Production rising

Production rising

It has been a great week. As a business we are really growing into our new fase of maturity. Proud to see that what you have started years ago begins to thrive on it's own. The last week was all about setting the pace, agreeing on who-should-do-what and then simply start doing.
But let me start at the beginning...

Over the last few months we were growing. This was not by chance, but strategically planned due to development plans. The hourly-based services we traditionally deliver should be enriched in the future by full-solution-products. This would take two changes within the firm:

Add capacity: we would not be able to combine sufficient turnover with qualitative product development with the capacity on resources we had. So growth was the answer.
Simplify the message in the market: selling solutions instead of only consulting asks for a very clean and clear message, so the core business of the firm had to be identified even more as we already did. A split in two companies with both their own, clean, message was the answer.

Since March 1st we are active with two firms, one focussed on Procurement from a business perspective, one focussed on Procurement from an IT (SAP) perspective. But both with a clear objective: start developing solutions for customers besides only staffing their projects!

It was a hectic month to get the ideas channelled, but last week the business plan for one of our new Interim Procurement Initiatives was closed up. On top of that, yesterday the developers started the build of our first end-to-end (SAP SRM based) software solution..

..the plant is in power, the production is in session!

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

Long hours of testing and fixing

Long hours of testing and fixing

...and discussing what to fix. Check the dashboard picture, see the time, third working day in a row that meal time has long passed before we went home from the customers' site. SAP SRM in an implementation that is divided in Template versus roll-out localizations. Interesting days full of discussion-based fixing of test-defects.

Template-based implementations: hard to do it perfectly. Either you run into unhappy local users that do not feel themselves fully at-home in the new environment, or you will run into an un-manageable (and thus way too expensive) project/investment when you manage the template not strict enough and want to please users! Caught between that rock and that hard case...

What to do then, how to make it work? To my opinion, after some years of seeing it happen, one golden rule: anticipate the localization-factor before you start your template. Sounds simple, here is what I mean.

1. Have a very clear picture of what it is you want to safeguard with the template strategy! Is it a certain policy you want to uphold, or is it just a manageable and maintainable system? Be sure to clearly state that within your managed change process.
2. Make sure that a proper sounding board is enabled before you start workshops. No inbalance between bloodtypes in your company or different attention to importance of Business Units. Every person in that group should count, from content, expertise, as well as validity and mandate perspective.
3. Design and build your custom developments in such a way that not only the development works as designed, but also easilly allows added development in those spots that allow localization from the basic strategy-standpoint.
4. The first thing that needs design in the project is the "request for change" process, only after that you can start your template P2P design.

Having concluded this from the position I had in some of the projects that I have seen: yes, for sure, it sounds simple enough. But having it managed for a few times as well, I know it is certainly not. But then again, long hours for a few weeks make a real project team, and that is priceless...

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

The week of knowledge

The week of knowledge

An interesting week. Filled with new knowledge, but on all kinds of different aspects in my working life!
The introduction to the new to be released European Public Tender rules was interesting from my Entrepreneur's view as well as from my Procurement-consulting's view. As a supplier I am very glad with the fact that those new set of rules attempt to force a more qualitative and considered way of working with some of the tendering governments. So dear suppliers, please let me urge you (us) all to keep them to that principles. But on the other hand, as a procurement consultant, delivering processes and procedures, and also a.i. purchasers to those same governments, it will force our competition to bringing their work at our level of quality, because the rules simply do not allow for shortage of carefullness anymore. In general I would say: hopefully it will help us professionalize our B2G market again for a little bit.
Let us wait and see from April 1st, ehm, really, April 1st...?

More knowledge this week came from an insight session we had at our office yesterday within SAP SRM 7.02. Insiders know that really (!) understanding what's new within a new Enhancementpack (EHP2 in this case) is key to being of distinctive added value to your customers. Thanks a lot to our German friends for giving us the opportunity again! We are certainly able to use the information in our product development and service delivery.

