Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company
When SAP projects get out of control, it's easy to blame the software, says Michael Hammer, father of the re-engineering craze and president of Hammer & Co., in Cambridge, Mass.
But the true problem is, "we have been misthinking what SAP is about," says Hammer, who gave a keynote presentation last month at SAP AG's Sapphire conference in Orlando, Fla. SAP's strength is not its functionality, but the fact that it forces companies to think about integrating business processes, explains Hammer.
To that end, three factors tend to derail SAP efforts: lack of organizational readiness, organizational resistance to change and a lack of executive leadership.
Hammer's keys to SAP success? Passionate executive leadership, fanatical belief in R/3, adequate resources, widespread buy-in and sharing responsibility across the enterprise.