Gaps

How to avoid problems during the implementation resulting from not identifying the local needs? How to find and properly identify the differences between the SAP template system for the corporation and local legal and business needs? The Fit & Gap analysis may be helpful – a standard element of BCC Go Forward methodology for projects of rollout type.

Many Polish companies face the challenge of implementing the standard SAP system operating in a corporation. Increasingly, they are not only the recipient of the system used in the international headquarters of the corporation, but they are the owner of the template system (regardless of the fact, whether they are original Polish companies or the Polish departments of the international corporations).

The implementation of such a project is an organizational and communication challenge both for the parent company and for the local company, particularly if both companies are located in different countries. The parent company is interested in the biggest possible adaptation of the local company to the corporation processes, above all due to the requirement of process unification in accordance with the best practices operating in the company.

The second essential aspect is also the optimization of the implementation, and hence its costs. But regardless of how much the parent company would like to see the template as a consistent entirety, two types of differences will occur:

• Legal Gaps – specific legal regulations, particularly in the financial, sales and human resources area (e.g. correction invoice in Poland and credit/debit memo in Germany);
• the differences in the local business process (local gaps) – particular companies may have own business processes that do not appear in the template (e.g. the unique production process in the corporation) or other specific requirements not resulting directly from the legal regulations, but critical for the business activity (e.g. special discount system for the key customer who has a large share in the company’s turnover).

Many people participating in the project believe that each difference will cause the increase of the implementation budget. However, it does not have to be the case. The awareness of the difference does not automatically mean that it has to be implemented in the system.However, it means the possibility of selecting the method of its processing:

• implementation in SAP system,
• leaving in the external system,
• manual processing outside the IT system or organizational change that eliminates the given requirement,

and presentation of the selected method to the persons from the local company.The experience shows that such an attitude builds the confidence in the new system (“my needs are not ignored”) that essentially influences the engagement of the persons from the local companies into subsequent project activities.

Prior the Fit & Gap analysis, the parent company should determine which areas of the system will be subject to the analysis.It depends above all on the business profile of the local company