Project 1: Data Migration from ERP Syspro to ERP SAP

i. Project Summary

1. Identification

Client’s Company Name ABB South AfricaTrading Name/s ABB South AfricaCompany Size Over 150,000Business Address Reporting Office:

ABB Campus, 2 Lake Road, Longmeadow Business Estate (North 1644, Modderfontein, Gauteng, ZA

Contact Numbers Tel: +27 10 202 5597 [Reporting Office] +27 10 202 5597 [Head Office]

Fax: : +27 11 597 8326

Web Address www.abb.comEmail AddressNature of project Data MigrationLocation of project South AfricaName of your employer ABB South Africa

2. Duration

From ToTotal project duration 08/2008 11/2010Your involvement 08/2008 11/2010

3. Resources

Your Team Client Project team size 200 200

Size of team led by you 20 0

4. Personal Involvement

Please list the phases of the project in which you were personally involved

Start Completion Phase Description

08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration Blue Print08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration system development08/2008 11/2010 Data Migration Cleansin06/2010 11/2010 Moc and go live cut over

5. Describe your role(s) and responsibilities, including the leadership aspects.

Roles and Responsibilities

1. My role was the data migration lead. I was responsible for all data migration activities and a successful go live

ii. Business Opportunity or Problem

1. Describe the business opportunity or problem(s) this project addressed and how it related to the (internal or external) client’s needs.

1. ABB South Africa has decided to migrate from ERP Sypro to SAP, ABB had 4 instances of ERP Syspro that needed to be migrated onto 1 SAP system

2. Describe the scope and complexity of the problem.

1. There was 4 instances of the legacy system that needed to be migrated onto 1 SAP system

2. Before data migration could start we first had to consolidate all master and transaction data of the 4 legacy system.

3. Systems needed to be developed to monitor the data and a database needed to be designed to host the data.

4. Super user teams in business needed to be setup for the project of cleansing the data and creating data .

3. Describe your relationship and communications with client management / user management / end users.

1. Daily, weekly and monthly feedback and reporting needed to be given to the stakeholders of the project.

2. I had to manage a team of 15 data migration consultance and +/ 100 business super users for data cleansing

iii. Solution1. Discuss your contribution to the solution, project or engagement including the rationale behind key choices. Please

enumerate the alternatives you considered and your reasons for their rejection.

1. My solution began by investigating the data consolidation for the 4 legacy systems master and transaction data process like customers, vendors, GL accounts and materials,

2. Need to develop a system that will handle the consolidation and a database to host the consolidation data, developed a system in .net and database in SQL .

3. Next was to cleanse the data, there was more data required in SAP that the legacy systems had that needed to be created. So I decided to extract the data into excel from the hosting data base and derived most of the created data based on X and Y values

4. The stakeholders decision was that 1 legacy company go live after the other, so there had to be a solution to cater for new master and transaction data that was captured in the legacy system while the other one went life. I decided that there should be dedicated staff in place to great master data in the legacy system as well as the SAP system. For example, new vendor has been greated in one of the legacy systems that has not been migrated to SAP yet, that vendor needs to be created in the other legacy systems not yet on SAP as well on the company that is already on SAP

5. Project management was a key factor in this migration project, needed to setup a project plan and activities with deadlines and staff involvement and monitor

6. There was a requirement from the auditors to have a trail report to show that the data in Dev that has moved to Quality and then production was consistent. I decided to write an SAP ABAP report and created a functional module in all 3 environment. The ABAP report will call all 3 functional modules and extract the data in question from their instance database and compare the data of all 3 environments line by line

7. With Data migration there was a requirement to produced and develop critical legacy reports in the new SAP system. I decided to put a hold on report development, first investigate what standard reports was available in the SAP system that will satisfy the reporting requirement business had, this saved this business a huge amount of money as there was no need to pay the implementation partner for developing custom SAP reports that was already available as standards reports in the system

8. With all the 4 companies migrating to SAP, there was confusion and frustration with assigning authorizations to +/ 3000 staff members that is going to work on SAP, management had a manual paper system in place to assign and monitor authorizations rolls to staff, I have decided to build a electronic web flow system with .net with an SQL database, with this system the assigning of sap authorizations has made it pleasant for managers to assign their staff to the correct rolls for SAP

9. I decided to great a cur over strategy document: This document describes the plan and various cutover activities during three staged Go-Live of ABB ZA from legacy system to SAP ECC 6.0. The cutover activities checklist would cover the activities for transport / migration of the SAP System Configuration, Development Objects, Master Data Objects required for the business and Open Transaction Data at the time of cut-off period before go-live. The cut-over plan would cover the activities and guidelines to ensure smooth transition from legacy system to production system of SAP.

