DISCOVERY ENGAGEMENT METHODOLOGY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AN ERP IMPLEMENTATION FOR BETTER BUSINESS AND IT ALINGMENT Shubhadeep Mukhopadhyay

Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................3 Introduction...............................................................................................................4 Typical Discovery Engagement Methodology........................................................4 Challenges of a Discovery Engagement.................................................................4 Discovery Engagement Life Cycle ..........................................................................5 Value Analysis ..........................................................................................................6 Discovery Methodology ...........................................................................................7
Participants.......................................................................................................................7 Session Process................................................................................................................7 Discovery Engagement Methodology Recommendations...............................................8

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. -- Gallileo Galiliei Abstract Discovery Engagement in ERP implementation is the process of capturing the current Business and IT process flows, making sense of the captured data using the best possible tools and identifying the areas of improvement where Business and IT ecosystem can further align to generate maximum value such as improved business efficiency, quicker ROI of IT etc. In any organization when an ERP is implemented there are instances where some business processes were not mapped correctly to ERP functionalities or unnecessary customizations of the ERP were created to support one. This happens due to reasons such as having local view of processes rather than a global one, poor business analysis and poor understanding of the ERP system at a global organization level. This is where Discovery Engagement comes to play by transforming organizational process flows that is accepted by the organization as standard; streamlining inter-departmental activities resulting in improving the efficiency of the organization. Discovery Engagement however can either be a complete success or a complete failure. Lack of understanding the outcome of a discovery process, faulty methodology or that of the perceived value itself can easily result in the failure of the Discovery Engagement. The paper will discuss Discovery Engagement as applied to implementation of ERP applications and as perceived by the party (provider) performing the Discovery process for its client (organization). The objective of the paper would be to provide recommendations based on from the trenches experiences for an efficient Discovery Engagement Methodology.

Introduction There are many instances of ERP implementations that failed to provide the ROI an organization expected to achieve post implementations. One of the prime factors for unsuccessful ERP implementations is the disconnect that exists between the IT and the Business and among the various departments within them. Each of the departments of an organization usually has a local view of certain business processes and not having a global view for the same. This leads to conflict of interests, poor business analysis and poor understanding of the ERP system at a global organization level. This in turn leads to an unsuccessful ERP implementation. This is where Discovery Engagement comes to play by transforming and standardizing organizational understanding of business process flows from local to global. The global process flows based on best practices are then communicated to the various departments of the organization as standard. Mapping of the standardized business process flows to the system processes result in global acceptance of the ERP solution. This also results in an improved alignment of IT and Business; IT being transformed to play the part of a true enabler for increased Business efficiency. Typical Discovery Engagement Methodology When an organization faces the problem of an unsuccessful implementation it contracts Discovery Engagement to a provider to solve their implementation pain points. A SME from the provider conducts discovery sessions with the SMEs from different departments of the organization. The team goes through the process flows one by one while an analyst from the provider documents the As-Is process flows. The SME from the provider analyzes the documented proccesses to understand the pain-points associated with the As-Is processes. Finally the SME from the provider recommends the To-Be processes that are to be accepted as the Organization as standard. However there are many challenges that provider faces as the Discovery Engagement session progresses. Failing to proactively address these challenges results in a failure of Discovery Enagagement and the Discovery Engagement itself becomes a bottleneck and a loss of investment for the Organization.

Challenges of a Discovery Engagement Discovery Engagement is a critical exercise as it directly impacts the underlying process flows that support business continuance of an organization. The challenges that a provider should be aware of before a Discovery Emgagment for better risk analysis and mitigation are listed below. 1. Change: The famous Greek philosopher Hiraclitus once said the only constant is change. However managing change is the biggest challenge for any provider as someone said Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they gain by giving that up. Recommendations that are outcome of a Discovery Engagement generates many process flow changes. The challenge for a provider is to ensure that key stakeholders are convinced of the recommendations even if they mean drastic changes to the current process flows. Hence change management plays a very vital role is successful completion of a Discovery Engagement.

