IBM insisted on installing SAP for SouthWest One's joint members. It was meant to be up and running in February 2009, the date was postponsed until April 1st, and continued problems meant that even in June 2009 the system was operating badly. This posting is also copied from Liddell-Grainger's websiteJune 4th 2009.
Another leaked document from the beleaguered folk at County Hall struggling to deal with a system isn't fit for purpose:
"Approximately 1000 invoices are being received at the Accounts Payable Team in County Hall each day and there are seven people employed full time to deal with this. Invoices of up to £20k are being pushed through without any checks being made. This is just to clear them. There are daily payment runs, sometimes eleven runs a day. Business rates have been paid late. There have been several County Court Summons about this. SAP contains an application called "webcycle" which is meant to track invoices. It doesn't work. The Accounts Payable team are forced to make hundreds of emergency CHAPS payments (at £15 a go) simply to pay customers. Staff responsible for County Council Imprest bank accounts have been told they can overdraw - never mind the costs. The new remittance advice notes only tell customers how much they are being paid, not what each payment is for! Some bills have been paid to the wrong suppliers. Some suppliers have been paid twice for the same service!"
The only sensible news is that Somerset County Council has frozen two monthly payments to IBM (around £5million) because of the cock-ups.
May 23rd 2009.
Councillor David Greene plays the didgeridoo and picks up £25,000 a year for being (allegedly) an "expert" on SouthWest One. He's on the Board of the company. He ought to know what he's talking about. On May 20th he presented a report to full council.
"We took the decision to ‘go live’ with the delivery of the finance and procurement aspect of SAP on 1 April, and are planning to implement the rest of the SAP modules in the summer to bring the whole system on line".
This is nonsense. SAP is a disaster. And within 48 hours Alan Jones had to tell everyone something completely different:
Councillor David Greene plays the didgeridoo and picks up £25,000 a year for being (allegedly) an "expert" on SouthWest One. He's on the Board of the company. He ought to know what he's talking about. On May 20th he presented a report to full council.
"We took the decision to ‘go live’ with the delivery of the finance and procurement aspect of SAP on 1 April, and are planning to implement the rest of the SAP modules in the summer to bring the whole system on line".
This is nonsense. SAP is a disaster. And within 48 hours Alan Jones had to tell everyone something completely different:
Sent: Fri 22/05/2009 15:12To: AllUsersSubject: SAP UpdateI am writing to update you as to where we have reached with the implementation of the SAP project. I know in particular you are keen to hear when we intend to go live with the additional modules - SAP HR/Payroll, CRM and Portal. It is clear now that we will not be in a position to go live on 1 June as planned. The South West One Project Team has recently confirmed this and we are currently discussing with them an alternative project plan. We will notify you of revised dates when we have concluded those detailed discussions. I would like to emphasise that we do not intend to go live with the additional modules until we receive adequate assurances that the system has been properly installed and tested. We are working with the South West One Project Team to ensure that we will have these assurances.However we do need to contuinue to prepare, so please support requests you may receive to get involved in testing and training processes.Many of you will have had your help desk calls closed this week. This is because of many generic fixes that have led to groups of calls being closed. However we know some of you still have specific problems. If your particular issue has still not been resolved please relog it quoting your original ticket number. We will continue to monitor progress closely on help desk calls next week with a view to closing as many as possible. We are continuing to reduce the number of invoices in the system waiting to be paid. The calls from suppliers chasing payment should begin to tail off shortly.Again can we thank you for your patience and your resilience as we deliver the SAP project.
Alan Jones
Chief Executive
But, as ever, Alan never tells the full horror story. Here are some fresh tales from the Trabant front line
1. Dillington House was in danger of close-down due to suppliers refusing to supply goods as they had not been paid and Dillington were unable to raise orders through SAP
2. Volunteer car drivers have not received their out of pocket expenses from SCC - many have refused to continue to provide the service
3. SCC Managers buying high priced stationery & copier paper from local suppliers on corporate credit cards because we are unable to place orders with preferred suppliers
4. £285,000 worth of goods were paid last week without any checks being made just to help clear the back log
5. A number of County Court Summons have been served on County Hall for non payment of goods
May 15th 2009.
