) and ensure involvement of the various departments

� Define the right scope

� Ensure that the required investment is in line with the available budget

� Start the change management process

� Get intimacy with the involved parties

� …

One should consider the selection process itself as an integrated part of the whole project. From our experience, the main reasons for failure illustrated on the left do already apply in the selection process. The companies that are already “ERP-mature” experience shorter selection process as most of the risks are mitigated from the beginning. While all those factors are important, it is important to keep the right balance between the selection process itself and the actual side goals of the process (easier acceptance, process re-design, …). One has always to remember that the selection process represents an important investment. There must be a clear scope management during this phase to prevent starting the blueprint/design while the software has not been selected yet. Complete requirements are necessary but should not be detailed during the selection phase.

Source: Standish Group

Why projects fail?

1. Incomplete requirements 13,1%

2. Lack of user involvement 12,4%

3. Lack of resources 10,6%

4. Unrealistic expectations 9,9%

5. Lack of executive support 9,3%

6. Changing requirements 8,7%

7. Lack of planning 8,1%

8. Didn't need any longer 7,5%

9.Lack of IT management 5,8%

10. Technology illiteracy 4,3%

15

2.5 Selection criteria Selection criteria to implement an ERP: Selection Importance/Actual Performance

4,3

6,1

6,3

8,1

8,5

2

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

International Capabilities

Technology

Ease of Use

Cost

Vendor viability

Match to functional Requirements

Selection Importance

Figure 7: This figure shows the importance that the respondents gave to the corresponding criteria before the implementation of the ERP. The values give the mean importance of all the respondents (maximum being 10).

Companies were asked to detail and give the order of importance of the criteria that they applied to the selection of the ERP package itself, as well as to give the rating that SAP achieved for each of the selected criteria (maximum ten points per criteria)

� Match to functional requirements is considered as the most important criteria, nearly like a prerequisite element. It encompasses various aspects, from the completeness of the solution to the depth of the most important processes. Some actors also did focus on the vertical key processes, next to the classical backend support (financial, logistics, procurement, …). This element was given the highest score by the majority of the respondents. When looking at the actual SAP performance vs. the selection criteria, SAP scores quite high (8.5/10). “Very broad functionalities” “The board wanted an ERP system, and SAP was the only provider of a circulation system integrated in an ERP system.”

� Vendor viability was also pointed out as a quite important criterion; it can be understood as the richness of services provided, number of references, ability to support locally and being a long-term partner. The life-cycle of an ERP solution ranging between 5 to 10 years, it is not surprising that vendor viability is a key selection criterion. This importance of this criterion increasingly goes up as we observe the consolidation in the ERP world or financial instability of some key actors. There, SAP obtains a rating of 9/10 as an average. This is the highest score of SAP in the proposed category and reflects the perception of SAP as being a safe harbour.

16

“SAP is the clear number 1 in Europe and proposes us a solid local partner for the implementation”

� Cost ranks third (6.4/10). It includes: ERP licenses, external implementation

costs, integration services, hardware and network, the cost of future maintenance as well as recurring operational costs, but excluded the cost of internal resources. Actual SAP performance on cost is judged as average by the respondents. But it must be noted that external costs for the implementation and evolution represent by far the largest cost item (60% to 70%) as mentioned by several respondents. This is in line with data available at IBM and SAP.

� Ease of use is defined as user interface (look & feel, ergonomics, configuration

and user setup), business rules flexibility and management, workflow capabilities and ability for users to create reports and analyse data. This criterion was similarly ranked to cost. Ease of use importance varies depending on the level of comfort and knowledge with the different ERP systems proposed (e.g. an IT Team will most likely have more time to be acquainted with the solution prior to the demo). Actual SAP performance on this criterion is rather average (6.1/10). One can expect that SAP will score better in the future as new technologies (web interfaces, portals) emerge, work is done around ergonomics, and also as the attention given by the implementer to the ease of use concept goes up. We feel that this average score is mainly caused by the wealth of functionalities available in SAP, and that more time is spent on demonstrating as much of the functionality as possible. The balance should be made between actual functionality vs. “good looks”.

� Astonishingly, international capabilities were perceived as the lowest criterion

decision: when we look at the profile of the respondents they are already present in four countries as an average; this implies to support local accounting rules and others specific legal requests. We thus think that there was some misunderstanding in perceiving the different dimensions in the international capabilities criterion. For the ones who evaluated these criteria, SAP was scoring quite high.

