Project management of an ERP implementation

To support their strategic objectives of substantially increasing capacity and sales growth, our client embarked on a programme to implement new production planning and control systems. They are an autonomous manufacturing unit of an NHS Trust producing pharmaceutical products for hospitals, retailers and chemists. The project manager left the trust and 3Peaks was approached to take over the ERP system’s implementation to support the financial and operational requirements of the business.

The challenge

The client required the implementation to have a phased approach to minimise the impact to their business. It was essential that the first phase went smoothly to ensure continued support from the Trust for the remainder of the project. The challenges were:

• Delivery to tight timescales.
• Cost control.
• Stakeholder management and communication.
• Co-ordination with external resources such as the system provider and the NHS Trust support functions.
• Ensuring conformation to GMP standards.

The solution

The Sage line 500 ERP system was chosen as having appropriate functionality to support the client’s current business and future expansion plans. As the previous processes were mainly manual with some systems support, there had been a significant amount of process re-engineering to enable the move to the Sage system.

The initial step was to create and agree a detailed project plan that covered the required activities, resources and check points. Timescales were critical as key internal resources supporting the project were only available for a limited period. In addition, as the project demanded support and resources not only from internal members but also from several external bodies, it was essential that the requirements were understood and committed to by the whole team.

The project plan covered the following activities:

• Data analysis.
• Writing and authorisation of SOPs and Business processes.
• Training of users.
• User acceptance testing and validation.
• Hardware and software implementation.

Controls and review mechanisms were implemented with separate plans and checks for the cut over and post go live period. A communication plan was introduced to ensure that the team and the stake holders were kept up to date on the status of the project and any issues.

The controls and improved practises that were implemented ensured that the project was successfully audited and the go ahead was given by the Trust to cut over to the new system. The system was then cut over successfully with minimal stabilisation requirements.

The benefits

The goal directed project management approach gave considerable benefits to the business:

• Established and validated sustainable project management controls for use in subsequent phases.
• Minimal disruption to the business at cut over.
• Only minor adjustments required to the new processes post implementation.
• Immediate benefit to the business came from an integrated supply chain with reduced manual processes, rapid, real time reporting and improved control mechanisms.