2. Scoping: The provider should assist the organization in defining the appropriate scope of work to be undertaken for Discovery Engagement. In Discovery Engagements it often a pitfall when the organization tries to achieve results beyond its capacity. 3. Expectation Management: The provider should set the expectations of the Discovery Engagement in the form of deliverables as per the scope. Often the organization might start viewing the Discovery Engagement process as implementation CRP sessions. It is very important for the provider to set the right expectation in terms of deliverables. 4. Sponsorship: It is often not possible to have all the key people form the organization available for Discovery Engagement, as they will continue to be responsible for their daily responsibilities. If the sponsor doesnt communicate the importance of participation in the Discovery Engagement no individual will participate in it on priority. As a provider the challenge is to influence the organizations sponsor to ensure that the priority of the Discovery Engagement is accurately communicated to all the participants. 5. Lead-Liar Phenomenon: Many a time a participant who is a person of influence in the organization and has only a high level view of the processes may describe a process inaccurately with many omissions. Other participants might be fearful of challenging him leading to an inaccurate collection of As-Is data. As a provider the challenge is to get the correct and complete As-Is data. 6. Politics: Some participants do not divulge some aspects of an inter-departmental process, as they may be fearful of inter-departmental politics. 7. Stamina: As Discovery Engagement progresses it becomes more and more difficult to capture all the necessary detail of the processes due to eventual fatigueness of the participants. Also the task of keeping the documentation updated with all the integration touch points gets difficult over time as more of the processes are discovered. 8. Documentation: Documenting the processes, with all the required views, data, drawings, and analytical reports is a major production challenge, requiring a multiple levels of review and approval, to identify missing information, enforce consistency, and keep information up to date. Document management and publication can easily consume one-third to one-half the total effort. The provider faces these challenges over the life cycle of the Discovery Engagement. The lead liar phenomenon for example is a challenge the provider typically faces in the Gather Data phase of the Discovery Engagement life cycle. Hence a proper understanding of the life cycle and challenges faced during each of the phases of the life cycle would enable the provider to engage the right resources at the right time to proactively mitigate the risks associated with the challenges. Discovery Engagement Life Cycle The life cycle of a Discovery Engagement comprises engaging organization, gathering data, structuring it, validating it, analyzing it and presenting it such that the life cycle of the processes can be understood and agreed upon by all the key stake holders. It is very important for the provider to pro actively manage the life cycle of the Discovery Engagement in a manner such that maximum value can be generated for both the organization and the provider. The organization gets maximum value by getting maxium ROI from the Discovery Engagement while the provider gets maximum value by generating more business from the account. Engaging Organization The provider should be engaged with the customer in defining the scope of the Discovery Engagement and its deliverables. In Discovery Engagement it often a pitfall when the organization tries to achieve what is called trying to boil the ocean. The provider should consultatively try to engage the organization in trying to come up with a realistic scope of work driven by the major pain points thats required to be addressed in the Discovery Engagement. In this phase of the life cycle the provider can reduce the risks associated with challenges such as scoping, sponsorhips and expectation management.

Gathering Data For gathering data the analyst has QnA sessions with the SMEs using pre-defined set of questions based on best practices and past experience. In these sessions the analyst might also encourage the SME to share some war stories around the process in question. The analyst uses a QnA workbook to capture the responses to the questions. An open log/issue workbook is used to capture all the issues arising during the sessions. A gap analysis workbook is maintained to identify the business processes that cannot be mapped to the ERP systems. In this phase the provider can manage the challenges such as lead-liar phenomenon, politics and stamina. Structuring Data After the data is captured the analyst is required to structure it in a manner that provides all the information that is required to describe the process for its entire life cycle. All the constituent processes are pieced together with integration touch points to complete the entire process. The analyst usually prepares process flow diagrams to describe the process from start to end. Any software application, which supports the creation and maintenance of process flow diagram scan, be put to use. In this phase the provider can manage the challenges such as documentation. Validating Data It is important that all the SMEs and stakeholders validate and agree that the process described by the analyst in the process flow diagram as per the current process flow. This is a very critical part of Discovery Engagement, as this becomes a feedback loop to ensure completeness of the captured data. The analyst goes through the process flow diagrams from start to end will all the inter-department SMEs. Any additional information captured in these sessions is captured in a separate validation session workbook. In this phase the provider can manage the inter-departmental politics that might arise. Analyzing Data. This is the step in which the analyst analyzes validated and agreed upon process flows to dig out the bottlenecks, inefficiencies and redundancies. All of the analyzed data is captured in a workbook. Presenting Data The final step is to finally present the outcome of the analyzed process flow data. The analyst uses a presentation application to highlight the challenges that persist in the As-Is process flows and recommends the To-Be process flows to address the challenges. Since it is in this phase that organization is expected to find value from the Discovery Engagement it becomes a phase faced with challenges associated with driving change. The typical deliverables of a Discovery Engagement are as follows; 1. As-Is and To-Be process flow and architecture 2. Gap analysis dashboard 3. Recommendation dashboard 4. Implementation Strategy 5. Value Analysis

Value Analysis Discovery Engagement is an expert service which has great cost associated with it. Any organization invests in Discovery Engagement because it believes in getting greater value. But the question to be asked is how do we measure value derived out of a Discovery Engagement?