� One respondent added the criterion “compliance”. This in line with a clear

emergence of various regulation requirements. These also apply to Mid-Market companies that are already quoted on public markets or are considering joining these markets. Such regulations can be on Accounting and Financial functions (IFRS, USGAAP, IAS and ultimately SOX), or core business ones (FDA, ISO, Environmental, …).

In hindsight, the respondents pointed out a few additional criteria that they would have liked to consider during the selection process or for the implementation itself:

� Technology: convince the business that technology needs a little more weight. For instance one respondent mentioned that the underlying software technology should allow a growing number of transactions following the growth of the business. This was one of the main reasons why this respondent is moving parts of their current ERP system to SAP.

� Flexibility: this is in line with the growing need for businesses to be able to adapt to ever changing business conditions and models (growing importance of the shift from products to services, externalisation of non-core functions, delocalisation).

17

� Reporting: it must be a particular attention point in the selection process as it can have a strong financial impact on the project. For instance, one interviewed company added 5% to their initial budget in order to cover their needs.

� Data gathering and cleansing tools: spending more time in the selection process in assessing available tools and methodologies/experience in this area is one of the elements that could speed up the implementation project and that should have been considered from the beginning in the selection criteria.

The number of packages considered for selection ranged between 1 and 29. This number is dependent on the maturity of the sponsor/stakeholders towards the ERP concept and the solutions available on the market, as well as the side goals of the decision process (increase awareness of the ERP concept, acceptance of new ways of working, …).

It is interesting to note that in the case that another package had a close score to SAP, the uncertainty about the future (evolution) of the other solution (due to a merge or buy-out of the editor) was the clear final differentiator. “We did score SAP and one other major software provider similarly (89 & 90%) but eventually decided for SAP because of the uncertain future of the other party.” This comment also reflects the importance of the perennity of the complete solution. Another respondent did not originally consider SAP in their selection because of the price, but after further investigation into the required functionality, it was put back in the shortlist.

18

2.6 Scope of the SAP project There is unanimity between all respondents that SAP is synonymous with integration. It is therefore not surprising that they did consider a large scope from the beginning either phased or not. As number two, they also mention that they called upon the best practice concept (vertical or not). Some of the respondents also pointed out the high cost and high effort to grasp the whole benefits of an ERP project. “Best Practices for integrated business Processes” “Integration, Standard solution for Business Process, Enhanced reporting & controlling, High cost & effort on implementation” Functional scope of the SAP project

13%

88% 88%

38%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Backend Core Application

Business

HR New

dimensions

Figure 8: This figure shows which SAP modules have been implemented by the respondents. The percentages indicate that x% of the respondents implemented the corresponding module.

• Not surprisingly the ERP implementation was for almost all of the respondents focusing on the back-end processes: financing, controlling, logistics, warehouse management and sales. This is also in line with the operational efficiency the companies wanted to achieve.

• Next to the back-end processes the majority of them also decided to support their core processes. The modules they implemented varied then according to their business (or PS, or PM, or Media,…).

� Gradual implementation was chosen by half of the companies, in line with available resources and to the risk management they valued.

� Typical of the Belgium market, most of the companies have not implemented HR and are still relying on the Application Service Provider platform (ASP) (Social Secretariat).

19

� Only one company planned from the beginning the implementation of a what is called a “new dimension” product in the SAP product line (CRM, SCM, PLM, SCM). The others are still stabilizing their ERP scope.

Against our initial perception, we do not see a rule to implement back-end functionality first followed by core business processes support. This is reinforcing our view that it will be more and more possible to break down large SAP projects into smaller and manageable parts. This is supported by technology (SOA), and responds to the increasing need of obtaining Return on Investment (reduction of payback period, need to fund new projects, risk reduction). The total budget mentioned by the respondents for the ERP implementation varied between 250k€ and 2,5M€. This is in line with the diversity of the scope of the implementations: from 8 employees using the implemented ERP to 450, from back-end processes to a complete end-to-end processes scope (back-end + core + reporting + HR). This budget includes the software licenses, hardware required and external consultancy (in most of the cases needed internal resources for the business process reengineering is not included). Based on our experiences, the two main items in cost expenditures are:

� The external consultancy that comes to more than 50% of the total external costs. It was also the case for the companies which shared with us the itemization subdivision of their costs.