At SCC we are reliably informed there are now 40,000 different invoices waiting to be paid (because SAP doesn't work)!
News from the Police - and, like all news about SAP - its also bad. There is a UK wide police support unit called the National Association of Applied Learning Technologies, set up (in part) by the Met. It helps to train officers in 43 different forces. EXCEPT AVON & SOMERSET! The reason? Colin Port - a key director of SouthWest One (and part-time Chief Constable) - is having SAP installed, and SAP can't run with NCALT. Result? All NCALT training cancelled! Want to see what they're missing?
UPDATE.....now SouthWest One admits the NCALT fault in a newswire dated this very afternoon:
Transformation Programme #24 In this week's e-newswire;
Spotlight feature - important information, hints and tips about raising a shopping cart, for requisitioners
Let the helpdesk know if the issues you've reported have been resolved in the meantime
Self Service e-learning on NCALT is being updated
Please send any invoices received to “AP Scanning Department” without date stamps
A reminder to respond to emails sent to you by the Accounts Payable team to provide additional information for unresolved invoices
The support team are working through all of the SAP issues raised to the helpdesk, and find in many cases that the issues have now been resolved. If you have reported to helpdesk an issue previously that has now been fixed, please let the helpdesk team know so they can close the ticket promptly.E-learning update for SWOne staff on secondment from Avon & Somerset Police The training team and Police Change team have agreed to remove the Employee Self Service (ESS), Manager Self Service (MSS) and Work Force Management (WFM) e-learning courses from NCALT. The e-learning team will be reviewing and updating the content, and once this has been completed and approved the new versions of these e-learning courses will be published to NCALT. You will receive a notice when the new versions of the e-learning courses are available. Sending Invoices for scanning If you have received an invoice, please send it through the internal mail to “AP Scanning Department” without stamping the invoice. The scanning team are experiencing difficulties scanning invoices into SAP due to date stamps on the invoice obscuring key information.
But you read it all here first!
May 10th 2009. Latest SAP disasters....starting with an insider's account of how few customers have been paid:
“There are 2000 payments worth over £20k EACH stuck in the system...”
Meantime a team of "SAP consultants" have been flown in from India to try and sort the mess out. They are working in a Taunton basement!
http://www.aspola.org.uk/cache/PDF/Document3478_85680.pdf
The Police are now admitting, in public, that SAP doesn’t work. The document is available to anyone on the Police Authority Website. It openly tells how tests of SAP failed. And if a public document says it so clearly, chances are the real situation is a whole lot worse.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/IBM_DBIRResponse.pdf
On March 28th IBM responded to a Government consultation document called “Digital Britain” with a report citing all sorts of wildly exaggerated claims about the success of SAP. They say that SCC and Taunton Deane have identified a 15% cut in “avoidable calls” because of the introduction of the new “portal” (in English this means the new website) The document fails to point out that the “portal” has been delayed yet again, probably until the autumn, because SAP doesn’t work properly. Nice to know that IBM are deliberately misinforming the Government!
Alan Jones seems to have been told to shut up about SAP. His initial e-mails to staff provided such a get-out card for IBM that no matter how bad SAP becomes it will be publicly deemed a "success" simply because Jones said so!The extraordinary e-mails issued by Alan Jones during April are in date order below. Latest SAP news comes from his deputy, David Taylor - and it is obvious that things are still going badly wrong. Indeed I am told that the launch of the new Somerset website is to be delayed indefinitely and that SAP will be unable to pay staff until July....or August...or beyond:
Alan Jones
Chief Executive
But, as ever, Alan never tells the full horror story. Here are some fresh tales from the Trabant front line
1. Dillington House was in danger of close-down due to suppliers refusing to supply goods as they had not been paid and Dillington were unable to raise orders through SAP
2. Volunteer car drivers have not received their out of pocket expenses from SCC - many have refused to continue to provide the service
3. SCC Managers buying high priced stationery & copier paper from local suppliers on corporate credit cards because we are unable to place orders with preferred suppliers
4. £285,000 worth of goods were paid last week without any checks being made just to help clear the back log
5. A number of County Court Summons have been served on County Hall for non payment of goods
May 15th 2009.