Last but not least, I started a study over the last few days towards the change effectiveness of eProcurement implementations and the differentiating behavior of key-figures in that effect.. way too much to tell about now, but it will keep me busy over the coming months so certainly it will be brushed upon a few times in this weblog!

Time to start thinking about an Easter weekend now..

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

How difficult! But why?

 

How difficult! But why?

Sometimes in the life of consultancy, you’ll find discussions that go over and over again without you actually grasping the deeper reason why people make it so difficult. This week, I was involved in a meeting at one of my customers on the topic of integration with Temps Agencies. Of course I understand the fact that things seem easier when you have done it 20 times before, where the matter is new to others in the room, but why oh why has this topic already been under discussion here for more than one and a half years…?
 

Optimizing Temporary Labor related P2P solutions is easier than it seems, just keep in mind the following 4 key principles:

 

1.     Never enter data more than once, the transactional volumes are simply too high to accept data failures by typo’s in copy actions.

2.     Who is the owner of the data-object? That is the one that brings or maintains that data-object in the process.

3.     Market standards (technology-driven as well as process-driven, such as SETU and SIDES) are there for a reason: they standardize a complete market, bend along, lower your risk and supplier lock-in!

4.     Do not hassle about the savings and costs on any individual basis. Optimize the dataflow, optimize your informational value, minimize the chance for failure, and divide the benefits afterwards… Keep commercial discussions away from your change project

 

They always say “procurement of people is not the same as procurement of goods”, but the simplest of Supply Chain Optimization values are the only truth really to make it happen…

 

Doede van Haperen

www.lakran.com

www.postulit.com

 

An introduction...

An introduction...

"Do the things that others do, but do them differently..." I think perhaps that is one of the phrases that supports me personally the best. Q1 2013, starting a weblog on two of the most boringly perceived subjects of current business; Procurement and IT. We still are in the middle of economic recessions, hopefully not in the middle, sort of in the end, but you will catch my drift. The world is turning, multiple times over, and I start writing about Procurement (dusty and boring) and IT (nerdy at best). You are right, but there is a twist... This will not be the next information-flow of articles and whitepapers. Many people are already posting daily messages on that and those are usefull, I use them regularly, but there are more then enough people who google the web on a day-to-day basis communicating the interesting sites they find. I want to do something...different...!

My name is Doede van Haperen, which is already redundant web-info, because you can see that in the URL-bar of your webbrowser.. I am an entrepreneur, a business lead who turns procurement and IT into succesfull (combinations of) products and solutions.
For the last 12 years I have worked in the field of consulting, combining the expertises on Procurement and IT into succesfull projects. Helping customers into a new era of effective and efficient operational execution, using various IT tools (SAP SRM, Oracle, Esize, Ariba, Proclare, Proquro, etcetera) and common business sense on processes. Coming from a big corporate consulting firm, 7 years ago, I started my own business. Different than others, only 26 years old, most of my environment thought that I was not prepared to bring knowledge to customers. For me it was clear: simple logic and bold sense in doing things from your own point-of-view was the truth, not per se being employed for a minimum of 20 years before you could know anything...

This formula, daring to be fresh and new, daring to raise your opinion, built a business with substantial basis. Two consulting firms with separated strategies (one on Procurement in IT environments and one on SAP-dedicated projectizing and productizing) fight for marketshare and recognized Branding under my directions. And fighting this fight, in the economics of today, using the fields of expertise perceived as boring...that is different...!

In my day-to-day work, as an entrepreneur as wel as being a consultant, directing a selection of talented consultants as well as managing a selection of, not always talented but never boring, clients, I thought there was room for a weblog. Writing down my experiences might help others, be informative about the use of P2P, help project managers in their work, might stimulate entrepreneurs in finding their goals, might...

...be different?!

Doede van Haperen
www.lakran.com
www.postulit.com

PS: did you recognize the picture, being of course the Statue of Liberty, but being different...? The picture is taken in Paris!