Sigma Wireless

6. Lessons learnt

There were a substantial number of lessons learnt during the implementation to date of this project.

1. Discovery exercise
As outlined in section 4 once the supplier for the solution was chosen the discovery exercise was undertaken. This involved the entire internal and external project team members working through the requirements and to challenge them from the point of view of appropriateness and feasibility.
The objective was to develop a realistic and functional set of business requirements. These were then incorporated into the final business plan. Both Joseph and Sarann agreed that this part of the process was critical and saved a lot of time in the future because they were confident that they had specified a solution that was both feasible, absolutely appropriate for the business at this point in time and would scale in line with the developing business strategy.

The final part of the discovery process entailed an extensive internal communication exercise where the internal project team had to convince stakeholders, including shareholders, of the business logic behind the chosen solution. This was particularly important given the decision had been made not to include a transactional component to the solution. In that sense the solution was atypical of the prevailing trend in eBusiness and needed careful explanation. (Although the solution has been designed to facilitate transactional capability if this becomes necessary in the future.)

The discipline of the ‘discovery’ exercise was useful in ensuring focused thinking and developing a clear business logic in the alignment between the solution and the business strategy.

2. Treat the project as strategic and give it ‘time’
Joseph Moore was clear that you will only receive the return upon your investment if you give a project sufficient attention and ensure it is given strategic priority. He said, “Everything that we’ve invested in, from cross-training, reengineering our manufacturing processes, our ERP system and now this eBusiness project, we always get tangible value from it because we give it the proper time and attention.”

3. Experience of ERP implementation
The fact that the project team had only recently been involved in the successful ERP implementation meant that they were up the learning curve as a functional working team and were used to dealing with implementation challenges. This created a confidence to deal with the challenges of the eBusiness project.

4. Strength and technical ability of team
Most of the suppliers involved in the original tender process attempted tried to force Sigma Wireless down the package route. They even went as far as to question whether Sigma Wireless would be able to implement what they had in mind. However, the team were clear that an off-the-shelf package could not deliver the functionality that the business required.

Sarann and Joseph are confident that the technical aptitude of the team enabled them to be strong and to remain focused on a solution that was appropriate for the business. If they had been less comfortable with the technology they admit they may have found it hard to resist the package route. This would have led to significant limitations on functionality and the ability of the business to extend the scope of the operations.

5. Seven months invested in defining requirements
Sarann spent seven months intense work defining the requirements for the eBusiness solution prior to the development of any architecture or infrastructure.
Specifically, the following was analysed:

• How Sigma Wireless currently does business
• How customers would like to do business
• Defining the exact parameters of how the eBusiness solution would work

Substantial work went into profiling different types of customers according to their information needs. These detailed profiles enable Sigma Wireless to increase the efficiency of their sales team and to attract potential customers with appropriate information and marketing messages. Joseph shared how the ability to efficiently respond to customer’s engineering requests has become a key capability for the company.

Joseph and Sarann were clear that the easy part of a project like this is installing the technology and infrastructure. The hard part is in ensuring that the business requirements are properly defined.

6. IT team’s involvement
Interestingly, the Group IT function only had a limited involvement during the duration of the project implementation. They became more seriously involved when the project drew to its end as they were going to have to take ownership of the new system.

This underlines how the project was driven by the business in line with and supportive of the new business strategy.

7. Future Plans
Sigma Wireless is currently at the stage where they are populating the Databank for internal usage. The next stage will involve the extension of the eBusiness system in two ways.

1. Third parties and suppliers will be brought into the system to reflect the ‘solution-sell’ strategy. Sharepoint is designed to facilitate this expansion in the scope of the business.
2. Customers will be linked in. Private access will be developed to allow access to certain information. For example, average test reports. Private access will be secure to ensure that only the appropriate information can be accessed.

The intention is to develop a ‘push’ as well as ‘pull’ approach to information. Using the customer profiles that have been established it will be possible to alert customers to particular information that may be relevant to them and invite them to access their private workspace.

Note that at this stage there are no plans to develop a transactional capability via the Web. Joseph is unconvinced of the business case for this development at this point in time. The high-touch, low frequency nature of the customer relationships do not make this a strategic priority. However, the system has been designed to enable this functionality if it becomes important.