At SCC we are reliably informed there are now 40,000 different invoices waiting to be paid (because SAP doesn't work)!
News from the Police - and, like all news about SAP - its also bad. There is a UK wide police support unit called the National Association of Applied Learning Technologies, set up (in part) by the Met. It helps to train officers in 43 different forces. EXCEPT AVON & SOMERSET! The reason? Colin Port - a key director of SouthWest One (and part-time Chief Constable) - is having SAP installed, and SAP can't run with NCALT. Result? All NCALT training cancelled! Want to see what they're missing?
UPDATE.....now SouthWest One admits the NCALT fault in a newswire dated this very afternoon:
Transformation Programme #24 In this week's e-newswire;
Spotlight feature - important information, hints and tips about raising a shopping cart, for requisitioners
Let the helpdesk know if the issues you've reported have been resolved in the meantime
Self Service e-learning on NCALT is being updated
Please send any invoices received to “AP Scanning Department” without date stamps
A reminder to respond to emails sent to you by the Accounts Payable team to provide additional information for unresolved invoices
The support team are working through all of the SAP issues raised to the helpdesk, and find in many cases that the issues have now been resolved. If you have reported to helpdesk an issue previously that has now been fixed, please let the helpdesk team know so they can close the ticket promptly.E-learning update for SWOne staff on secondment from Avon & Somerset Police The training team and Police Change team have agreed to remove the Employee Self Service (ESS), Manager Self Service (MSS) and Work Force Management (WFM) e-learning courses from NCALT. The e-learning team will be reviewing and updating the content, and once this has been completed and approved the new versions of these e-learning courses will be published to NCALT. You will receive a notice when the new versions of the e-learning courses are available. Sending Invoices for scanning If you have received an invoice, please send it through the internal mail to “AP Scanning Department” without stamping the invoice. The scanning team are experiencing difficulties scanning invoices into SAP due to date stamps on the invoice obscuring key information.
But you read it all here first!
May 10th 2009. Latest SAP disasters....starting with an insider's account of how few customers have been paid:
“There are 2000 payments worth over £20k EACH stuck in the system...”
Meantime a team of "SAP consultants" have been flown in from India to try and sort the mess out. They are working in a Taunton basement!
http://www.aspola.org.uk/cache/PDF/Document3478_85680.pdf
The Police are now admitting, in public, that SAP doesn’t work. The document is available to anyone on the Police Authority Website. It openly tells how tests of SAP failed. And if a public document says it so clearly, chances are the real situation is a whole lot worse.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/IBM_DBIRResponse.pdf
On March 28th IBM responded to a Government consultation document called “Digital Britain” with a report citing all sorts of wildly exaggerated claims about the success of SAP. They say that SCC and Taunton Deane have identified a 15% cut in “avoidable calls” because of the introduction of the new “portal” (in English this means the new website) The document fails to point out that the “portal” has been delayed yet again, probably until the autumn, because SAP doesn’t work properly. Nice to know that IBM are deliberately misinforming the Government!
Alan Jones seems to have been told to shut up about SAP. His initial e-mails to staff provided such a get-out card for IBM that no matter how bad SAP becomes it will be publicly deemed a "success" simply because Jones said so!The extraordinary e-mails issued by Alan Jones during April are in date order below. Latest SAP news comes from his deputy, David Taylor - and it is obvious that things are still going badly wrong. Indeed I am told that the launch of the new Somerset website is to be delayed indefinitely and that SAP will be unable to pay staff until July....or August...or beyond:
From: Robert GunningSent: Fri 01/05/2009 16:56To: AllUsersSubject: SAP Update from David Taylor.
