The first core team meeting
During our first core team meeting, we set standards and discussed the implementation plan. Each team member was given his or her role:
- I was responsible for the provision of technical advice and meeting minutes.
- The accountant's role was not immediate, but he was scheduled to create the chart of accounts and back-office procedures.
- The materials manager was responsible for capturing the existing business processes and for recording any new business processes required.
- The HR manager's role was also not immediate, but she was brought on board early enough to ensure proper understanding of the exercise, so that she could begin developing a training plan. Lack of training is one of the most common failure points of a new implementation.
- The consultant defined his role as the facilitator.
The first exercise involved data gathering from each functional business unit. The materials manager, the consultant, and I were responsible for this task.
The consultant distributed a questionnaire for review and explained some basic principles of systems analysis. We planned to distribute the questionnaires to each department's manager and set up meetings with key members and their managers. These meetings would allow us to gather all pertinent data to create the RFP.
The key questions were:
- What do you do at this company? What is the purpose of your job?
- What are the problems you're experiencing that affect the efficiency of your job?
- What information do you need to do your job properly?
- What form does the information come in? Can it be improved?
- Who/what department does your information come from? Is it delivered on time?
- What do you do with the information you receive?
- Is this an integral part of achieving your objective?
- What reports do you produce, and who are the users of these reports?
- Do you think users of your reports are satisfied with them? Are they always asking for additional information?
- What hardware/software do you use?
- Are you satisfied with the way that hardware/software improves your efficiency?
The information-gathering process
The materials manager distributed the questionnaire and a tentative project schedule. Managers were asked to meet with the materials manager to finalise meeting dates and to clarify questions that the questionnaire may have created. Forty out of almost 100 employees were to be interviewed for the process.
At the beginning of each meeting, the employees handed in their questionnaires and the consultant reviewed them. The consultant then asked the questions in a different format, to ensure that all bases were covered.
Our consultant demonstrated a unique approach. He asked: "What reports do you use and who are the users of these reports?" The consultant then drew a diagram, as shown in Figure A, and asked the employees to write the departments/business units that "constantly nagged them" for information in the rectangular blocks. Employees were asked to name the departments that they constantly visited to get information. These were marked in the decision-type boxes.
Employees were then asked to think of all the information that they needed from each department. This information was entered by each department's box. Employees were asked whether the information came on time, late, too late, or not at all, and what else they thought they needed from each department, but were unable to get, in other words, their wish list.
10%
8%
