On January 1, 2008 the SAP system for Dutch Lady Malaysia successfully went live. Since Malaysia was the last country in Asia to adopt SAP, now throughout Asia mSAP has been successfully introduced. Align stood at the heart of the implementation as project advisor, trainer and coach, applying Natural Excellence™ and Natural Excellence™ methodologies. The multinational dairy firm behind Dutch Lady Malaysia, Frisian Flag [Susu Bendera] Indonesia and Foremost Thailand has adopted Natural Excellence™ as their world standard for business and project practices.
In summary, the project had to select and implement one business software that would support the heart of the business operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The project was to be executed in a strict manner with high priority, and the business software was to be used without any modifications to the ERP standard.
Right from the very start in September 2003 Project @lign was executed according to high quality, yet with a strong focus on the human factor, both internal and external. The first phase of the project was used to capture the knowledge of the business team members and to translate it to regional best business practices. These practices were used to select the most appropriate business software and to set up this software in such a way that it would optimally support the business operations. At the same time regional best business practices were defined. The sharing and capturing of knowledge created a lot of energy and enthusiasm in the team. Via a series of workshops and meetings the knowledge and experiences were shared nwith the Management Teams in the countries. The entire setup and approach resulted in an optimal acceptance of the project team’s deliverables, and a Go was given by the Management Teams of the Operating Companies to continue with the subsequent implementations.
1 January 2005 SAP went smoothly live in Vietnam. In the meantime the project management had been asked by Headquarters to also implement Hong Kong and a decision was made to implement Hong Kong in parallel to Thailand. Since Hong Kong was not involved in the regional design and realization, the project management placed emphasis on the project preparation, including a readiness assessment and an implementation team preparation workshop. And even though a core element of the regional approach was to have the same business team members involved in the implementations as those who were involved in the regional design and realization, after the implementation of Vietnam it became increasingly difficult to do so. As a result increasingly the project preparation became critical, especially the human factor.
With a continuous focus on quality and the human factor all implementations in Asia were successfully completed. Since after the Hong Kong implementation was completed, the SAP system was also prepared for Vietnam Ha Nam, and in parallel with Malaysia the SAP system was implemented for Singapore, in total seven implementations were done. The setup of the Competence Centre in Malaysia
makes it eight.
During the execution of Project @lign also the cooperation among the several continents has improved dramatically. As a result many team members of Project @lign are and will be involved with the implementations in the Netherlands, Hungary and Greece. Every implementation in Asia was closely followed by Corporate ICT. In their role as external auditor they typically performed three audits per implementation. Their advice and input helped to keep the project management focused and aware of possible threats and risks associated to SAP implementations. Ultimately it was the cooperation of all parties that made Project @lign successful.