On Wednesday I sent out a note to all staff about SAP and the problems we have all faced over the past month. I started then by thanking everyone for their hard work and patience. I’d like to do so again now. Your efforts really are appreciated. The senior management team really does understand the frustrations that some of the issues have caused. This weekend a team of people will be working throughout Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday to finally clear the backlog of SAP invoices that were generated by problems when we first launched. This will be an important achievement and I’m really grateful to those who are giving up their Bank Holiday to do this work. We are working through a list of people who do not have IDs or passwords and again there is a big effort to make this happen. As I mentioned earlier this week, anyone with issues should report them immediately to their Superuser or Change Team. We are making steady progress with SAP and with a big push over the next few days we will really crack many of the issues. Once again, I can reassure you that I understand the problems people have faced I will make sure that the pressure is kept on to get it right. Finally can I thank those who sent in questions to propergander@somerset.gov.uk. As there were only a handful sent in, I thought I’d again offer the opportunity for you to send in a question. I will make sure we have the answers for you. Thanks again for your hard work and perseverance and for those not working, enjoy that rarest of things, a Bank Holiday in the spring sunshine. David Taylor
On Wednesday I sent out a note to all staff about SAP and the problems we have all faced over the past month. I started then by thanking everyone for their hard work and patience. I’d like to do so again now. Your efforts really are appreciated. The senior management team really does understand the frustrations that some of the issues have caused. This weekend a team of people will be working throughout Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday to finally clear the backlog of SAP invoices that were generated by problems when we first launched. This will be an important achievement and I’m really grateful to those who are giving up their Bank Holiday to do this work. We are working through a list of people who do not have IDs or passwords and again there is a big effort to make this happen. As I mentioned earlier this week, anyone with issues should report them immediately to their Superuser or Change Team. We are making steady progress with SAP and with a big push over the next few days we will really crack many of the issues. Once again, I can reassure you that I understand the problems people have faced I will make sure that the pressure is kept on to get it right. Finally can I thank those who sent in questions to propergander@somerset.gov.uk. As there were only a handful sent in, I thought I’d again offer the opportunity for you to send in a question. I will make sure we have the answers for you. Thanks again for your hard work and perseverance and for those not working, enjoy that rarest of things, a Bank Holiday in the spring sunshine. David Taylor
From: Deborah PorterSent: 29 April 2009 17:02To: AllUsersSubject: SAP update
Message from David Taylor
Deputy Chief Executive
I thought I would give you all an update on where we are with SAP, to let you all know that ongoing problems have the highest priority within the council, and to set out a timetable for improvement.
First though, I’d like to thank everyone for their patience over the past few weeks. We have been open about the fact that we have had problems, and that the system has not delivered as well as it should. So a personal thank you from me and the senior team for dealing with the issues that you have faced. We are now one month in and have made a huge amount of progress since SAP went liveeven though there is still a way to go. There are fixes in place, the SAP system itself is now working far better but I know that in some areas it is still a frustrating experience. We are working flat out to sort these remaining issues and problems.
I thought it useful to highlight some key targets that have been achieved. There was a well documented backlog of suppliers’ invoices. That has now largely been cleared. We have extra floorwalkers in place, more staff taken on to process work, and all key authorising personnel now have access to the system. And I have asked all Directorates to hold daily meetings to feed specific problems into the early morning SAP Board that meets every day. This meeting raises with Southwest One and the SAP Project Team each and every issue and gets agreement as to what must be put in place and when, to resolve these this is recognition of how important the impact of the problems has been to our staff.
In the meantime, anyone with issues should report them immediately to their Superuser or Change Team to ensure it is escalated into your directorate meeting. In summary, SAP is improving daily, I know how difficult is has been and I will ensure that the pressure is kept on to make sure we get it right. We have set clear targets that we want to achieve and will be reviewing these at the end of the week. Finally, I’m sure many of you will have questions and I’m happy to answer as many as possible. Please email them to the communications team at propergander@somerset.gov.uk and we’ll send out a Question and Answer sheet picking out the main themes by the end of the week. Thanks again for your hard work and perseverance.
David
Message from David Taylor
Deputy Chief Executive
I thought I would give you all an update on where we are with SAP, to let you all know that ongoing problems have the highest priority within the council, and to set out a timetable for improvement.
