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&'()*+",-.& NATURE Implementing SAP in the company TIME FACTOR October 2009 to March 2010 TEAM The entire finance team and in fact, most of the senior management across functions PROJECT COST Over a few crores DIRECT IMPACT Totally automated system for generating financial statements, scenario planning and invoice processing led to improved productivity and profitability of the company.
implementation of SAP says many pre conceived notions were demolished during this exercise and he treats it like a case study as the exercise helped him learn more than one valuable business lesson.
THE CHALLENGE “Honestly the biggest issue I faced was the nagging doubts about whether it was correct to have rushed into SAP,” smiles Barasia as we sit in his ground floor office inside the mini-township called ‘Godrej Industries Complex’ in suburban Mumbai. “We were moving from one ARP to another and I wasn’t sure initially if SAP would necessarily improve the financial processes and controls that
Narayan Barasia, CFO, Godrej Household Products talks about how SAP was implemented in the company. DHIMAN CHATTOPADHYAY
we had in place. The fact that we were spending over a few crores on the project did not help matters. Even a few of my senior colleagues were debating whether it was worth spending so much just to generate financial statements through a sophisticated software. The challenge was to understand and then convince others about how SAP could be used to leverage business, impact sales and ultimately lead to greater profit,” says Barasia. There were also concerns across the team about technical glitches that such software is prone to. Was there a way to ensure there were no disruptions of ERP transitions on the date of launch?
HOW THEY CRACKED IT In fact, recalls Barasia, these questions proved to be a far greater challenge than what the senior management had feared would pose to be an issue: convincing the majority of employees about the need and advantages of an extremely technology driven system. The first thing the commerce graduate from Calcutta University (he later did his CA from ICFAI) did was involve the entire finance team and even other divisions in the process. “We went through internal debates and discussions on best practices. Also we visited other offices where SAP had been implemented, asked questions, found out what the teething problems were, if any, and finally set clear and precise goals for the team,” he says. The fear that there could be disruptions or technical glitches at the eleventh hour, also played on the mind of
the core team at GHP. “We managed the calender so that before going live, we checked everything in the test database. We had dummy runs for two weeks and we involved our statutory auditor in the process from day one so that the entire team went through the exercise in real time.”
THE LESSONS Today the SAP software is running smoothly and we have even been awarded for the successful implementation of SAP,” says a proud Barasia as we step out of his office and move into the interestingly named ‘creativity room’ next door – a diamond shaped glass panelled room with solar panels on the roof, where employees are encouraged to experiment with a new project or a new concept. So what lessons did he learn from the exercise? Barasia says his biggest ‘technical’ lesson has been the realisation that SAP is a great software. “It runs like blood through the veins of the organisation. Today I have five different projects being implemented through SAP. For instance, our automatic invoice processing system runs on SAP. We also do our scenario planning exercises on SAP now,” he says. The exercise also helped him understand other functions of the company better and he feels, it made him a better man manager. “It was believed till not so long back that finance professionals needn’t bother about HR or other areas of work. The SAP challenge showed me how wrong that is. I am now fine tuning my HR skills,” says Barasia. AU G U S T 2 0 1 0
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