The value associated with Discovery Engagement is mostly intangible. Providers can highlight on the following areas while providing a value analysis of the Discovery Engagement to the organization. 1. Number of bottlenecks, redundancies and inefficiencies discovered 2. Number of recommendations made to the process flows 3. Estimating value derived by removing bottlenecks and introducing efficiency within a process flows

Discovery Methodology Most providers understand the challenges faced in a Discovery Engagement at the various phases on the Discovery Engagement life cycle. However the reasons of their failure lies in defining a methodology that is required to be followed to proactively manage risk and to ensure a smooth change management resulting in a successful ERP implementation for an improved alingment of IT and Business. The success of a Discovery Engagement depends on 3 prime factors: Participants, Sessions and Participants The key players in the Discovery Engagement are the following; 1. Sponsor 2. Subject Matter Expertise (SME) 3. Analyst The sponsor, typically a business executive of the organization, charters the Discovery Engagement. Here there is an opportunity of the providers to assist the sponsor to define the scope and goals of the Discovery Engagement. This enables the provider to estimate the cost and time lines of the Discovery Engagement better. The SMEs are the sources of information about the processes that are included in the scope. A SME is usually the individual who owns the process or performs the process everyday. The analyst is an individual who is responsible for compiling, organizing, analyzing, and presenting the information gathered from the SMEs. Session Process Discovery Engagement sessions can be organized in many different ways. There are three main approaches that the provider and the organization can mutually agree to choose from in defining the methodology to be followed for the Discovery Engagement. 1. Centralized vs. Distributed 2. Top Down vs. Bottom Up 3. Undefined vs. Structured Centralized vs. Distributed In the centralized methodology the discovery sessions facilitated by the providers analyst are conducted with inter-departmental SMEs. The inter-departmental business processes are constructed in totality from start to end. This enables to capture all integration touch points for a given process at once in presence of all the departments involved in the process. The advantage of this methodology is that a business process is discovered in entirety of its life cycle resulting in closing loop across all departments. However the disadvantages could be factors such as assembling all the SMEs across departments at one time, the lack of time, and the phenomenon of the lead-liar.

In the distributed methodology the analyst obtains process information from SMEs in silo. Hence the process is discovered in fragments and then the analysts pieces all the fragments together to produce the final end-to-end process. The advantage of this methodology is better logistics in terms of getting suitable time from the SMEs. The disadvantage of this approach is that since the information is collected in silo some information may be eliminated and the fragmented processes might not fit together. Then the challenge for the analysts becomes how to resolve the inconsistencies between SMEs. Top-Down vs. Bottom Up Methodologies either work top down or bottom down. The top down approach is based on the concept of starting with a process and then decomposing it down to smaller processes to create a hierarchy of processes with the lowest level being a non-decomposable activity. The analyst then performs discovery as per the defined process hierarchy. The main advantage of this approach is that it ensures breadth of scope as the analyst covers all the key areas that required to be addressed. The disadvantage however is that the scope can explode and the focus may be lost. Also the analyst might miss out some constituent process that is specific to the organization. In the bottom up approach the analyst interviews the inter-departmental SMEs about the processes and using the information block pieces together the end-to-end process. The main advantage of this bottom up approach is richness of detail as the SMEs cover all the aspect of the process. However the disadvantage is that the analyst might miss out interviewing an important SME and might miss out certain constituent aspect of the process. Undefined vs. Structured In undefined approach to discovery the SMEs describe the processes as day-to-day stories highlighting the benefits and challenges associated with the processes. Many a time these dayto-day war stories often provide unexpected valuable insights to the processes that might be missed out while conducting discovery sessions using a predefined questionnaire. However the disadvantage associated with this approach is that the enormous amount of time required structuring this information. In the structured style, the SME responds to a pre-defined set of questions, structured and organized to ensure consistency. The advantage of a structured approach is that you ensure consistency and completeness of detail. However, the analyst may miss valuable from the field insights.

Discovery Engagement Methodology Recommendations A single Methodology can never work across organizations, however it gives a direction to the provider to perform an efficient value oriented Discovery Engagement for organizations. Methodology is nothing but a product of common sense applied to circumstances. The recommendations for an effective Discovery Engagement for ERP implementations based on experience and best practices are listed below; 1. Start by segregating the scope of work into two parts: one comprising processes that can be discovered using distributed approach and the other that is required to be discovered using centralized approach 2. Next is to establish a top down structure in the form of a process hierarchy. The hierarchy will for the discovery path that is required to be taken and will also ensure the completeness of the scope 3. The analysts should perform bottom up interviews with SMEs using a structured interview approach. This will ensure richness of detail.

4. After validating the information and integrating the process fragments, the analyst should schedule centralized reviews of the end-to-end processes with the SMEs and the key stakeholders. These reviews will verify accuracy and ensure alignment. 5. PDCA methodology can be applied to the overall Discovery Engagement to proactively manage expectation of the organization.