First though, I’d like to thank everyone for their patience over the past few weeks. We have been open about the fact that we have had problems, and that the system has not delivered as well as it should. So a personal thank you from me and the senior team for dealing with the issues that you have faced. We are now one month in and have made a huge amount of progress since SAP went liveeven though there is still a way to go. There are fixes in place, the SAP system itself is now working far better but I know that in some areas it is still a frustrating experience. We are working flat out to sort these remaining issues and problems.
I thought it useful to highlight some key targets that have been achieved. There was a well documented backlog of suppliers’ invoices. That has now largely been cleared. We have extra floorwalkers in place, more staff taken on to process work, and all key authorising personnel now have access to the system. And I have asked all Directorates to hold daily meetings to feed specific problems into the early morning SAP Board that meets every day. This meeting raises with Southwest One and the SAP Project Team each and every issue and gets agreement as to what must be put in place and when, to resolve these this is recognition of how important the impact of the problems has been to our staff.
In the meantime, anyone with issues should report them immediately to their Superuser or Change Team to ensure it is escalated into your directorate meeting. In summary, SAP is improving daily, I know how difficult is has been and I will ensure that the pressure is kept on to make sure we get it right. We have set clear targets that we want to achieve and will be reviewing these at the end of the week. Finally, I’m sure many of you will have questions and I’m happy to answer as many as possible. Please email them to the communications team at propergander@somerset.gov.uk and we’ll send out a Question and Answer sheet picking out the main themes by the end of the week. Thanks again for your hard work and perseverance.
David
From:Alan JonesSent: Fri 17/04/2009 13:04To: AllUsersSubject: SAP Update/More Bollocks
Dear Colleagues,
First of all, on behalf of SMB and everyone involved with the SAP project, I would like to record our sincere thanks to all staff for working with us this past week in implementing the SAP system and for providing valuable feedback each day to drive improvements. Things are moving forward, and I am monitoring progress every morning with colleagues from our organisation, from Southwest One, and from IBM. David Taylor will continue to chair this group across the course of next week whilst I am on leave, but you should be assured that this project remains our top priority. Overnight, the SAP system was enhanced to allow all 'Requisitioners' (people who order goods and services) to do so in a more streamlined manner. You will now see when you go into the system to create an order that all our delivery addresses have been loaded, and staff can directly enter cost codes from their respective cost centres to accompany the order. Should you need them, we have posted all the cost codes on the intranet or you can of course speak to your finance support team for help.
We ran a successful 'BACS' run yesterday, but still needed to process a handful of payments manually, and I want this number to continue to decrease or disappear as soon as possible. Supplementing the on-line 'e' training many of you will have undertaken in recent weeks will be further one to one sessions with 'floor walkers' and also SAP 'surgeries' across next week and beyond.
Finally, we have agreed with colleagues in the procurement service that they will help us to clear the backlog of orders which have been placed this week and they are working on this task now. I know we're not there yet, but I also know that we will make SAP a success by continuing to work together, thank you again for supporting this approach.
Alan.--------------------------Sent on the move
Dear Colleagues,
First of all, on behalf of SMB and everyone involved with the SAP project, I would like to record our sincere thanks to all staff for working with us this past week in implementing the SAP system and for providing valuable feedback each day to drive improvements. Things are moving forward, and I am monitoring progress every morning with colleagues from our organisation, from Southwest One, and from IBM. David Taylor will continue to chair this group across the course of next week whilst I am on leave, but you should be assured that this project remains our top priority. Overnight, the SAP system was enhanced to allow all 'Requisitioners' (people who order goods and services) to do so in a more streamlined manner. You will now see when you go into the system to create an order that all our delivery addresses have been loaded, and staff can directly enter cost codes from their respective cost centres to accompany the order. Should you need them, we have posted all the cost codes on the intranet or you can of course speak to your finance support team for help.
We ran a successful 'BACS' run yesterday, but still needed to process a handful of payments manually, and I want this number to continue to decrease or disappear as soon as possible. Supplementing the on-line 'e' training many of you will have undertaken in recent weeks will be further one to one sessions with 'floor walkers' and also SAP 'surgeries' across next week and beyond.
