First SAP project

Some time ago SAP Expert asked you to share your memories about your first SAP Project.

Let me now share two interesting responses. No names shared, of course!

My first SAP project was an implementation of SD/MM and FI/CO at Remington Arms Company in Wilmington, Delaware from 1993-1995. I remember the debate about whether to go with release 2.0 or 2.1!

The client server architecture was new to everyone, and so was SAP R/3. I had 3 small children at the time, and I worked 80-90 hours a week for over a year. I knew that once I mastered SAP, my future was set for awhile. This was my motivation to work the long hours and to push myself to learn everything about SAP.  We had to figure everything out for ourselves – there was no easy access to the Internet and not a great deal of US companies who had gone live with SAP at the time.  I remember when we had to FTP files form the mainframe, it would bring the system to it’s knees.

We went live in April of 1995. We all were promised a bonus (mine was $15,000) if we stayed until one year past the go live date. I lasted 15 days, as the Philip Morris project in Richmond was just getting started so I decided to forego the bonus for the SAP $$$$ that awaited me. I remember how impressed I was with the ONE person we knew who had ten years of SAP experience. And to think I now have 25 years!

And the second one

My first SAP project was to assume the program manager role of a large implementation, involving 16+ countries in Asia Pacific. It was a migration from legacy to SAP, focusing on OTC (order to cash) processes.

I took over the implementation right after UAT (user acceptance testing), and was tasked to plan cutover activities with a team of 50+ members (employees + consultants). I had less than 1 month to complete that.

Working with the core team, I put together a very detail cutover plan, where activities were defined by the hour. In order to minimize business impact, all cutvover activities had to be completed over a weekend. Schedule was put together with a 24-hour clock and resources were grouped into 3 shifts. System went live on Monday, had some issues but nothing major that affected business. Overall, I would say that was a successful cutover!

By the way, that was my encounter with SAP – have been working on legacy applications before that.

Do you have a similar story to share? Please do so!