Question

Case Study: First City Bank Implements an ERP System First City bank initiated an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system implementation project to reduce overhead, increase efficiency, enhance the quality of operations, and increase customer satisfaction for its mortgage branch. The Systems Integrator (SI) Sigma Consulting, LLC, was brought onboard to analyze the existing business processes at the mortgage branch of the First City Bank and help the bank achieve its business objectives by implementing and configuring the ERP system to increase automation of its repetitive operations, integrate various business functions, and offer a portal for the customers to directly submit their mortgage information online by completing an online application themselves. The SI performed the stakeholder identification and analysis and collected the stakeholder information in the stakeholder register. Thereafter, Joint Application Design (JAD) sessions were scheduled to gather stakeholder requirements. The JAD sessions were completed and requirements were collected. Based on the requirements collected, solution specifications were created, and in turn, the solution was developed and configured. However, the client did not accept the solution because it was not configured correctly. This became apparent during the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase when the client asked specific subject matter experts (SMEs) to test use cases and test scenarios, and SMEs discovered that the new ERP system was configured incorrectly. Apparently, the requirements captured by the SI were incomplete and incorrect due to the lack of participation by all required stakeholders. The incomplete requirements resulted in wrong solution specifications and hence incorrect configuration of the new ERP system. Jeff Barlow, the manager of the mortgage branch of First City Bank (the client), said that the SMEs engaged in performing the UAT were not available during the JAD sessions. This turmoil prompted the client First City Bank and SI Sigma Consulting to go back to the drawing board. The design of the solution was subjected to significant changes involving time-consuming change requests and approvals followed by additional cycles of the unit, system, and user acceptance testing. The solution, though, was finally approved and delivered, but it was significantly late and over budget. Case Questions 1. Who are the stakeholders in this case? 2. How do you define a successful project? In your opinion, was this project a success or a failure? 3. What went well in this project? 4. What went wrong in this project? 5. What are some lessons learned from this project that can be applied in similar project environments?

Answer 1

1. Stakeholders in this case are: First City bank -client, Sigma Integrator- consultant, SMEs, customers and other employees who use the ERP on a daily basis.
2. A successful project is defined as one that meets the requirements of the client. The project should achieve its purpose. In my opinion, the project was a failure as it did not fit the requirements of the current business process.
3. The best thing about the project is bringing onboard the software expert SI to analyze the existing business processes at the mortgage branch of the First City Bank and develop a software that best suits the current process requirements.
4. The thing that went wrong about the project is that the requirements captured by the SI were incomplete and incorrect due to the lack of participation by all required stakeholders. The SMEs engaged in performing the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) were not available during the Joint Application Design (JAD) sessions and this was a great drawback. This was the main cause of the failure of the project.
5. Lessons learned from this case is that a process should be properly completed as per the procedure. Since SI did not involve SMEs in the JAD sessions, it led to collecting inadequate information to develop the software.