Having Industry background helped me understand any Organization's Business Processes. Although, it took quite some time to get the required system access with the login details for all the Team members, this was never a bottleneck for the preparation of the BPPO service. It was different experience to be on the other side of the table wherein the deliverables had to be targeted with the help of the Team members with a strength of 5. The catch was, 1 member (resource) was from China (APJ Zone), 2 members from Ireland and 2 members from US itself. Now, this was a bit challenging to organize the resources, as all of them wrere from different Time zones.
It is important here to explain the preparation of the BPPO Service under two major headings / sections. This includes,
1. 'Workpath' Roadmap
- Preparatory Call - It is important to set up a call for preparing the team for the upcoming service. This helps to interact with the Team Members and know them. In case of further clarifications, this is necessary.
- Service Portfolio - To be constantly in touch with the Customer Single Point of Contact i.e. the TQM (Technical Quality Manager - SAP Representative), to understand about the service portfolio. TQM also highlights the critical issues of the customer and briefs the future plans of the customer.
- Business Documents - Referring customer Blueprint documents / service reports of previous services of the customer. This gives a fair idea of the customer’s business, known customer issues, solution landscape, etc.
- Agenda - After reviewing the Service Portfolio and business documents, preparation of the Agenda is the most important part of the schedule, as the Service has to be delivered as per Agenda without any gaps and loose ends.
- Final Report - Preparation of final report in the Solution Manager of the customer and submitting the same to the customer after SAP QA’s approval.
- Post-Service Activities - During the 2 weeks availability (after the Service Delivery), it is necessary to follow up with the Development Team on any standard code changes suggested. This timeframe should also be used to find out if the concrete recommendations during the wrap-up presentation have been tested by the customer and if so, their findings.
2. Administrative and Behavioral approach
- Common Shared Folder - Team Members should save their findings in a common shared folder with their respective names. This helps to ensure that the given work is shared amongst all the team members and none of us are unaware of each other’s work and everyone in the team can access any required documents at any given point in time.
- Time Zone Blues - Some of the team members work from a different time zone and it is necessary to keep up their motivation to work. In order to do so, their working hours should be be flexible. Such as, Consultants working from Dublin (Ireland) are 5 hours to EST and 6 hours to CST ahead and in such case, they would not be in position to work till 6.00 pm US local time (i.e. 11 pm Ireland local time), as it will be too late for them.
- Logistics at Customer Site - Consultants should be placed comfortably during on-site delivery, by providing them the required logistics.
Delivery
Once the resources were identified for my service and as soon as the login details were received from the customer, I instructed my team members to start analyzing the critical areas and document them. Of course, this had to be done remotely at their own convenient time.
There are other small aspects that are also equally important, such as, providing each Consultant a separate cabin / desk wherein, a network hub to access internet uninterruptingly, etc by keeping the Consultants comfortable during on-site delivery.
While delivering the service, due to the time zone differences, I had to schedule the customer interviews and follow-up interviews during my team member's time-zone, so that the Consultant does their work with equal zeal and motivation. This helped to keep my members focused to the work they are doing.
After all those many days work, at last it was time to present the wrap-up presentation that consists of Very High, High and Medium issues along with the recommendations, out of which, Very High and High issues were the roadblocks for a smooth and successful go-live.
Post wrap-up, it was time to prepare the final report in the Customer's Solution Manager wherein the Business Process along with the issues with the recommendations has to be recorded. After successful proofing from by the Quality, I passed the final report to the Technical Quality Manager to distribute it to the customer.
Conclusion
A quick summary of what I feel are the most important / crucial for delivering a service / project :
- Drawing an outline of the timeline required for completion of the project and pre-requisites of the delivery
- Collection of data by the means of documents, talking to the customer (can be End-users, Consultants, Managers)
- Preparing an Agenda and working on the project strictly as per Agenda
- Understand the customer's pain points and raise the critical issues and provide recommendations to ensure a smooth go-live.
- Sumission of final report in a stipulated format duly approved by Quality authorities.
