April 20169other change management project, the implementation of SAP requires strong support from the CEO and top manage-ment to drive this change, as well as de-termine clear goals.3. Understanding organiza-tional culture is critical. Inspired by Peter Druker, Bill Aulet once said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, tec-nology for lunch, and products for din-ner". I couldn't agree more. When an organization needs to undertake a major transformation like SAP, the relation-ship between change management and organizational culture becomes crucial. Change management will happen if cul-ture permits. Organizational culture is a factor that is often underestimated, but in difficult processes like this, the human factor plays a crucial role. To achieve the objective, it is necessary to make use of the existing culture and change behaviors that are critical to the process. In my ex-perience, I've learned that choosing the right integrator, which understands the culture of the institution and is able to sync properly with it, goes a long way. 4. Shared knowledge is a big part of the process. The trans-formation that SAP brings occurs ef-ficiently if everyone is committed. For this to happen stakeholders should understand the process clearly. Knowl-edge transfer must be intentional and planned from the beginning of the proj-ect. This approach will ensure the prop-er use of the tool, and the necessary engagement from all users. To achieve the learning objectives, it is important to know the talent and level of expertise of each of the players, and understand that everyone learns differently. At the IDB, we have included our Department of Knowledge and Learning from the beginning of the project, coordinating and designing a strategic plan accord-ing to levels of understanding and the culture of the organization. Trainings have become part of our daily routine, and with different styles of trainings we ensure that everyone understands the proper use of the tool. By foster-ing collaboration, and constant com-munication, we will have created a sys-tem where each incident goes straight to the knowledge department, and an exercise gets designed to provide answers, and teaches how to avoid mak-ing that same mistake again. We even had a workshop where we taught "SAP-enese", where new users could learn termi-nology before us-ing SAP for the first time.The hard work of our amazing team led us to a successful "Big Bang" launch. On April 6th, 2015, the new system went live, with all functionalities available in 29 countries at the same time. We knew choosing this approach represented a huge challenge, but also brought the best management experience in the long run. We took a significant risk in radically streamlining our systems, but those involved agreed that it was the best decision. Having these functionalities available in all countries now reduces the time to deliver on future improvements.Today, we process more than 35,000 transactions in SAP every month, and with approximately 2,000 users, we have completed more than 350,000 transactions since our launch. The numbers truly speak for themselves and our users keep growing every day. In April 2016, we will launch SAP Human Resources and with it, all of the IDB's employees will be SAP users. Most of them will perform basic functions in our SAP Employee Self Service, like self-managing personal information and benefits.This project has changed our mindsets, as we now recognize users as a key part or our continuous improvement cycle. Our constant interaction has helped us understand our needs, develop new solutions, and deploy better trainings. Going forward, as business evolves, we will continue to enhance and refine our processes for aligned and sustained efficiencies using SAP. This is a journey we are now well positioned to take as we continue to work to improve the lives of the people in Latin America and the Caribbean.With SAP, we have laid a robust, secure, and modern platform to continuously improve the way we work, and in turn, stay relevant and valuable to our partnersBC
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