SRM 7 – An Upgrade

By Julian Patmore

& Andrew Lee

Who we are…

• Hertfordshire County Council • First tier authority • 1 million residents • c£800 million budget

• 10,000 SAP users across:

– Finance – HR – Employee and Manager Self Service – eRecruitment – Procurement – Reporting

• Paying 37,000 employees via payroll

Julian Patmore

• SAP Team Manager was HCC now Serco

• SRM 7 Project Manager

• Manages the support and development HCC’s SAP landscape including ECC6, SRM 7, Business Warehouse, Business Objects, ESS/MSS and eRecruitment

Andrew Lee

• Over 15 years of Local Government experience

• Managing SAP and non-SAP projects and programmes as part of the Hertfordshire’s Business Improvement team

Background

• Implemented SAP in April 2004

• As part of the implementation, EBP was at version 3.5

• Upgraded to ERP 2005 in October 2008

• Were advised against upgrading to SRM 4 and recommended to wait for SRM 5

• EBP 3.5 was then on extended support

• In 2010, SRM 7 came into general release

The challenges

• The upgrade posed several challenges – No direct upgrade path

– Do we go ‘like for like’ or change business process

– 6 months timeline

• It was decided to re-implement

• Moved from classic scenario to extended classic

Benefits

1. Empowerment of users

2. Greater ownership of budgets

3. Invoice approval

4. Less end user support

5. Better reporting

6. Fewer outstanding invoice queries

7. All purchase orders sent electronically

1. Empowerment of users

• Previously users had created requisitions that were processed by the purchasing department who were not adding value

• All users in SRM7 are able to create and amend orders themselves

• Purchasing department has restructured and now focus on advice

2. Greater ownership of budgets As Is

• Approval for shopping carts over £500 from line manager who often wasn’t the budget holder

• Organisational structure was out of date

To Be

• Approval by budget holder

• Organisational structure now flat

3. Invoice approval

• Goods receipting was seldom done

• We were under the impression it would be an easy transition to move to invoice approval

• When in reality we had to totally bespoke workflow which involved the use of quite strong language due to backwards compatibility

4. Less end user support

• Not using the SRM7 org structure for anything

• Empowering the users

• Reactive rather than proactive

• Users down from 1,000 to 700 due change in business process

• Went live with 3 roles now down to 2 – Service Purchaser and

Authoriser

5. Better reporting

• Changed product categories to ProClass a local government standard

• Built custom Business Warehouse reports to better find out who bought what from whom

6. Fewer o/s invoice queries

• With the old invoice query system, there was no way to know if the user was dealing with the issue, was ignoring it or had left the organisation

• There was no escalation process

• New workflow now has a “ I’m looking into it” option and escalates quickly to line manager if ignored

• Some users do not necessarily appreciate escalation but it’s very effective

7. Electronic Purchase orders

• Approx 8000 orders were still being printed and posted per year

• In SRM 7 all orders go by email • Any orders to suppliers without

email addresses are emailed to our Accounts Payable department and posted with covering letter to request email address, BACS details and BACS remittance email address for future correspondence

Change Management

• Getting buy in from senior management prior to blueprint on key strategic decisions

• Design a system that users will like – Quality Review Group

• Count down comms

• Training and awareness sessions – Trained the top 20% of Free Text

users

– Use of eLearning

– Bulletins

End of Project

• Went live on time and on budget October 2010

• Now live for 12 months

• Support calls down

• User perception is that the system is better

• Main issue is with complicated workflow

• Number of pop up screens

Lessons Learned

• Sufficient resources

• Sufficient time

• Not to underestimate the training required

• Allow enough time to play with the system and sufficient testing

Questions