� The internal effort consists in IT involvement and the key users from each department of the business. It should also take into account the business process reengineering. According to our Best Practices, internal effort should be comparable to the external consultancy workload, especially for change management aspect.

“We did foresee 8 key users being full time dedicated in the blueprint and ending by 30% involvement.” It is interesting to note that very few companies can extract the benefits of the wealth of information that is now made available through the system. Some of the respondents are mentioning that they are clearly preparing the next steps to extend the scope to reporting. In our experience, education cost (participants time not included) is reaching 5 to 8% of the total implementation cost in the mode of a blended learning (mixed of traditional classroom, ongoing weekly support of key-users, e-learning with traditional manuals). “Reporting cost was under valued. Eventually we added a new track for reporting; this has come to 5% of the total cost.” Number of users were quite different depending of the scope of the companies (extension or not, new dimension or not, maturity to the IT of the company). As an average, number of users comes to 17% of the number of employees. Cost per user is much more substantial for smaller companies, due to the lack of economy of scales, the fixed costs that stay valid regardless the size of the company (time needed to analyse the processes, technology set up, …) and the relative importance of the project team effort in small companies. As a result, ERP investment should be considered as an enabler platform for growth. This should be translated into the initial decision criteria for ERP choice: focus must not only be on functional mapping of the needs but also must take into consideration potential and willingness of the top management to sustain major growth.

20

For all of the respondents, it was their first SAP implementation. This is in line with the maturity of the Mid-Market companies towards ERP concept. One can expect that some of these companies will start a second wave, consisting in adding processes to their current scope. This second wave could be launched when the first one is completely stabilised and returns (partly) achieved. They would likewise follow the example of larger companies who rarely go for a “big bang” implementation approach but rather a phased one.

21

2.7 SAP evolution We asked respondents to give us their opinion on the evolution of SAP. From the answers we have received, there is a clear recognition of the fact that SAP has heavily invested in enhancing the usability of their system. This is an attention point in the implementation project itself (getting rid of unused tabs/fields, hide unnecessary transaction shortcuts, correct mapping of roles and responsibilities in the system,…). It is also clearly recognised that SAP has heavily focused on radical technology shifts (open architecture, SOA, J2EE,…), and that industry solutions have been integrated in the standard package.

Some of the respondents pondered however the interest of the new dimensions in supporting their core business and the evolution of it. “Is CRM interesting for us?” Next to the relevance comes the complexity of implementing these new innovative solutions for small companies. Indeed they are still perceived at too complex, too rich, and therefore too expensive at this stage. They do not exclude considering them in a further stage when pre-packaged solutions will be available. Also their focus still is on stabilising their current implementation and reaping the planned benefits from it.

In parallel to the response above, the respondents had the same opinion about the availability of advanced services related to ERP or others (hosting, outsourcing, storage, and application service provider). Those are very interesting concepts, but they do not foresee the need to make use of them in the near future, as they would not feel that they could fully profit from it. Yet a respondent considered them as a “good evolution to improve IT cost transparency and lower TCO.”

22

2.8 SAP Implementation and integration

2.8.1 Achieved Schedule – Budget – Scope

Most of the respondents implemented SAP within a six to twelve month timeframe. Many factors can explain such a reasonable timeframe:

� Higher professionalism of the implementers, leveraging experiences from past implementations on the various aspects of a project (project management, Business Process Review, knowledge of the package itself, change management, …).

� Stronger methodology available: short and well-defined milestones, sequenced by key deliverables, well-described roles and responsibilities, available tools and accelerators.

� Maturity within the organisation towards the ERP implementation: leverage of the experience of peers, importance of change management, involvement of key sponsors, frozen scope, …

One can expect pre-packaged solutions to further shorten implementation times. In these solutions, a number of processes are indeed already pre-defined according to standard and industry best practices.

It is important to note that, unlike commonly believed, most of the projects were delivered on time or with a slight deviation (less than 10%). Use of proper planning and smaller milestones linked to each other, are key to identify potential issues and their cause and therefore to allow for rapid and appropriate reaction. These are key success factors to achieve a project on time and are recognized as major elements of standard project methodologies.

