Nestlé's ERP Odyssey

Nestlé's global SAP project, which is tied in to a larger $500 millionhardware and software data center rehaul, will be integrated with itsAmerican subsidiary's soon-to-be completed ERP. And Dunn is evenlending 70 of her own staffers for the global initiative, as well assome of her hard-won expertise. But while the verdict is still out onthe global project, the pain - angry employees, costly reengineeringand long periods when it seemed the project would never end - was worthit for Nestlé USA, Dunn says. To date, she claims, the Best projecthas saved the company $325 million. (Because Nestlé is headquarteredoutside the United States, it doesn't have to disclose its financialinformation to the SEC.)

Regardless of the project's exact ROIROI, the lessons learned are real.The primary lesson Dunn says she has taken away from the project isthis: No major software implementation is really about the software.It's about change management. "If you weren't concerned with how thebusiness ran, you could probably [install the ERP software] in 18 to24 months," she says. Then "you would probably be in the unemploymentline in 19 to 25 months." Alles zu ROI auf CIO.de

Nestlé learned the hard way that an enterprisewide rollout involvesmuch more than simply installing software. "When you move to SAP, youare changing the way people work," Dunn says. "You are challengingtheir principles, their beliefs and the way they have done things formany, many years."

The Problem: 29 Brands of Vanilla

Vanilla may be the world's least exciting ingredient - the word is evena synonym for bland. But that wasn't the case at Nestlé USA, wherevanilla represented a piquant plethora of inefficiencies and missedopportunities.