Marissa T.

Grutas

III-A-BSBA-SM

REFLECTION PAPER

On this video, Eric Kimberly which is the founder and CEO of third stage
consulting shares insight about the German grocery retailer that tried to implement SAP
and spent 500M Euros ($580M USD) on their project. He discussed on the failures and
shares his knowledge and ideas when a business does not follow the implementation
best practices. He also gave five takeaways when implementing a system. (1)
Organizations are often unwilling to change the way they need to, in this statement I
believe change is important for any organization because, without change, businesses
would lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the ever-changing needs. (2)
Software customization can kill a project, according to Eric, too much
customization is often a symptom of not having a good enough organizational change
management strategy and plan in place, therefore before deciding to improve a
standard SAP system, a company must have to understand the accompanying
challenges and costs. Company also need to identify the reason why SAP development
and customization is necessary. (3) Choosing the best SAP system integrator is
important, a successful SAP implementation is largely a result of the system integrator
that a company choose. (4) The trickle-down effect of executive misalignment is
very powerful, here, the company will remain misaligned as there is no clear direction
to follow and lastly, SAP software works, it allows businesses to manage financial
transactions, product life cycles and supply chain activities. So these are the five
takeaways that Eric Kimberly discussed. A lot of company will be able to adapt this as
their reference or guide in the future.