Figure 9: Timeframe of SAP implementation

Figure 10: Percentage of delay for the implementation

< 6 months

6 - 9 months

9 - 12 months

≥ 12 months

10 - 30 %

≥ 30%

0 - 10 %

23

To further break SAP implementation myths, 60% of the respondents did stay within budget limits or with a slight deviation (10%). Interestingly, the respondents who did not stay on their budget are amongst the largest companies interviewed that were early adopters in their approach of implementing vertical niche solutions. One can expect now the usual learning curve to allow for a substantial reduction in the cost (around 60 to 80% of their total SAP implementation budget) and timeframe of that sort of implementation.

Another element that explains that initial schedule and budget were respected is the minimal change in the original scope that companies have accepted. Indeed, only half of the respondents mentioned some minor deviation of scope (5%):

� some users were asked to make concessions on some key processes,

� the go-live of an important block of reporting functionality was postponed to meet the foreseen starting date.

In our experience, timeframe and budget are objective and well-measured data, and any deviation is strictly controlled. Scope is by far more subjective and is subject to slight evolution mainly during blueprint phase and along the realisation phase. It also greatly depends on the eagerness of each one of the key users to defend their own view of the required scope. Eventually, it is one of the main tasks of the project manager and of the steering committee to arbitrate and list the priorities on this subject. It is the project variable that is ultimately adapted to respect the agreed planning.

Figure 11: Percentage of difference between the planned and real budget

≥ 30 %

10 - 30 %0 - 10 %

24

2.8.2 Project success factors

Project success factors are linked to the internal organization and reflect a high level of readiness. All of them must be considered from the very start of the project and, as mentioned earlier, even in the selection phase. But they need constant attention during the whole duration of the project.

“We made use of existing regular business meetings to keep the management updated on the progress and keep their focus on deciding on key issues.” It is interesting to note that all respondents dedicated key users per domain. Key users must be knowledgeable, rely on a strong network within the company, be appropriately empowered and broadly recognised. All projects should make use of a set of methodologies (PMI, ASAP …), because they ensure that all the success factors listed above are taken into account all along the implementation project.

Source: Standish Group

Those methodologies are built around activities, deliverables, work breakdown structures, roles and responsibilities … The definition of these elements in the current ERP implementation project methodologies do focus on key success factors.

As an example, high level representation of key deliverables and milestones as proposed in the ASAP methodology:

End-users Training MaterialEnd-users Training Material

TechnicalTechnical

FunctionalFunctional

Project Project Project Project ApproachApproachApproachApproach

High Level

Technical

Blueprint

High Level

Technical

Blueprint

Detailed

Technical

Blueprint

Detailed

Technical

Blueprint

Baseline

Configuration

Baseline

Configuration

FinalConfiguration

Final

Configuration

Cut-over to

Productive

Environment

Cut-over to

Productive

Environment

End-users Training End-users Training

Volume &

stress

Testing

Volume &

stress

Testing

Helpdesk PreparationHelpdesk PreparationScenario &Integration

Testing

Scenario &

Integration

Testing

KickoffKickoff Go-LiveGo-Live

Unit

Testing

Unit

Testing

Quality ReviewQuality Review Quality ReviewQuality Review Quality ReviewQuality ReviewQuality ReviewQuality Review

FicheReview

Fiche

ReviewEnd-users ProceduresEnd-users Procedures CommunicationCommunication

InitialProject

Plan

Initial

Project

Plan

ProjectCharter

Project

Charter

Go Live

Plan

Go Live

Plan

1.1 1.2

1.3 4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5 4.6

FunctionalBlueprint

Functional

Blueprint2.1

FunctionalBlueprint

Functional

Blueprint2.1

Initial Process (Re)designInitial Process (Re)design2.2Initial Process (Re)designInitial Process (Re)design2.2

2.4

Detailed

Process

(Re)design

Detailed

Process

(Re)design3.3

Detailed

Process

(Re)design

Detailed

Process

(Re)design3.3

3.6

3.5

3.7

3.8

3.9

3.1

MaintenanceMaintenance

OperationalOperational3.2

Support to End-usersSupport to End-users5.1

Technical SupportTechnical Support5.2

Data Model Data Model 2.3Data Model Data Model 2.3

DetailedProject

Plan

Detailed

Project

Plan3.4

Why projects succeed?

