About nine out of 10 ERP implementations fall short, often due to lack of adoption by either employees or business units, according to global consultancy Bain & Company. So, how do experts such as Bain ensure success during their own big-bang implementation of, say, SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud?
“We executed this change management successfully by leveraging our own playbook on ourselves,” Ramesh Razdan, Global Chief Technology/Information Officer, Bain & Company, told SAP. “Just as we have done [with clients] multiple times across the globe, in partnership with SAP.”
The “playbook” is Bain’s methodical guide to modernizing an organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. And it played a vital role in Bain’s own ERP journey.
In an article, Bain explained the process behind the implementation: “Just as we advise our clients, we began with an airtight case for change, [leveraging] the migration as not just a check-the-box IT exercise but an opportunity to simplify our operations and ultimately transform our business.” Bain accelerated its cloud transition with a project plan that combined implementation best practices from SAP with Bain’s own change management and process redesign best practices.
The company’s airtight case, jointly developed by its IT and finance teams, was its need to simplify operations while rapidly growing worldwide.
Growing globally and customizing cumbersomely
Bain enjoyed significant growth over the last two decades, expanding into 65 offices across 40 countries and growing its workforce by nearly a factor of five to more than 18,000 employees, while also scaling further via about two dozen acquisitions. To keep pace with all that growth, it continually customized its homegrown ERP platform.
But that led to silos across offices and org charts, Razdan said. There were also problems scaling and integrating acquisitions, some of which ran on different platforms than Bain.
“We wanted to set up a platform that solves problems of today and sets us up for the future,” Razdan said. “That was the business case.”
After months of searching, Bain chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for its standardized processes, industry best practices, and continual innovation, Razdan said.
“SAP S/4HANA was the best fit for Bain,” Stephen Mackey, Bain’s EVP of Global Finance, said. “It future-proofed our technology stack, enabled us to get the data that we needed to make business decisions, and also positioned us to be able to grow.”
The aim was standardized core processes — kept clean with zero customizations, thanks in part to apps capable of add-ons and upgrades as needed. The next step would be driving adoption to assure successful change management.
How Bain managed change, Bain’s way
Bain’s ERP transformation playbook is full of hard-won lessons from the company’s own experience and research, according to Razdan. These include what Bain consultants have learned both from successful and more challenging implementations.
From the start, Bain was crystal clear about its case for change, according to Razdan. The company prioritized change management, which meant IT partnering with finance; it also meant cultivating a mindset conducive to change.
“We owned the change; we identified a group of high performers within our finance and our IT teams. This community of super-users could readily identify and deal with any of the problems that typically arise in an implementation of this size and scale,” Mackey said. “This was less just changing their technology; it’s changing employee behaviors and setting us up for how we want to grow and change processes going forward.”
Bain also wanted to stick with industry best practices via SAP standards. And keeping customizations off the platform, unlike Bain’s previous ERP environment, “would make life easier,” Mackey said.
“Adopting a clean core with minimal customizations means that we can absorb any changes that occur in the platform,” Mackey said. “It also gives us the ability to integrate our future acquisitions in a way that’s effective for Bain.”
Why metrics and transparency were crucial
“We actually set up a program to be always measuring the value,” Razdan said. “You have internal stakeholders, you have external stakeholders, you have partnerships; we kind of built an ecosystem of governance and partnership that enabled us to keep everybody on the same page because transparency and communication is critical to success.”
Gauging progress via transparent key performance indicators was all the more impressive, given that most of this happened during the worldwide, pandemic-driven move to remote work.
“We could assess the implementation, as we went through it, to keep us on track [and] course correct,” Mackey said. “This enabled us to do the implementation from end-to-end in under three years, which was an incredible achievement.”
A big-bang implementation also helped, according to Razdan. Bain thoroughly examined its business, as well as the complications of running multiple systems in parallel.
“It was a bold decision and, looking back, I’m really proud of it, particularly about the people and the partnership,” Razdan said. “We would not have done it any other way.”
“Just the beginning”
Since going live in July 2023, Bain runs all core financials around the world on the SAP platform. Real-time data enable better, faster decision making, while automated core processes have reduced manual work, which helps Bain execute seamless updates as well as onboard acquisitions more efficiently.
“We have set up a great foundation with SAP in terms of how we apply our own playbook,” Razdan said. “I think this just the beginning for our partnership; I’m really excited for the next phase.”
This story also appears on the SAP News Center.
