Our client, a large privately-held regional grocer in North America, partnered with Plantensive to assess their ability to successfully implement and absorb an enterprise-wide ERP solution, while gathering detailed requirements and performing an ERP Fit-Gap Analysis, considering People, Process & Technology. They were operating as both a Grocery Wholesaler with a large portfolio of private label brands and a retail operation with over 400 stores.
Our Solution:
Plantensive managed this project with three discrete tracks using a small integrated project team of senior resources who leveraged our findings across all project efforts:
- Organizational Readiness Assessment
- Business Requirements Gathering
- ERP Fit-Gap Analysis.
Organizational Readiness Assessment
Plantensive leveraged our Advisory Services Toolkit throughout this project. We used our Change Acceptance Curve to plot each business unit and department. We then developed a Roadmap for recommended improvement for each including knowledge and skill deficiency gaps that need to be addressed through the Change Management/ Training track of the ensuing ERP project.
- Buying – Meat/Seafood | Produce | Bakery | Dairy | Deli | Dry
- Goods | Beverage | General Merchandise | Health & Beauty |
- Frozen/Refrig | Specialty/Promotional
- Finance & Accounting – Internal | Services
- Real Estate Operations
- Marketing
- Information Technology
- Human Resources
- Retail – Owned | Franchised | Partners
- Board of Directors & Sr. Executives
Business Requirements Gathering
During this track of the project we worked to understand and document our clients wholesale and retail grocery models. We leveraged our PlantensiveToolkit preconfigured with standard business requirements which we find to be 80% applicable to the businesses we engage with.
Plantensive then worked with the client to identify and catalog over 1,200 enterprise-wide discrete business requirements through interview/review sessions and supporting workshops. We also utilized our Plantensive Process Framework (above) to categorize our client foundational Business Actions, requisite Industry Actions, and the Competitive Actions which are the ‘secret sauce’ requirements that cannot be forgotten during the ERP selection and implementation.
Organized by function, these requirements served as the backbone for the ERP RFP which the business owners and IT team ultimately developed. They will also serve as the starting point for the design phase of the ERP Implementation project.
ERP Fit-Gap Analysis
Throughout this effort Plantensive was hard at work analyzing the ERP software vendors and how each would meet the organizational needs and requirements of our client’s surprisingly complex business environment. We considered two enterprise-wide approach options:
- Single vendor
- Best-of-breed with certified interfaces
After working through decision trees during Executive Steering Committee sessions we short-listed the vendors to: SAP, Oracle, Infor & JDA. We then did a deep dive to understand their specific functionality for the grocery/retail landscape and built scenario scripts for each vendor to demonstrate their capabilities against.
In the end, our client asked for the best fit solution for both approach options which we provided to them. Additionally, we used all of our learnings for an Plantensive Best Recommendation for the lowest-cost / best-fit / highest-success solution. With this information our client was well equipped to proceed with their ERP RFP process.
Results:
- Organizational Readiness Score with Gaps by Function
- 1,200+ Detailed Business Requirements Cataloged
- ERP Fit-Gap Analysis Performed