1. User involvement 15,9%

2. Execute management support 13,2%

3. Clear requirements 13,0%

4. Proper planning 9,6%

5. Realistic expectations 8,2%

6. Smaller milestones 7,7%

7. Competent staff 7,2%

8. Ownership 5,3%

9.Clear vision/objectives 2,8%

10. Hard work 2,4%

25

2.8.3 Change management

In half of the cases, the project was coupled with business process reengineering (BPR) initiative. In our eyes, this approach leads to the best return; especially for the companies of a critical size that already implemented structured processes into their former information systems. One can expect that the required effort for change management is higher with this approach:

� The middle management has to align and agree on the end-to-end processes.

� Middle management must endorse new ways of working

� The process that the users are responsible for is modified / enriched

� New competencies must be acquired by users in the new processes For the smallest companies of our panel, the processes are often not yet formally described as such and are relying more on informal ways. In that case, a BPR is not necessary. This is in line with our experiences where these implementations made benefit from the best practices the editor/ implementers have defined with a positive impact on the needed timeframe and related budget. Note that the reduced cost of the implementation is offset by the small number of users and therefore the limited economy of scales those companies could expect from the implementation. In both cases (BPR or not), the respondents we get in this survey provided some mixed feedback on the user acceptance. “All users were interested and open. There was a strong evolution from interrogative to acceptance.” “Acceptance was positive but, under economical and market pressure the company was obliged to transform itself.” The users have to become more familiar with the ergonomic interface of the new tools. Training is of course of key importance, as it is demonstrated by one respondent. “Some resistance but not everyone has been trained.” Different practices can be here considered to increase the user acceptance:

� Train the trainer concept

� Use of the concept of presenting the list of allowed transactions in appropriate sequences

� Tailored, to the point, documentation per user

� Periodic presence of the project team during the weeks following the go live

26

2.8.4 Implementation rating

75%

63%

63%

56%

56%

31%

19%

13%

13%

0%88%

75%

75%

69%

56%

31%

31%

25%

25%

13%Executive management support

User involvement

Ownership

Clear vision/objectives

Clear requirements

Competent staff

Smaller milestones

Realistic expectations

Proper planning

Hard work

easier

heavier

Figure 12: This figure shows if the implementation was easier or heavier than planned for the mentioned criteria. The percentages indicate that the corresponding point was considered easier or heavier by x% of the respondents.

The most underestimated key element was the constant effort needed from the project team. In many cases, the project team members are not fully dedicated to the project and are sharing their time with daily operational tasks. This leads to overwork and conflict in priorities. There must be a clear recognition of the additional effort of the project team by the management and we recommend that appropriate rewards should be foreseen. Those rewards can be financial related or linked to the career path. One can also make use of simple means like team event, dinner, celebration to maintain the motivation. Realistic expectations, smaller milestones and proper planning are linked together. The respondents’ answers (heavier than foreseen) highlight the complexity of this type of project. A strong evolution has been achieved as of the methodologies and tools available to increase the mastering of the project (PMI, ASAP methodology, solution manager,…). These tools and methodologies must be tailored according to the needs. Executive management support, user involvement and ownership were not experienced heavier than foreseen by the respondents. According to us, there are different reasons:

� Clear focus from the beginning of the project as it was expected to be quite difficult to obtain

� The entrepreneurship behaviour in Mid-Market business increases the involvement and the ownership in the resolution of the key issues

� The sense of belonging to the company allows mobilising key people in the most efficient way

27

3 Expected Benefits and success criteria for the project

3.1 Expected vs. achieved benefits

Four categories of benefits were presented to the respondents:

� Increase shareholder value

� Improve competitiveness

� Lower risk

� Enhance operational efficiency These categories correspond to the business values outlined in IBM’s Express Value Creation methodology. Express Value Creation is aimed at helping C-level executives to prioritize and align IT investments - to realize values that matter the most in reaching key business objectives – short and long term, and is centred around delivering business value through core strategy & change capabilities. There is a clear tendency for nearly all the respondents to focus on “enhancing

operational efficiency” 2

. This category gets nearly 50% on the relative importance.

