Located in the hart of the Netherlands a manufacturing customer who we met back in 2011, went from rebuilding the company with limited funding to selling the company and becoming part of a global investment group in 2019.

Their journey was quite difficult where dedication, passion and hart for the company made the difference.

Nevertheless, their attempt to implement a suitable ERP solution according their need as NOW a global player turned out to be more challenging than they ever expected.

The first attempt failed unfortunately leaving the company with a lost of half a million euro’s of initial investment.

ERP Challenge

How come such a successful company who made it from red figures into a profitable and healthy EBITDA survived the crisis and re-build a strong brand, was not capable of implementing an ERP solution?

The answer to this story is quite an interesting one.

Changing business climate seems to be an external factor which is hardly visible in a company. Until it hits you!

Same happened to our customer. The company was oriented to be a Top 20 player in the package handling systems, until two years later the strategy changed targeting Top 5 listing, since global financial forecast was very positive and to remain a relevant key player growth is a must.

Imagine being an CEO, CFO or CIO without having all the answers ready, without an alliance built and prepared to go to battle. What is the first thing you should do?

Everything becomes visible during a Transformation project, especially an implementation of an ERP solution where literally all bloodstreams and business life lines are exposed and rewired. At this stage you stumble into process bottlenecks, hidden unrouted streams, partial End2End visibility and the biggest trap, not knowing which decisions to be made since we never dealt with such altitude before!

Mission.one Solution

As the project was temporarily paused, we were asked to support and re-initiate the project by just providing a project manager.

As to our own developed transformation approach:

• We started to figure out the Strategy of the company. Question to the customer: What are we, Who do we want to be, What can we realistically become given the time?
• Assess the stakeholders. Surprise! The involved stakeholders audience was much bigger than anticipated, very active Global CEO, very active private investor, very involved external auditor but an inactive software supplier!!!
• Assess the status of the current situation! Business transformation was happening and still in motion, but the ERP scope has not changed in the last 2 years. Basically we were configuring a company that didn’t exist anymore! FULL STOP we said.
• Redefine the Transformation Phases and redefine per phase the new business scope.
• Equip ourselves with knowledgeable set of people. Grow the team from 5 to 25 team members. Build an external consulting team around our internal team members with full sense of ownership.
• WOW, Initial Sponsor left the company. Now what? Due to the fact Mission.One built a strong stakeholder model, group CEO has assigned a new steerco group and proceed. Reinitiate with new set of agreements and strategical direction.
• Oh No, here we go Again! Scope change, going from single site to multi-site setup, different business model and a new company has been acquired. Can you keep up with the number of changes? Nevertheless, we stayed focused; Define the changes vs. the business models implemented and how do they impact the solution overall? Stick to strong decision making, meant also taking decisions NOT to change a running project. Re-think a business plan and propose an incremental transformation roadmap.
• Finally the finish line was insight, last preparation of end users, training session, master data migration in full progress, integrations aligned and WHOOP THERE IT IS: COVID-19 shuts down the whole country!! True story!

Eventually after 14 months in middle of COVID-19 period we went successfully live allowing the company to transform further and take technology as an added value into their processes!

What did we do as Mission.One Advisory? We definitely provided a Project Manager!

• On top of that we provided Executive Coaching.
• On top of that we provided Change Management.
• On top of that we provided Project team Mentoring and above all, our full dedication.

Moral of the story: No matter which approach/option you choose, there is always a surprise and decision- making process behind!! Dealing with such choices Mission.One Advisory is here to support and prevent losses.

GET IT DONE