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202 Chapter 7 • Operations and Postimplementation

misuse of the system. These problems often surface in the postimplementation phase when the
system is in production and is being used extensively by the company; however, if the imple-
menting organization makes sure there is a knowledge management plan in place, the company
can prevent the pitfalls and missteps that would otherwise occur. A study of more than 100 SAP
4
customers concludes that there are four areas businesses should focus on when they implement
an ERP system. One of the four areas is training and knowledge development (the other three are
vision and strategy, structure and decision making, and management processes).
The ERP implementation process can be divided into major phases: Requirements
Gathering and Definition, Build, Go-Live, Stabilization, and Ongoing Support. Knowledge is
gained and lost during any of these phases, and the most problematic time frames are moving
from one phase to another. More often than not, there are changes in personnel during those time
frames as both internal and external resources leave or join the ERP implementation team or users.
The project team must therefore ensure that there is a well-defined process in place during those
time frames in order to transfer the knowledge and skill to new or existing staff or team members.
Knowledge and skill transfer should be an integral part of the implementation plan, starting from
Day one. If you are using an implementation partner or external consultants, then be sure that they
have defined the roll-on and roll-off process and that it includes knowledge transfer.
Multiple aspects of the implementation process must be documented during the Definition
and Build phases. From the project management perspective, such issues as project monitoring
and tracking, collaboration and communication, subject matter expertise, and lesson-learned
repository should be documented. From the operational perspective, it is important to document
the business processes and how they are mapped to the ERP software. From the IT perspective,
hardware and software architecture, network configuration, and the like need to be documented.
Structured and integrated visibility to the knowledge base (i.e., ERP Center of Excellence
(COE)) is critical for easy accessibility and retrieval of information.
The team composition is likely to change in the Go-Live and Stabilization phases: Internal
and external resources used in the Define and Build phases leave, especially third-party consul-
tants, whereas new internal staff takes their place. As mentioned earlier, the boundary between
the phases is a weak point. The first task in the knowledge management plan should therefore be
monitoring the transition from one phase to the other, which enables a smooth transfer of knowl-
edge. Other tasks include training guides, user guides, known problems, a troubleshooting guide,
IT architecture and code repository, and third-party tools used to access the ERP system (e.g.,
reporting tools). The ERP COE is replaced with an Application COE at this stage.
In the ongoing support phase, the departments and users involved are likely to change
again. This time, such supply chain partners as customers and vendors are added to the user base,
along with analysts who use data warehouse tools for analysis of the ERP information. The
knowledge base must therefore be revised to reflect the new communities involved.
There are knowledge management systems that can help streamline the process of knowl-
edge and skill transfer. With such a system in place, one centralized data repository can then be
used by the implementation team to store the documents. In addition, one data repository will
eliminate confusion, duplication, and losing data. Moreover, there will be only one interface to be
used by the entire team: The knowledge management system will store the data in one consistent
format, thereby making it easier for new users to collect documentation input by different people.

4 Brennan, M. (2004). Knowledge Transfer Enables Enterprise Performance. Working Paper, Carleton University’s
Sprott School of Business.