“Enhance operational efficiency” also gets the double of the respondent attention in comparison with the next ranked category that is “Lower risk”. (nearly 25% on the relative importance) “Increase shareholder value” gets an intermediate relative attention and ranked 3. When looking in details in the sub-elements of this category, the following 2 elements get a score of 60% on the relative importance:

� Reduce cost of goods sold

� Reduce sales and administration costs

It clearly illustrates the importance given to achieving a better cost efficiency rather than acting on the different elements increasing the revenue (Volume optimisation and Price optimisation). Furthermore, these sub-elements are mainly the results of actions belonging to the category “enhancing operational efficiency”: For instance, improve material logistics and services (that belong to category “enhancing operational efficiency “) have direct impact on cost of the goods sold (that belong to category “increase shareholder value.) “Thanks to the SAP implementation we did reduce our IT personal budget by 50%. It allowed us to free up 2 IT dedicated persons.” The implementation of SAP in our warehouse and the linked business process reengineering allowed us to achieve a 25% of productivity win, while our revenue increased by 20% in the same period.” “Improve competitiveness” ranked the last category as a minority of respondents focused on it in term of expected importance. Therefore, it only achieved 10% on the relative importance. It is interesting to note that these respondents valued this category as the

2 The total score of “enhancing operational efficiency” divided by the sum of the

importance of the elements of all the categories

28

second after the operational efficiency. These companies have very low margins and do business in a very competitive environment. “Implementing SAP allowed us to achieve a better ATP (availability to promise)”. Three elements are particularly mentioned by the respondents:

� Improve customer interaction, satisfaction and loyalty,

� Improve responsiveness,

� Faster time-to-market.

This shows the importance of the clear tangible short-term returns that companies want to achieve. The other three sub-elements (Strengthen innovation, Improve brand awareness, Improve partner and relationship collaboration) could be considered more as long term plan to improve competitiveness. These three sub-elements together only get 15% of relative importance. One can stress out that a side effect of the ERP project is to break down the departmental silos within the companies. As a result, some respondents highlighted as benefits reached through the project their increased ability to innovate in term of products and go to market (increased collaborative models like partnership, alliances,…) We focus our analysis on the two categories that together gathered about 80%:in terms of relative importance:

� Enhance operational efficiency

� Lower risk

3.1.1 Enhance operational efficiency

16

29

23

8

13

22

14

29

24

8

16

21

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Improve

development and

production

Improve logistics,

materials and

services

Improve corporate

services

Improve human

capital

management

Improve capital

management

Improve data

management

Importance

Benefit met

Figure 13: This figure shows 1) the importance that the respondents gave to some operational efficiency benefits they expected to get with SAP and 2) the extent to which the expected benefits were met. They had the possibility to rate each point from 0 to 5 (5 being most important). The values in the figure are the sum over all the respondents (maximum being 40).

29

There is a clear correlation between the importance of the sub-elements mentioned and the benefits met. One can interpret this strong correlation as one way of measuring the success of the project. We will further come back on it in the conclusion. The importance of elements is spread more or less equally between the different possible assets, being fixed ones, financial and informational. Human capital is largely below the average.

When assessing the benefits met, it has to be mentioned that most of the respondents had no clear KPI’s baseline. There are different reasons explaining this lack of evolution in the indicators:

� No wide consensus on the elements to be measured and followed up

� Initial measure of the major indicators were not available

� Target values for the selected criteria are not necessarily assigned “It is difficult to evaluate the impact of the software implementation through KPI’s because of external factors that can influence them and that are out of reach of the project team.” Nevertheless, the set up of the required indicators are part of the project. They are put in place as a result of the implementation and are used to better manage the evolution of the corresponding business units. Ideally, they must include some indicators that reflect the external factors impacting the baseline of the business. Including those external factors in the KPI’s analysis allows the management to better assess the return of the different actions undertaken in order to improve the overall efficiency. As an example, an increase in the customer orders to be processed will have immediate impact on the cost of sales indicators which does not mean that the sales process efficiency is decreasing. “We do monthly follow, through KPI’s, replenishment, intakes, customer deliveries and returns.” According to their level of maturity, customers are producing various numbers of KPI’s. In most of the cases, they are enriching the indicator quality and quantity following the demands of their business lines and departments. As an example, one respondent provided us a dashboard of more than 15 indicators that are followed up for its inventory.

