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Kennys
Bookshop & Art Gallery
5
. The Project
5.1 The Project Team
The BSM involved many staff around the company and mean that it
wasn’t simply an exercise in making management decisions and
communicating them as fait accomplis. This style of process management
made staff focus their thinking and identify fundamental requirements
issues through detailed analysis of the current manual process.
Of course, there still had to be representatives from the management
team overseeing and driving the project forward:
- Conor
Kenny, Managing Director – Conor’s main responsibility
was to oversee the project and provide insights from a marketing
point of view.
- David
Lohan, IT/Project Manager - David had responsibility for development
of the original detailed specification document prepared prior
to BSM coming on board. Additionally, David worked with BSM in
the development of the process document and was the main contact
for the OCLC.
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Karen Golden, Retail Manager – Karen was responsible for
ensuring that requirements for the Point Of Sale (POS) and stock
control systems were correctly specified.
- Jim
Shaughnessey, GM in Galway – Jim played a large part in ensuring
that the cataloguing system worked correctly and, like David,
worked closely with the OCLC to ensure the new system would be
compatible with its systems. Jim also looked after distribution
of products to customers.
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Tom Gilligan, Accounts Manager – Tom had responsibility for
capturing the requirements for the accounts side of the project.
5.2
Third Party Selection
BSM was introduced to Kenny’s by Enterprise Ireland when
the requirement for an external consultant was identified. Initially,
the two companies thought that they couldn’t afford to work
with each other – Kenny’s didn’t think they had the
budget and BSM didn’t think Kenny’s could afford their
fee. “If we had gone to BSM at the beginning, we would now
have made our investment of €200,000 back threefold”,
noted Kenny. Though BSM advised on the process through which to
select vendors, they were not involved in the selection itself.
Don’t put the cart before the horse
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ERP
(Enterprise Resource Planning)
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| An
ERP system helps an organisation manage the important parts
of its business. It has different modules that look after areas
such as production planning, procurement, human resources and
finance. Depending on the modules implemented and the size of
organisation, an ERP system can involve a considerable amount
of business process reengineering. SAP, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards
are among some of the larger suppliers of ERP systems. |
Although
Kenny’s had a very good idea as to the type of system they
required, a combination of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning –
See Sidebar) and Library Management Systems, the company didn’t
have a good understanding of the requirements of the system. “It’s
very difficult to go and look for a piece of software if you don’t
understand your requirements and the business issues”, stated
David Lohan, IT Manager at Kenny’s. “It could happen that
you introduce functionality you don’t need at the expense of
functionality you do”.
Kenny’s approached Galway-based process management
consultancy BSM (www.bsm.ie)
to assist them in identifying what their requirements
actually
were. “The BSM approach made us identify the requirements,
take a step back and work out what it was we actually needed”,
continued Lohan.
Using Business System Selection, a very structured and iterative
process designed by BSM, Kenny’s was able to easily identify
the requirements for the new system, build tender documents and,
based on the responses, select a vendor that best suited the needs
of the company.
Through a series of workshops, all staff were involved in the process
of detailing required functionality and requirements - from warehouse
staff to accounts staff to marketing staff. This level of involvement
meant that the final system would mirror (and better) the processes
that were in place already.
Diagram 5.2 – The BSM Business System Selection process
The
output from the first phase of the process was a list of 1,300 separate
requirements that Kenny’s would have for their final system.
A screening document was sent out to 11 potential vendors. Based
on those responses, an ITT (invitation to tender) containing the
full list of requirements, was sent to those felt to meet the initial
criteria, a mixture of both ERP and Library Management System vendors.
Of those, two organisations were chosen to progress to the final
phase where a test script was run on both systems.
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