Client Situation
The international branch of one of the top six consulting companies in the world was struggling to deliver on a very complex ERP implementation and a management re-engineering project for their top branch customer, a large mining company. The project was critical as it also represented the foundational cornerstone for the consulting firm’s key initiative for the mining, power generation and petroleum verticals for its global operations. The project had suffered from chronic delays and cost-overruns, and the patience of the client mining company was running thin.
Solution
A new project manager, now a E78 team member, was brought in. The original task was to minimize the shortcomings of the project. This was not an easy task, as there had been considerable friction between the parties. The new project manager first performed an exhaustive identification and assessment of the root problems that were causing the implementation to fail. Second, he developed a series of business stabilization measures which he presented to the consulting firm’s top management and to the client company’s top executives and board. After securing buy-in from both groups, immediate implementation of these measurements followed. Within six months the results confirmed his forward vision produced results beyond what any had thought possible.
Results
- Creation of a proprietary workflow portal coupled with a complex integration layer that, together with the workflow portal, became key intellectual property (IP) assets for the consulting company that enabled the later sale of that branch and IP to a huge international conglomerate for over 20 times value
- The combined ERP and workflow portal enabled immediate costs savings in admin costs and accelerated parts and inventory purchases by up to 35%, creating large additional savings by facilitating just-in-time delivery of parts and supplies for the mining company
- Turned around the project from a potential failure to a huge success story that enabled the consulting company to sell multiple additional millions of dollars worth of workflow portal & SAP/Oracle ERP implementations to multiple mining, petroleum and energy generation clients around the world