30

3.1.2 Lower risk

16

11

17

10

8

19

11

22

18

13

0

5

10

15

20

25

Optimize intelligence Optimize regulation

compliance

Improve risk planning Improve risk management Improve business

recovery

Importance

Benef it met

Figure 14: This figure shows 1) the importance that the respondents gave to some risk related benefits they expected to meet with SAP and 2) the extent to which the expected benefits were met. They had the possibility to rate each point from 0 to 5 (5 being most important). The values in the figure are the sum over all the respondents (maximum being 40).

From the answers it appears that the benefits met are slightly above the expectations. This is almost the case for all of the 5 sub-elements that are touching the whole company:

� Financial and accounting department regulation compliance like SOX, IFRS, DIMONA

� R&D and production departments: regulation compliance like FDA, ISO

� Management of the company: risk management and risk planning

� All departments and especially IT: Business recovery and optimise intelligence One can expect from the ERP implementation that the companies clearly improved their business resilience (ability to guarantee the continuity and integrity of the business processes should major and unexpected changes occur). This is of utmost importance for stock listed companies or for the ones that are considering this move. Risk management and risk planning are more and more on the top of the agenda of the deciders for several reasons:

� Increased versatility of the customers

� Emergence of new players

� Possible new channels like partners, alliances, internet,…

� Impact of globalization as of the geographical spread

� Possible substitute products

� Reduced product and services life cycle All of these elements force the companies to collect the needed information quicker and to articulate their data in a structured way. The next challenges are now to better use the

31

huge bench of information gathered through the implemented transactional system. This will allow for quick and sound decisions. “Optimise intelligence “has to be understood in this context and much probably in our eyes, is one of the main dimension to be developed in the next future. This item is often under estimated in the initial budget and may vary between 5 to 10 % of the total ERP budget. One can consider this as the top of the iceberg visible for the management and representing their prime interest. This is the point where the true value of the ERP implementation is seized.

32

3.2 Success criteria Internal satisfaction was the main criterion that companies used to evaluate the success of ERP implementation. Depending on the respondents, this criterion was informal or established in a well structured way. “We did use 12 criteria (user friendliness, standard implementation, quality of the input, quality of the output, efficiency realised by users,…) that all 5 internal departments were monthly evaluating in rates from 1 to 4 (1: to improve; 4: above expectation). Our goal was to get at least a rating 3 for the 60 criteria before Go-Live.” According to us, establishing a structured way for measuring the success brings the following advantages:

� Clear monitoring on the evolution towards satisfaction

� Allow to keep people focusing on the project

� Prevent misunderstanding and emotional reactions when facing issues or temporarily troubles

� Allow to maintain the objectivity of the success criteria and the final results achieved

Only 50 % of the respondents did calculate a financial ROI that has been used to evaluate the success of the project. In our view, the importance of the ROI is increasing as of the data from past experiences are made available and as the necessity to evaluate the financial investment. As an average, the respondents were largely satisfied and estimated that their project was quite successful. “We will give a success rate of 75% with the current version implemented. There are significant improvements we hope to achieve with the upgrade in 2007.” “We significantly achieved reducing the risk level associated with the performance of our former information system.” “Allowed us to implement Best Practices in business processes.” Nevertheless, one respondent encountered significant issues as of the industry specific vertical implementation: more than 70% of the effort were dedicated to the specific processes that were not yet completely supported by the standard SAP industry solution. To compensate this, they had to consider some specific developments that were quite heavy.

.

33

4 Conclusion: It was clearly pointed out by the respondents that ERP investments imply the involvement of the whole company and get the top management attention, particularly in the Mid-Market. There are numerous drivers leading to the decision of an ERP project. As an average, the 6 mentioned drivers are spread between IT, operational and strategic business objectives. ERP scope is not always limited to back-end support functions but more and more covers vertical core business processes. We even encountered companies prioritising their investment in the most critical core processes. Selection process and duration vary quite substantially depending on the goals that the project team wants to achieve. It is of primary importance to take advantage of the selection process in order to ensure the largest needed user acceptance. This reflects somehow the maturity of the organisation towards this cross departmental initiative. Criteria used in the selection process are encompassing (in higher order of importance) functionalities, viability of the solution, total cost of ownership and ease of use. Higher professionalism of the different actors, large number of shared experiences, strong methodologies, reduced functional software complexity and enhanced project management tools are breaking down the old ERP myths: Too large, too complex, too expensive,…… Our respondents mainly achieved their objectives in terms of timing, budget and scope. Nevertheless, these successes imply strong user involvement and even harder team work than foreseen.

