White paper Capitalizing on Change Capitalizing on Change One Network Enterprises www.onenetwork.com
White paper Capitalizing on Change These big bang implementations take months and years to complete, making the risk to the business extremely high and the time to value very long. Change Management Change management is an inherent part of any software implementation. The idealist concept is that new business processes are desired and software solutions are used to support them. Unfortunately companies continually have to compromise on their solution due to their implementation approach and technology limitations. Traditional applications vendors utilize what is called a Waterfall approach to implementing their solutions. This approach has significant limitations to support desired change management and has proven to be very expensive during both the initial implementation and throughout the on going maintenance of the solution. The purpose of this paper is to lay out a more rapid approach to change management and solutions implementation with reduced risk, greater value, and lower cost of total ownership. What is a waterfall approach? A waterfall approach to software implementation is a methodology where all aspects of the solutions and how it is to be installed are determined before the implementation begins. This would include blueprinting of the required business processes and gaping the solution requirements against the existing business processes and technology. The required integration into 3rd party applications is also defined and scoped. Another name for this is the big bang approach. There are many challenges and few benefits to this approach. The timelines to full deployment of both the technology solutions and the new business processes are typically very long. These big bang implementations take months and years to complete, making the risk to the business extremely high and the time to value very long. The value of the entire project is often jeopardized because the blue printing that is done on the front end is often no longer valid by the time the solution is deployed. This is due to changes in business strategy, market conditions, or just based on findings discovered after the blue printing was completed. These types of projects are difficult to manage as they are often plagued by budgetary over runs and extensions to the deployment due dates. As a result, users lose focus and belief in the project and look for short cut opportunities to the detriment of the implementation. Lastly these projects are typically, if not almost always, based on the internal needs of a business and not focused on the collective needs of the value chain. As companies have outsourced their raw material supply, manufacturing, logistics, and often times sales operations the problem and opportunity moves away from internal operations to one of managing all the needs of the value chain, from the shelf to the supplier. This is frustrating knowing that the business is being put into turmoil and large amounts of capital are spent yet the results don t solve the real problem. With the advent of new technologies and the utilization of a Spiral process, cycles of learning, these long, costly, high risk projects focused only on internal needs can be converted to full value chain focused, low risk, rapid ROI projects.
white Paper Capitalizing on Change What is a Spiral Methodology? In a Spiral Methodology, change management and solutions are implemented, via short projects that drive incremental change to the business and the supporting technology. The methodology uses a cycles of learning approach where new concepts are rolled out quickly, their success measured, and next steps are defined. In theory, this approach will drive change incrementally with less risk while actually increasing the time to value and the success of the project. The problem with this approach has historically been that technology would not support this concept. The technology limitations were as follows: Embedded Business Processes. Most application solutions in the market today have embedded the process model in the database schema. This therefore reduces the ability for the application to easily map to unique or even variant models that may need to be supported by the business. This forces the business to either modify the application (huge cost and ongoing support issues) or further change their processes to conform to the limitations of the application. This increases cost, time and risk. Single System of Record. The integrated approach that vendors have taken when tying all their business processes to one model has limited their customer s ability to use and benefit from other vendor or custom applications. This required the business to adopt an almost all or nothing approach versus allowing the business to embrace best of breed solutions easily and thus guaranteeing process compliance. This once again increases the length of the project, forces greater business change, and reduces the value of the project. Single Enterprise Only. Most all applications available on the market today are limited to a single enterprise model yet many companies have outsourced a significant portion of their value chain. The inability to represent the entire value chain causes major issues on how customer service levels are managed because there is no visibility to a partner s inventory or production plans. The partner is challenged as well because they can t see finished goods demand or consumption. These limitations require businesses to build in manual processes that do not guarantee compliance and instead require buffering against uncertainty by building more inventory, or allowing service to falter. This reduces the return of a project as well as complicates the solution. No End to End Visibility. In theory, value chain partners should all be focused on the same metric - Customer Satisfaction. Whether you are a raw material supplier, a contract manufacturer, or logistics provider your products and services are not necessary if there is not an end consumer. Unfortunately due to lack of end to end visibility from the shelf to the supplier companies can not align their operations around what it takes to win and keep the end customer. This means that everyone is forced to create and work from a different plan. The disparity in these plans creates the classic bullwhip effect. As a result, the products are not available when you need them, transportation costs are higher then they should be, raw material is not available when manufacturing needs it etc. This increases costs and reduces revenues and margins.
