Inteva CIO, Dennis Hodges, on how to keep an IT team focused and motivated throughout multi-year global implementations.

Global-IT-team-motivation

Start an ERP implementation. Complete fourteen sites in twelve months. Spend one year understanding what you implemented. Buy another company. Spend four years implementing at twenty-five new sites. Then revisit all the sites for optimization and leverage. Ever had one of those decades?

Such is the life of a modern, global ERP project. Budgets rise and fall (why do they primarily fall?), external events impact ‘go live’ dates. It may drive us crazy as CIOs, but the real impact is on the implementation and support teams. How do we give the team the motivation they need on a long journey like this?

A Long Global ERP Journey

Our path to a global ERP system began with the death of another system. We were just spinning off from a larger entity that used SAP. There were a number of reasons that we simply wouldn’t be able to continue with that system – financial reasons being among them. We had to move to a much less expensive environment while meeting our primary manufacturing requirements.

When we moved to the new ERP system (Plex) in 2008, there were not very many business analysts floating out in the market. We built a team from scratch, with virtually no experience in the system. Our initial implementations were augmented by support from Plex and our system integrator. With their assistance, we replaced SAP with Plex in the original Inteva locations in one year.

By then, the team had a good knowledge base under their belts. So, we celebrated success and began understanding what we had implemented and how to improve in some areas.

Then, we made an acquisition in January 2011 that doubled the size of the company and added a new ERP system with thirty separate database instances. This system was supported in house, so a number of infrastructure and application support specialists came with the new company.

We made the decision to replace the system in the acquired company with Plex. The business analysts and functional support specialists were brought in for discussions on our plan to move forward and how to utilize their expertise in the new environment. We were able to keep most of the team by reinforcing the fact that understanding the company’s business processes was more important that knowledge of any particular system.

Evolution of a Top Notch Team

We made the decision to start the implementations in China, then move westward into India, Eastern Europe and finally Western Europe with a couple of Americas sites implemented along the way. Starting in China allowed us to bring the new team together, working side by side for months. This formed the nucleus of a strong team that has been able to divide and conquer since then.

When we started the process in China, we brought several people from the US who’d worked together before and mixed them with new team members from China, India, and Europe.

A number of implementations and several gan bei’s* later, we have a very functional group. One member of the team who hails from Amsterdam has taken on a number of implementation leads. Another from Bangalore has led projects in Poland, and is scheduled to lead a German implementation. Another who started as a co-op student five years ago has since led projects from Mexico to France.

I can’t begin to describe how much our team has impressed me with their ability to work together and get along in situations that have ranged from fun to furiously frustrating.

The Team-building Magic Formula

So what magic formula can we attribute this successful team building to? One could say that it was some stroke of CIO brilliance, but that would only be wishful thinking. There are a number of items that have contributed to the success. First of all, It’s been the result of hard work by the team members themselves – understanding what they needed to do and pulling together to get it done. I have been part of several large project implementations like this and I have to say that this has been a unique experience.

As CIO, there are several areas that I think we have to focus on to keep teams performing at a high level over a long period of time. My main task has been to keep the executive level stress away from the team. I am very pleased to say that politics is kept at a minimum here, as opposed to many places I’ve seen. There is a sense of common direction that I am proud to be part of.

We must empower the team. People will work up to the level you allow them to. People grow or tire tremendously in long projects. Empowerment will help those people that want to do more by serving as a great motivator to them. The organization also benefits by having a very self-managing team. Hopefully, we’ve all seen that workforces need leadership, not micro-management from the CIO.

Also, remove the external stress whenever possible. Large projects can have opponents; don’t force the team to fight these battles. That’s the role of the CIO and the Applications management team. An analogy to a racing car is in order here – remove the governors that limit progress and the team can move much quicker.

And finally, communicate – with the team and the organization. Never waste an opportunity to tell the team that you appreciate the effort. Never forget to keep the organization up to speed on where the project is. This is remarkably difficult to remember in the fourth or fifth year of an implementation. You can get so involved in the project that you take it for granted. Communicate success wherever possible. And communicate your strategy – where do you want the company to end up? If people don’t see what they are doing is contributing to the direction the company wants to go, they will quickly get demotivated. So, as CIO, repeatedly reinforce what the direction is and how this project is enabling progress towards the goal.

*Gan bei: In China, to toast with an alcoholic drink, or to drink down the whole glass.

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