There is a correlation between the size of the company and the percentage of the overall turnover dedicated to IT investment. This also reflects the increasing role that IT is playing in supporting the business strategy of the largest Mid-Market companies we have interviewed. In line with this, nearly half of the respondents are investing more than 3 percent of their revenues in advanced transactional solutions and/or in building up SOA3 architecture to

increase their agility and responsiveness. For limited sized companies in the panel of the respondents, there is a quite substantial “entry ticket” to the ERP. These companies considered this very large investment as a platform to sustain their growth in the future and also likewise reduce the relative cost per users. Often, the SAP implementation is aimed to be depreciated in 7 to 10 years. Benefits achieved by our respondents are mainly focusing on enhancing operational efficiency. This optimisation is translated in a better use of the various assets in the company being financial, fixed or informational. Lowering risks is also of main importance in terms of expected benefits. This is particularly true in the ever increasing changing world that the companies are facing today. Many companies experience difficulties in measuring the net return of their investment because of the lack of baseline KPI’s, exogenous factors impacting the business environment and a focus on the short term tangible items. We expect a next move in treating and analysing the information available through the transactional system in order

3 Cfr page n° 7 – IT Thinking

34

to better measure the return of the IT investment and to allow quicker and sounder reactions to market changes. Together with our respondents, we do also expect that innovative solutions (collaboration platforms with ecosystem, CRM transactional system,…) will be considered by the smaller Mid-Market companies (100 to 300 M€ turnover) in the next future. In this context, current ERP implementation can be considered as the foundation for these innovative solutions. Several reasons will accelerate this acceptance: increasing internal IT competences, access to knowledgeable solution providers, better user friendliness interfaces and availability of pre-packaged solutions. All of these elements will reduce the total cost of ownership and will shorten the timeframe needed for implementation.

35

Table of figures

Figure 1: This figure shows the repartition of the respondents in different sectors. 5

Figure 2: This figure shows the importance of some key points in the business model. The values are

the mean of all the respondents (maximum being 10). 6

Figure 3: This figure shows the importance of some IT characteristics. The values are the mean of all

the respondents (maximum being 10). 7

Figure 4: This figure shows which IS elements existed in the respondent companies before the SAP

implementation. The percentages indicate that x% of the respondent had the referenced

elements. 9

Figure 5: This figure shows which criteria were taken into account by the respondents for

implementing an ERP package. The percentages indicate that the corresponding criterion has

been taken into account by x% of the respondents. 11

Figure 6: This figure shows which SAP modules have been implemented by the respondents. The

percentages indicate that x% of the respondents implemented the corresponding module. 18

Figure 7: This figure shows the percentage of the respondents who used a particular selection

process. 13

Figure 8: This figure shows the importance that the respondents gave to the corresponding criteria

before the implementation of the ERP. The values give the mean importance of all the

respondents (maximum being 10). 15

Figure 12: This figure shows if the implementation was easier or heavier than planned for the

mentionned criteria. The percentages indicate that the corresponding point was considered

easier or heavier by x% of the respondents. 26

Figure 13: This figure shows 1) the importance that the respondents gave to some operational

efficiency benefits they expected to get with SAP and 2) the extent to which the expected

benefits were met. They had the possibility to rate each point from 0 to 5 (5 being most

important). The values in the figure are the sum over all the respondents (maximum being 40). 28

Figure 14: This figure shows 1) the importance that the respondents gave to some risk related

benefits they expected to meet with SAP and 2) the extent to which the expected benefits were

met. They had the possibility to rate each point from 0 to 5 (5 being most important). The values

in the figure are the sum over all the respondents (maximum being 40). 30

36

Contacts

SAP Belgium Chaussée de la Hulpe / Terhulpsestwg. 166 1170 Brussels SAP Contact Point: Cédric Mulier Tel: +32/(0)486.13.66.44 cedric.mulier@sap.com

IBM Belgium Avenue du Bourgetlaan, 42 1130 Brussels IBM Contact Point: Jean-Bernard Dumont Tel: +32/(0)477.78.27.56 jean-bernard.dumont@be.ibm.com