White paper Capitalizing on Change No Simulation Capability. Many business process changes can be dramatic and risky. At the same time, change could bring about significant benefits and competitive advantages. It is often difficult to understand the impact of a change, whether positive or negative. This capability would be especially useful since managing change in the overall supply chain can be dynamic and complex. Without the ability to simulate, decisions about change are blueprinted at the beginning of the implementation, and the business hopes that they have made the best decisions. The impact is not known until after the big bang go-live. To undo a change is often costly and time consuming. Introducing One Network One Network s Demand Driven Business Process Network was designed specifically to address the issues listed above. This proven technology and implementation methodology is deployed at 1000 s of customers and has proven to drive significant results for not just a business but for an entire value chain - from the shelf of the retailer to the supplier of raw materials. One Network has developed a community service that uniquely offers the following: A Spiral implementation Methodology called Value First. One Network has created a spiral implementation and change management methodology we call Value First. With this rapid implementation approach we target total project ROI in the first 4 months of the implementation. This allows for a low risk, high reward project that pays for itself every step of the way. We implement our software in small, manageable releases over a time frame that is measured in weeks. This approach yields more successful change and adoption within the enterprise and across the entire value chain. Learning from our experiences, we build and deploy a continuous improvement approach that targets proven results and strategies from the prior release. This methodology is only made possible through the enablement of the technology used. Migration to Multi Party Business Process Networks. The community network is based on multi party transactional, execution and planning technology. Once on the network, a member can connect to anyone else on the network. Unique business processes can be defined for each company and each set of trading partners. Eliminated are the manual processes required to tie companies together. This allows partners to align their operational strategies around the common goal of attracting and keeping customers which is enabled by the fact that they can easily see, manage and share the same data in virtual real time. Dynamic Multi Party Business Process Support. In order to facilitate a continuous improvement and rapid implementation approach the business processes can not be dictated, defined or constrained by the software application. Processes should able to be defined, deployed and refined at will. The application needs to embrace and enforce the business process whether it spans across organizations within the enterprise or across multiple enterprises.
white Paper Capitalizing on Change Embrace Not Replace Technology. Each step in the Value First implementation process can be supported by a different system of record. The community service can be deployed as simply a visibility layer, as the total system of record, or any variation in between. This allows for embracing not/then replacing existing legacy systems, ERP packages or other best of breed solutions. Even though the community can embrace and work harmoniously with any other application, the One Network solution can still enforce compliance to the business process even though it may be supported by many disparate applications. End to End Visibility. Inherent in the community is the ability for all parties to view the value chain. For example, an OEM can see shelf sales and inventory at the retailers stores. This visibility is controlled by a robust permissibility and security framework which limits and controls access to information. This visibility enables all parties in the value chain to work from the same information and work towards meeting the same set of objectives. The members of the community see how they impact the entire value chain. This feedback helps guarantee the success of the multi party business process since all parties can see the upstream and downstream impact of their efforts. Change Management Simulation. One Network has revolutionized the change management process by actually automating much of the human effort previously required. The software simulation tool runs like a production system and is used to test new processes and policies to determine their impact on both the business as well as the entire value chain. The system can run standalone prior to the activation of the production service and/or can run parallel to the production services to test new concepts against the existing processes. With the insight to understand the impact of a process change without having to fully implement it, more intelligent and profitable decisions can be made. With far less risk and far greater returns, companies can now work with their trading partners to completely revamp their value chains and drive significant value for their customers. One Network has revolutionized the way companies deploy software and enable intelligent business process change. We have proven that the implementation and time to value of a software project can be measured in weeks. One Network can help to transform the way companies do business by enabling a community of users, leveraging the same information, to reach a common set of objectives focused on the end consumer. One Network has revolutionized the way companies deploy software and enable intelligent business process change. We have proven that the implementation and time to value of a software project can be measured in weeks.
White paper Capitalizing on Change To understand more about One Network s solutions, please contact us at: Email: inquiries@onenetwork.com Tel: 1-866-302-1935 (US) 972-385-8630 (international) Corporate Headquarters US One Network Enterprises 4055 Valley View Ln Dallas, TX 75244 Tel: +1 972.385.8630 Email: inquiries@onenetwork.com Web: www.onenetwork.com International Headquarters One Network Enterprises (Europe) Mayfair House 14-18 Heddon Street Mayfair London, W1B 4DA United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 203.355.1646 Email: europe@onenetwork.com Web: www.onenetwork.com