One of the world’s leading dairy suppliers was implementing SAP with APO across all business units, starting with Australia. The consumer products division – yogurts, desserts, processed dairy – went live successfully. A new Supply Chain Director with extensive FMCG experience had driven smart configuration changes.
But the ingredients and cheese divisions were a disaster. Three separate go-live attempts. Three failures. Each one deepening business resistance.
The problem wasn’t technical. It was fundamental business reality.
Consumer products operated on weeks and months. Fast-moving goods with predictable cycles. Standard supply chain thinking applied perfectly.
Cheese production operated on months and years. Specialty cheeses needed extended maturing cycles. Overseas manufacturing and shipping added complexity. Co-production processes generated many products and by-products simultaneously.
The business teams recognised that their operations were distinct. They felt SAP was too limited for their special circumstances. Their perception hardened with each failed implementation.
Under pressure to meet deadlines, IT started configuring systems themselves. Without business input. Without understanding the operational complexities. The predictable result was even less cooperation from business personnel.
Each failure made the next attempt harder. Business resistance grew stronger. Trust disappeared. The spiral was accelerating downward.
Three strikes. The project was heading for complete failure.
The Global CIO called Pivot to get to the bottom of the problem and recommend a solution. Pivot’s consultants identified the core issue: complete lack of business buy-in.
Their solution was radical. Move physically into the business areas. Sit with the business personnel. Engage instead of working through IT intermediaries.
The business teams were skeptical at first. They’d been burned three times. Why would this attempt be different?
Pivot used an agile, iterative approach. Starting with standard business scenarios, they generated trial configurations for immediate feedback and revision. No big reveals. No surprise implementations. Continuous collaboration.
Business personnel responded well to seeing their input reflected immediately in system configurations. They could influence the outcome instead of having solutions imposed on them.
Pivot then tackled the non-standard scenarios. Extended maturing cycles for specialty cheeses. Complex overseas manufacturing and shipping. Co-production processes that previous implementations had failed to handle.
As the project progressed, business personnel became more and more positive. They began seeing benefits of end-to-end horizontal business processes instead of their traditional silos.
Demand planning connected to supply planning connected to production scheduling. For the first time, they could see the complete picture instead of isolated fragments.
Pivot extended supply chain management to include distribution depots for the first time in the company. The integrated approach delivered obvious advantages and benefits.
Pivot modified elements of the original consumer products solution to handle co-production scenarios. Pivot accommodated products and by-products from single manufacturing processes in standard SAP with minimal workarounds.
The finished solution catered for even the most complex processes. All in standard SAP. All with business buy-in.
Go-live succeeded. After three dramatic failures, the implementation was indeed “boring.” That’s what the Global CIO wanted to hear.
But success went beyond Australia. The solution became a replicable template for other countries with minimum exceptions.
The business organization had never believed a global solution was possible. They’d assumed it would be Australia-specific only. Now other countries were asking to implement the same solution.
The transformation was complete. Business teams who had resisted three implementations became advocates for global rollout. Skeptics became champions.
Breaking the failure spiral meant understanding that business buy-in comes before technical implementation. Pivot delivered both.
