Back to business

Posted on March 1, 2008
Filed Under Side Posts, bloggista

Recently, my Team just concluded a year-long roll-out of a Client’s new Sales & Distribution system which integrates all Sales, Distribution and Financial functions from Route Management to Order Processing, Credit approval, Product Dispatching, Invoicing, Finance settlement transactions and Accounts Receivables.

We covered all of the Client’s 13 Plants all over the Philippines with more than 70 sites nationwide. It was an awesome experience, despite being their first time implementing a system, the Consulting Team successfully completed the roll-out.

The project involved installation of the new S&D system, replacing the client’s legacy sales and finance system. The project was composed of three groups, the Technical Team who was tasked to migrate data from legacy system to the new S&D system, and providing technical support, report-writing, bug-fixing and hardware installation. The Consulting Team, composed of 12 newbies (with no systems implementation experience before) was responsible in education and training, preparation and review of data, and in implementing and ‘hand-holding’ of the new system on site. I headed the Project Management Team, who ensured the project is carried out smoothly and successfully, providing scheduling, support and issue resolutions to all other teams, including the Client’s teams.

The project was quite challenging, coping up with major obstacles namely:

The pains of ‘Change’ - a lot of changes were inevitable, and all people in the organization have to cope with the changes to habits, procedures and policies. Coping up with ‘resistance’ was a great challenge to everyone.

Site Locations - the project covered nationwide sites, thus my Team have to be away for two weeks straight before going back to Manila for just 2 days. I myself have logged more than 40 flights and 12 hours of travel by land at one time in some occasions going from one site to another and back to Manila.

Culture differences - each Team member has to cope with the difference in culture and dialects, making it more challenging to roll-out the new system and policies

Nevertheless, the project was a success, judging from the way the Client acknowledged the efforts that the Team exerted. And the Client has seen the benefits of the new System, and this was the first time, a Project this magnitude and ambitious as it seemed, was fully implemented on all of their plants and sites.

Next business stop - new projects for this wonderful Team.

If you like my posts, you can subscribe using your favorite RSS feed reader or get them delivered to your email inbox. Thanks!

Sphere: Related Content

Comments

Gimme' some Lovin'. Leave your comments. Ohh, if it's your first comment here, it will be queued. Please bear with me but promise it will appear quickly. Your succeding comments will be displayed on the fly once you hit the 'Submit Comment' button.