I recently had the privilege of helping document a success story on Enterprise Asset Management activities at Nova Chemicals. The whole process is both a trying and exhilarating experience at the same time. I love hearing about how companies are using the SAP product suite to support and grow their business. The people at our customers are truly and should be proud of what they accomplished. It does, however, take some prodding of them and their companies to get them to share their experiences. In Nova’s case, as with a lot of companies, the current business environment meant that they could not start immediately. It took about a year from the initial contact & proposal before Nova, was ready to participate in the process. And, with how busy everyone was, the process never goes as fast as you want or expect. In this case both summer, and Christmas holidays got involved.
Once the customer was ready, another typical problem arose; one of too many possible success stories. Which of the many examples of tremendous work & success do we choose to communicate to the SAP community? While we were going through each of the examples trying to decide which one to pursue, I was trying keeping track of them for future stories, and I was overwhelmed. Once we had all decided and agreed on the topic we were (as they say) off to the races. I then had the pleasure of working with a group knowledgeable, dedicated, and professional people. The fact that they were also very friendly was just a bonus.
After a series of meetings we identified the specific people that we need to talk to about the success that they had in Enterprise Asset Management. With that done, interviews were conducted by SAP and the professional writer who was engage to create the success story paper. This interview lasted about 2 hours and from the information gathered the writer was able to produce the first draft of the story.
Once the initial draft was created, it went through a series of reviews internal to SAP. I sometimes felt that I had seen the same document a dozen times, before all the edits had been looked at and agreed to. Once we satisfied that the draft said what we thought Nova Chemicals discussed with us, it was time for Nova Chemical to review & approve it. This phase actually happened faster than I expected. I had heard of success stories getting hung up in the legal approval process for months on end. Not in this case. I had hoped that the story would be approved before I went on Christmas holidays, but that was not the case. But I had a good Christmas present form Nova, since when I returned to work, there in my in-box was the approved Enterprise Asset Success story. You can read this story at http://download.sap.com/download.epd?context=F87C12798477E3FBF0FA1C527BAA752C9313D24D9EF45E5A49B8B8F....
As I stated earlier, I had a good time doing this work. I met interesting people, who were proud of what they had accomplished, and were please to tell their stories. I sincerely hope that everyone that was involved had as good a time and would want to do it again. Nova Chemical look out I will be calling on you again.