Objective of the document:

This document is to be used to communicate the cut over strategy to the Business and Project Management for approval of the proposed strategy. Subsequently, the cut-over strategy is to be communicated to all relevant team members and business people. For the successful transition, it is important that all the stake holders have got clear picture of roles/responsibilities for the cut-over activity.

2. Enumerate and describe the key decisions you made, and the reasons for making them as you did.

1. One of the key decisions that I made was to consolidate the data in a host database and from there export the data to a different host database for data cleansing

2. Systems in the market was available to use for data migration that come s with a huge price, but I have developed my own system with .net and that is customized to the solution ABB needed for data migration and it also didn’t cost ABB anything as it was developed by me in-house. The system could be adjusted anytime to cater for unforeseen problems with the data

3. I have also made the decision to derive created data automatically with my .net system based on X and Y, this cut of a huge amount of time and human errors for capturing new data

3. Describe the design method you used on this project and the rationale for its selection.

1. The design method consisted of two phases.

2. The first phase was simple research ABB is an international company with branches in every country, what I did was to consult some of the countries that has already been through a data migration process to see what approach they took for data migration and to get lessons learned from their project

3. The second design phase was to get the hosting databases designed and the development of the system documented and the data migration process all approved by the stakeholder

4. List the design tools you selected for use on this project and discuss the rationale for their selection.

1. I used Microsoft VISIO for the final diagrams, as well as the simple pen and A3 paper for the actual development and adapting of the technology to our situation. I find it far quicker to use an eraser and pen correcting fluid to develop a solution. A quick revision or correction to the design can be made in a matter of seconds with a pen and paper, but in VISIO it usually takes much longer to achieve. A whiteboard also achieves a similar result.

2. For the data migration system I used .net to develop the system.

3. For the hosting databases I used SQL and SQL scripts

4. Data was extracted from SQL to Excel, allot of VBA coding has been done in Excel to automate and check input from cleansing staff

5. I used my usual problem solving process was again more than adequate for the task at hand. It consists of:

a. Phase 1 – What do I have and where am I?b. Phase 2 – What do I finally wish to achieve or the final objective?c. Phase 3 – Any required researchd. Phase 4 – What steps are required to get me from what I have/where I am to where I need to be/the final

objective?e. Phase 5 – What are the requirements for each step to reach the final objective?f. Phase 6 – Implement the requirements for the steps to realize the final objective.g. Phase 7 – Carry out the steps to realize the final solution.

5. List the major deliverables of the project that you were responsible for or contributed to, and summarize the reason for their inclusion.

1. The major deliverable was a cleaned and created data in a WBS template to hand over to SAP functional staff to import into SAP.

2. This included all 4 legacy companies data consolidated and cleansed

3. The final thing was that ABB had to have a smooth cutover from Syspro to SAP and data migration played a big part on that

iv. Results

1. Was your solution implemented? If so, describe the role, if any, you had in the implementation. If not explain why not.

1. My solution was successfully implemented in its entirety for ABB South Africa Data Migration process.

2. As the Data migration manager I had to oversee and took responsibility to deliver clean and created data of all 4 legacy systems to import into SAP

2. Assess the overall success or failure of the project. Comment on client satisfaction, attainment of objectives, and ultimate versus proposed cost and schedule.

1. The project has been a success. The data migration costs have not only been reduced, but managed down to expected levels..

2. All the existing infrastructure and hardware in place was used. The only real “cost” incurred was the man hours involved in managing and cleansing data. There was budget and the data migration process stick far within the budget as the systems used was developed by me in-house

v. Lessons Learned In retrospect, what you might have done differently on this project and what lessons did you learn?

1. One very important lesson learned is to take the super users complete out of their day to day work to only focus on data cleansing, stuff was very tired as they had to concentrate on their day to day jobs as well as data migration

2. In this instance, I would have not changed anything that I did.