http://blogs.sap.com/services/files/2012/04/273542_l_srgb_s_gl1.jpgHANA has amazing speed, but are you concerned the path to get there is slow with lots of speed bumps along the way? Concerned that it could take months or even years to implement?
Take a deep breath and know the concern is valid. And the answer is the implementation can be quick and smooth with very little business disruption. Take Medtronic as a case in point.
This Minnesota based medical device manufacturing company, with 40,000 employees, faces unique industry challenges. Their strategy is taking a full end-to-end look at the diseases they’re working to cure and strives to record and track every byte of customer feedback it encounters — whether it’s a formal U.S. Food and Drug Administration report or an informal conversation that a Medtronic employee happens to overhear. The company must also satisfy specific regulatory rules about tracking what their devices do.
As an innovation oriented company, they are on the leading edge of technology and need to be given the massive amounts of data the company processes and analyzes. With this business need as the driver they became an early adopter of SAP HANA.
So how did they get there? And get there on time? Yes, believe it or not, their HANA implementation was on time and considered fast for this highly regulated industry.
Keys for successful implementation:
- Strong executive sponsorship – leverage executive support and relationships with SAP for new technology
- Clear use case – drive speed and business value together
- Critical business process – capture business requirements to ensure commitment; define business benefits and success metrics (e.g. reduced reporting time from 30 minutes down to 5 minutes with much deeper data access and report manipulation than before)
- Strong business and IT alignment – hardware ordered and delivered ahead of project to avoid unnecessary delays
- Skilled pool of resources including project managers and architects
Want to learn more about their success story? Hear Medtronic’s Steve Teichman, director of business intelligence, share insight and best practices for the company’s SAP HANA implementation.
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