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‘Keeping on top of things’
a major success factor in ‘Project Asia’

“Philips today is not the Philips it was three years ago”

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“Keeping on top of things”. This is an expression that turns up regularly when talking to Theo Brunken (45), especially when he’s telling a success story in which he has been involved in recent years: ‘Project Asia’ is one such story. Project Asia was all about the implementation of SAP-Class for Philips Semiconductors’ entire Asian operation. Class had already been implemented in America (2002) and in Europe (2004).

Theo, Functional Team Leader (SAP FiCo) at Philips Semiconductors in Eindhoven, explains: “It was a really big operation that involved transposing 18 company codes – we’re talking about a substantial part of our sales – so, if anything had gone wrong we would have had a major problem. But it all went well; we went Live in August 2005 and the majority of our customers didn’t even notice the changes.” The main success factor was perhaps the fact that our twenty man strong team kept ‘on top of things’ right from the beginning till the end of the project. Theo, however, has a few more reasons on offer for the project’s smooth progress.

Two worlds
“The more complex the project, the better it is for everyone to reach agreement on what the precise aims are. In that way, Business and IT can be optimally tuned to each other’s needs. In such a big project, proper interaction between these two ‘worlds’ is crucial. In Project Asia this interaction was consistently open and constructive – precisely because the project’s scope was clear from the start. The starting point was clear to everyone involved and if you then stick strictly to the agreed scope, you’ve already guaranteed the success of half of your project.
Being present on site was also very important as you have to take account of the demands of the local business. You start with a SAP ‘core’ that has to be defended as much as possible, but sometimes you simply have to make concessions... But not too quickly! If a user comes along with a request, you have to check critically whether the change is truly necessary or not.
We had a really well-tuned team both in Taipei, capital of Taiwan, and in Eindhoven. During the Go Live phase there were about 60 of us in Taiwan, and we had a logistic link present in every major location in Asia. These links all had SAP experience and insight into our systems in order to support the local business. That was a really important success factor. Another way we kept on top of things was a strictly managed integration test by which every possible outcome had already been generated once in advance. That way we avoided coming to the conclusion (too late) that e.g. invoices were incorrect and goods couldn’t be sent abroad.”

Generating goodwill
“Also important was that we kept our communication up to scratch, especially after Go Live: checks every day, what are the issues…keeping right on top of things. Due to the time difference, ‘Europe’ could get started on the ‘tickets’ (requests for changes, adaptations etc) that people in Asia had submitted in the course of their working day, so that when they returned to work the next day, their issues had already been dealt with. That generated a huge amount of goodwill.”
For fiscal reasons, changes to the structure of the Asian operation were put into place in the course of the project. A request was made to adapt the scope of the project to these changes, but Theo and his people stuck to their guns: “We wanted to stick to the original scope, because otherwise the entire project would be at risk. We did, however, start up a parallel project which, with a lot of hard work, we managed to complete by January 1st 2006 as requested by management. That yielded a considerable financial saving, so that it was well worth the extra pressure and effort involved – quite a few people had to sacrifice their Christmas break to get it all done.”

Not scared of an adventure
Theo has been with Philips for some 20 years now and can’t see himself ever leaving. “It’s such a huge concern and you have such a marvelous range of choices. You can switch between companies and divisions, you can go to work on other systems and you can even go to other parts of the world. The big advantage as an IT person is that you’re right up close to the business. We’re currently just about to start up a new project and that means I’ll be in touch with the business almost every day: what are the requirements, what will be the first priorities, etc. etc. The great thing about this process is that you can see how the business changes from day to day. Philips today isn’t the Philips it was three years ago. Ironically, this also applies to Semiconductors, which, within the foreseeable future, will no longer be part of the Philips concern. Theo Brunken regrets this, but from the Philips point of view I can certainly understand it. I myself see the opportunities of this rather than the threats. We must not be afraid to join in in this adventure!”

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