Finally, we have agreed with colleagues in the procurement service that they will help us to clear the backlog of orders which have been placed this week and they are working on this task now. I know we're not there yet, but I also know that we will make SAP a success by continuing to work together, thank you again for supporting this approach.
Alan.--------------------------Sent on the move
From: Alan JonesSent: 15 April 2009 16:02To: AllUsersSubject: SAP updateDear Colleagues,
With a fair number of staff on leave this week, SAP user numbers have also dipped today. Despite that, the number of procurements made using SAP again rose sharply.However, rather than recount every day to you what we know has been performed on the system, I am more concerned today to know if some users are having to resort to other means to carry out day to day operations. We are of course aware that there are still difficulties in raising requisitions and the team is working hard to resolve them. If you need to make some urgent purchases and SAP is not delivering the functionality you require, please let your super users know.A number of you have emailed me directly and I am always happy to receive this instant feedback. Where appropriate, I have forwarded your messages and concerns on to the appropriate staff to resolve but your quickest route to an answer is via your super users, who may be able to answer things instantly.My management team and I meet every morning with key project and transformation managers and being able to relay your comments to them is very helpful to ensure we concentrate our efforts on those areas where we will get the best and quickest return.Following today’s meeting, I have had conversations with Richard Jones, the Chief Executive of South West One, on his return from leave, to brief him of the issues that we are facing and enlist his support to resolve them. I also called Julian David, Vice President of IBM’s Public Sector Business to alert him. He has promised to make sure that everyone at IBM understand the urgency of resolving these matters and has reiterated what we already know, that IBM will work as long and hard as it takes to sort these implementation problems out.
Best wishes.
Alan
With a fair number of staff on leave this week, SAP user numbers have also dipped today. Despite that, the number of procurements made using SAP again rose sharply.However, rather than recount every day to you what we know has been performed on the system, I am more concerned today to know if some users are having to resort to other means to carry out day to day operations. We are of course aware that there are still difficulties in raising requisitions and the team is working hard to resolve them. If you need to make some urgent purchases and SAP is not delivering the functionality you require, please let your super users know.A number of you have emailed me directly and I am always happy to receive this instant feedback. Where appropriate, I have forwarded your messages and concerns on to the appropriate staff to resolve but your quickest route to an answer is via your super users, who may be able to answer things instantly.My management team and I meet every morning with key project and transformation managers and being able to relay your comments to them is very helpful to ensure we concentrate our efforts on those areas where we will get the best and quickest return.Following today’s meeting, I have had conversations with Richard Jones, the Chief Executive of South West One, on his return from leave, to brief him of the issues that we are facing and enlist his support to resolve them. I also called Julian David, Vice President of IBM’s Public Sector Business to alert him. He has promised to make sure that everyone at IBM understand the urgency of resolving these matters and has reiterated what we already know, that IBM will work as long and hard as it takes to sort these implementation problems out.
Best wishes.
Alan
From:Alan JonesSent: 14 April 2009 14:48To: AllUsersSubject: SAP updateDear colleagues,
At my Management Team briefing this morning we heard about the progress made with the SAP rollout since last Thursday.We continue to see daily progress in many aspects of the SAP system. Progress is slow but steady. Although we see more users on the system making transactions, it is clear that it will take some time before staff become familiar with the scale and potential of SAP.There are still difficulties in raising requisitions and the team is working hard to resolve them If you have raised a call to the help desk and you have not had a solution to your particular query yet, please do not think that we are not working on it. Many calls have been logged for similar issues and we are working on a general resolution to these. You may not receive a response to you personally as we are concentrating on resolving issues affecting several callers. In many cases we are finding that the loading of new data is likely to address your concerns by the following day. We are grateful for your assistance in doing whatever you can do to familiarise yourself with SAP and resolve issues personally. Remember also that we have a number of 'floor walkers' out there to help you and also a large number of designated 'super-users' who will provide assistance.
Alan
From:Alan JonesSent: Wed 08/04/2009 17:04To: AllUsersSubject: SAP Update
Dear Colleagues,
Further to my e-mail yesterday, a great deal of work continues each day, and throughout the night to deliver the full functionality of our SAP system. At a meeting with my Directors today, we have received a full briefing from the senior Project Manager and Project Sponsor on the latest position.All calls which have been received by the ICT helpdesk, the issues which have been escalated to our 'Super Users' and the messages from our Change Team are being logged and resolved as quickly as possible, and your feedback is valued through these channels. We have seen good progress. There is clearly much more work to do, but I want every member of staff to understand that we do care about the difficulties you are facing, and we are working hard to make sure they are resolved quickly.The biggest concern we are working to resolve is related to procurement, and the ability to order goods and services. This problem mainly relates to making sure every user, or 'requisitioner' has the correct budget codes assigned to them. We have prioritised the County Council's Requisitioners to ensure that these business critical people are supported appropriately.As I said stated yesterday, this is a huge project, and it is not without its challenges. No new system of this scale and complexity can be introduced into an organisation like the County Council without some implementation difficulties. It is perfectly normal for those issues to be worked out in the first full month of its operation.Whist we expect continued turbulence over the coming weeks, particularly when the further elements of the SAP system are launched, please be assured that your concerns are being monitored and addressed quickly. We have also put in place contingency arrangements to ensure that your service requirements are fully supported. At senior management level, we will continue to receive a daily briefing in my office to ensure we understand what is going on ‘one the ground’ and to keep you informed of the latest position.Once again, thank you for your patience. This system will improve every day and become fully functional over the next few weeks. As it does and as you become more familiar with it, the current concerns will recede and we will find that we are in a much stronger place to manage our services than we were before.
Regards,
Alan
At my Management Team briefing this morning we heard about the progress made with the SAP rollout since last Thursday.We continue to see daily progress in many aspects of the SAP system. Progress is slow but steady. Although we see more users on the system making transactions, it is clear that it will take some time before staff become familiar with the scale and potential of SAP.There are still difficulties in raising requisitions and the team is working hard to resolve them If you have raised a call to the help desk and you have not had a solution to your particular query yet, please do not think that we are not working on it. Many calls have been logged for similar issues and we are working on a general resolution to these. You may not receive a response to you personally as we are concentrating on resolving issues affecting several callers. In many cases we are finding that the loading of new data is likely to address your concerns by the following day. We are grateful for your assistance in doing whatever you can do to familiarise yourself with SAP and resolve issues personally. Remember also that we have a number of 'floor walkers' out there to help you and also a large number of designated 'super-users' who will provide assistance.
Alan
From:Alan JonesSent: Wed 08/04/2009 17:04To: AllUsersSubject: SAP Update
Dear Colleagues,
Further to my e-mail yesterday, a great deal of work continues each day, and throughout the night to deliver the full functionality of our SAP system. At a meeting with my Directors today, we have received a full briefing from the senior Project Manager and Project Sponsor on the latest position.All calls which have been received by the ICT helpdesk, the issues which have been escalated to our 'Super Users' and the messages from our Change Team are being logged and resolved as quickly as possible, and your feedback is valued through these channels. We have seen good progress. There is clearly much more work to do, but I want every member of staff to understand that we do care about the difficulties you are facing, and we are working hard to make sure they are resolved quickly.The biggest concern we are working to resolve is related to procurement, and the ability to order goods and services. This problem mainly relates to making sure every user, or 'requisitioner' has the correct budget codes assigned to them. We have prioritised the County Council's Requisitioners to ensure that these business critical people are supported appropriately.As I said stated yesterday, this is a huge project, and it is not without its challenges. No new system of this scale and complexity can be introduced into an organisation like the County Council without some implementation difficulties. It is perfectly normal for those issues to be worked out in the first full month of its operation.Whist we expect continued turbulence over the coming weeks, particularly when the further elements of the SAP system are launched, please be assured that your concerns are being monitored and addressed quickly. We have also put in place contingency arrangements to ensure that your service requirements are fully supported. At senior management level, we will continue to receive a daily briefing in my office to ensure we understand what is going on ‘one the ground’ and to keep you informed of the latest position.Once again, thank you for your patience. This system will improve every day and become fully functional over the next few weeks. As it does and as you become more familiar with it, the current concerns will recede and we will find that we are in a much stronger place to manage our services than we were before.
Regards,
Alan
From: Alan JonesSent: 07 April 2009 14:24To: AllUsersSubject: SAPDear Colleagues,As you know SAP was launched last week for SCC, TDBC, the Police and Southwest One. I’m conscious, however, thatfor some staff SAP has not yet gone live or is not yet capable of offering complete functionality. Many of you will be aware and some of you have reported to me, that we have encountered a number of teething problems, mainly technical issues, in using SAP for the first time. I am grateful for your patience and support in helping to resolve these issues.I’m sure you will appreciate that this an extremely complex system and its installation and configuration is a huge task. It is perfectly normal for ICT projects of this scale and complexity to encounter problems during implementation. Despite all the detailed planning and preparation by our staff and those in South West One, many of these glitches can only be ironed out - frustrating though it is - during implementation. The set up needs to be absolutely right or SAP will not perform as well as we all want it to in the longer term.The main engine of SAP is working - it has been tested, and some staff have been able to process and create orders on the system. However, some staff have not been able to do so for a number of reasons. Please accept my apologies if you are one of those affected. I know that change managers are advising staff how best to deal with this, as we work to resolve these faults as quickly as we can.The project team and the change managers are working together to keep staff informed about the glitches discovered and the progress on resolution. The help desk feeds back twice a day on the nature of calls logged and the team can then focus on the most commonly reported issues. One of these is that some staff have not yet received their ID and log-on. This affects currently less than 150 staff across all 4 organisations out of the 3,670 created in this phase of the roll out. This issue should be resolved today. The single biggest issue creating calls to the help desk is that for some people the correct SAP attributes for an individual’s role have not been loaded. This was a massive data load of over 30,000 records and some have failed. This problem was most prevalent within the Environment Directorate. We have had to reload this data and it will take some time to correct the attributes for all 3,670 users. We hope that the majority of these will be corrected in the next few days and apologise for this delay.Another commonly reported issue is that some staff cannot raise requisitions because they cannot access e-catalogues. This is a technical issue that has been referred back to SAP and we await their advice as to how to resolve this. In the meantime, we advise using the catalogues wherever possible on the vendor’s website and then using free text orders as a temporary measure. The SAP project team is working relentlessly -day and night - to fix all the issues raised via the help desk, so that we can resume normal service as soon as possible.The project team provides an update on progress twice a day at 9.00 and 5.30 and we feed this onto change managers as soon as we have it. We are doing all we can to ease users through this massive transition. Thank you for your patience in the meantime and I will continue to keep you informed of developments.Alan-------------------------- Sent on the move
Any new problems that emerge will be reported here (and there will certainly be problems) SAP cost Somerset £35 million. Alan Jones has been apologising for it ever since.
Question: If SAP is such a "great success" (backed by the global power of IBM) why is SouthWest One so desperate to find someone who knows what he's doing to try and fix it? They're offering £2000 a week!
You have to admire his gall in turning the truth on its head. Every Friday Somerset's Chief Executive blows his own trumpet and publishes the results for his 'loyal' team to swallow and absorb. Friday April 3rd was no exception - pure undiluted spin:
Despite the fact that 80 percent of the great SAP project is still delayed Jones writes:
"To have developed and implemented this order of change in such a large organisation on time and on budget, was –notwithstanding the glitches and frustrations – a great success"
Any new problems that emerge will be reported here (and there will certainly be problems) SAP cost Somerset £35 million. Alan Jones has been apologising for it ever since.
Question: If SAP is such a "great success" (backed by the global power of IBM) why is SouthWest One so desperate to find someone who knows what he's doing to try and fix it? They're offering £2000 a week!
You have to admire his gall in turning the truth on its head. Every Friday Somerset's Chief Executive blows his own trumpet and publishes the results for his 'loyal' team to swallow and absorb. Friday April 3rd was no exception - pure undiluted spin:
Despite the fact that 80 percent of the great SAP project is still delayed Jones writes:
"To have developed and implemented this order of change in such a large organisation on time and on budget, was –notwithstanding the glitches and frustrations – a great success"
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