Unified Business Process
Unified Business Process, over the past 10 years, global companies have been focused on reducing Enterprise System annual costs, simplifying complexity in their organizations and unifying their processes. Recently, one of WGA’s Global Pharmaceutical Industry Clients engaged WGA to deploy Unified Business Processes as part of their $700MM dollar ERP Consolidation.
WGA successfully completes Global Common Unified Business Process consolidation project for Global Pharmaceutical Industry Client.
Problem – Reduce Complexity, create and deploy unified business process for multiple country operations to dramatically reduce costs
WGA’s Global Fortune 500 pharmaceutical client was maintaining multiple ERP solutions in each country requiring separate data centers. Our client set forth on a $900MM dollar effort to consolidate unified business process operations to a single data center and substantially reduce annual maintenance costs. Their team’s challenge was to gain consensus on a single, common/unified business process across multiple country operations. A key unified business process requirement was flexibility and the creation of an approval process for changing the core solution and unified business process during the phased rollout as final requirements for each country were understood. Another challenge was creating and managing a multi-country project team during development and implementation; as well as acceptance of the core solution. This also meant moving control and the data center outside their operations and direct control.
Approach – Create multi-country Change Agent Teams (CATs) to staff, develop and manage phased unified business process rollout
To address these challenges, WGA lead the global Organizational Change Management effort, using Change Agent Teams (CATs) representing each country operations were created. These teams were tasked with developing common unified business processes for all countries, as well as, individual country manual workarounds when necessary. Localizing Core Solution – Refinement of the unified business solution had to occur during each country rollout when either the solution was fully accepted, or a workaround developed, or a change to the core / common solution adopted by all countries. A specific approach was developed. Managing the approval process was accomplished through this approach, a strict set criteria and a 24-hour decision-making framework. The Change Agent Teams (CATs) led this effort, creating awareness and approval process that led to on-time implementation and final consensus for all involved
Solution – Create cross-divisional teams and process to “localize” common unified business process solution
WGA first understood how local processes fit with a core solution. This involved prioritizing gaps and analyzing impacts, utilizing local user involvement from the beginning. Consensus was achieved on a vision for how the organization should operate in the future; including new roles and responsibilities, reports and operational requirements. For each country rollout, the core solution/unified process template needed to be validated (“localized”) to catch gaps not realized during core solution design and prior rollouts. “Localizing core solution” process was repeated during each country rollout. Management of the overall team was maintained at the new, single data center. CAT teams were dispatched to each country as the core solution was “localized” and adopted.
WGA Consulting works with pharmaceutical, biotech and medical product manufacturers to deliver high impact results. Reduce costs, strategy, supply chain. potential to revolutionize new life-saving drug development and patient outcomes.
Results – Exceeded expectations with on-time, on-budget delivery of common unified business process solution
Consolidated ERP systems into a single core SAP solution and unified business processes. Annual savings in IT operations cost reductions exceeded -$427 million per year and enabled the organization to outsource application maintenance to support ongoing development efforts. The 29 month unified business project was completed on time and under budget for each country rollout, exceeding client expectations and acting as a model for similar unified business process consolidation efforts at other client divisions.
To find out more about WGA’s Unified Business Process Consulting Services, please contact us by email or call our offices at (866) 556-5206,
Getting value out of an ERP system is all about common process and high user adoption. Most companies today are looking at some way to reach a unified business process model, this is a great example of how to achieve it.