A tall man walks into the conference room.

Looks at me.

“So you are going to make our lives easier?”

A hesitant grin on his face.

I can feel the sarcasm.

Lorenzo, a man in the late fifties, is part of the project team representing the company that we are bringing onto SAP Business One.

His realm: The company’s massive warehouse.

As the Warehouse Manager – a role he has held for over 25 years – Lorenzo is managing a team of 20 warehouse workers who all work towards the same goal: to keep the goods moving at all times.

This SAP project has stirred up Lorenzo’s familiar territory.

Like a tsunami.

He was made ‘Logistics Process Owner‘ in the project. This means he has to tell the SAP consultants how the company would like to run its logistics operations in the future.

It’s a huge responsibility.

You could think Lorenzo enjoys the responsibility.

That he’s happy about the dynamics brought about by the project

But he is not.

Like most of his colleagues, Lorenzo is following the system migration with a very distinct feeling:

Fear

Fear of not knowing what’s coming.

What will the new system feel like?

Will the team still be able to run their business well? Keep the production running? Deliver on their promises to customers?

As a leader of a team, Lorenzo is particularly worried the impact on his team.

How will his workers respond to the new system?

How will his workers respond to the new system?

Will they throw in the towel out of frustration?

“I HATE SAP! I CAN’T DO MY JOB!!!”

Lorenzo and his team have been managing their work entirely with email and Excel.

And now they have to use this new fancy “system”.

It’s no surprise that Lorenzo is afraid.

I can totally relate to Lorenzo!

Because think about it:

A Business One rollout means drastic changes for end users

You are completely changing the way people do their work.

Before the transition, people had a lot of freedom in their processes:

• The warehouse team manages the company’s 8’132 pieces inventory in their self-built Excel tool. If the company released new products, the warehouse manager simply keys in the details like price, category, weight, etc. into the sheet.
• Engineers maintain their parts lists and BOMs in Excel. Sharing a BOM with the production or sales team is as easy as sending an email with the Excel BOM attached.
• The lady from accounting creates all invoices in Word. If a customer asks for a correction – the indicated price is not correct or the tax code has changed – she just modifies the Word file and – voilà, here is your correct invoice!

But now you come along as the Implementation Lead.

And you are forcing people to use this rigidly controlled and unforgiving ERP system where your permissions are restricted to the absolute minimum, where every transaction is logged, and where your supervisors and your CEO can look into your data and evaluate your performance.

It’s no surprise that employees don’t start dancing and shouting in excitement when they walk into the Business One project kickoff.

“Oh Lord, thank you for blessing us with this wonderful Eeeh Arr Peeee system!”

On the contrary.

You are more likely to experience frustration, fierce resistance to change, people withholding information that you desperately need as well as dirty games by department heads and other warlords who want to jeopardize the implementation.

So the question is:

How do you still deliver a successful project, even though it’s hard?

How to win the hearts and minds of end users?

What’s the ‘trick’?

You have to be as prepared as a high-wire artist crossing the abyss below on a tightrope — 1’300 feet in the air

What keeps the artist alive and up in the air isn’t his skill.

It’s not his gear.

It’s not his understanding of wind conditions.

It’s this, that keeps him alive:

CONFIDENCE

Confidence in his own ability to make it to the other side, come what may.

Without this extreme conviction, our artist wouldn’t get past the first 2 feet.

How can you apply that lesson to your project?

And how does confidence allow you to deal with all the challenges you will face in a Business One implementation?

The thing is:

When you KNOW what you are doing …

… When you have a plan …

… When you are confident about the project …

… BECAUSE you have a plan

Then your users will be confident too!

The great thing is:

You don’t have to create a project plan for your Business One implementation from scratch.

At the time I am writing these lines, SAP Business One has been implemented at more than 60,000 companies. What does that tell you?

It means there is tremendous experience out there from these rollouts. Experience that you can access, because the Project Managers who came before you have learned lots of lessons from these projects.

Now I suppose you don’t want to go looking for a Business One rollout veteran yourself.

That’s why I have prepared a project plan template for you.

I built the Busines One Project Plan Template in a combined effort involving a team of true Business One ‘stars’ – highly experienced delivery leads with a long track record of delivering successful system transitions to Business One for the most challenging clients.

The project plan template captures the learnings and best practices gained from dozens of successful SAP Business One implementations completed over the past 10 years.

Read on to learn more about the project plan template: