492 Part III • Acquiring Information Systems
obtain a visa for only two months, they remained in Kuala
Lumpur for one week every two months to renew their visas.
The week-long visa stays in KL were staggered so that two
APSS team members always remained onsite in Taiwan.
Pressing issues were discussed with absent team members by
phone as needed, and the Project Integration Lead provided a
weeklyprogress report by phone to the APSS Applications
manager, who was serving as the APSS lead on an R/3 proj-
ect in Thailand during several weeks of the Taiwan project.
Everything was coordinated with timelines. You could
do the project at a distance, but being co-located made
it a lot easier: when you hit an issue, you could say,
“Let’s have a meeting to discuss this.”
— SAP Application Consultant, APSS
The manager of finance for BAT Taiwan was ini-
tially responsible for choosing the “power users” for the
project team based on information provided by APSS
about the user expertise that would be needed. Five
Taiwan employees were selected to work on the FI/CO
modules (see Exhibit 4). Only one user was assigned to
work on the SD and MM modules because no one in the
Taiwan office had previously been performing these
functions; the person had gained experience with sales
and logistics functions when employed at Rothmans.
None of the Taiwan users had prior experience on
SAP projects, but some users had entered data into the
SAP R/3 financials system (of BATUKE) and one user had
some experience with Oracle systems. All team members
were considered fast learners who would be able to pick up
the new system quickly.
The good thing about Taiwan is that most of the man-
agers here are pretty new in the organization. They are
young, well-educated (many have MBAs), and have a
high level of computer literacy. They are open-minded
and are more prepared to take on changes. They knew
that whatever we were doing in the past, things were
going to be different, and they knew that what we had
was cumbersome, that we could not go forward with a
bunch of non-integrated systems. They welcomed the
[SAP] system; this was going to help them do their
job. Their commitment level was extremely high. So
the credit is due to the people themselves.
— Mr. Ma, BAT Taiwan Country Manager
All of the Taiwan team members continued to also
do their regular jobs during the project. One manager, who
had just rejoined the Taiwan office in a supervisory role,
was able to devote 70 percent of his efforts to the project.
The BAT Taiwan Project Co-Lead was able to juggle the
workloads of the part-time project team members that
reported to him. The trade marketing position was left
open, but the country manager helped with that role.
The Taiwan operations were small at that time.
This made it more difficult for the project team,
because they had to deal with day-to-day activities
as well as the project. But they also had full senior
management support.
— Major Project Manager, APN IT
There were three technical team members (see Exhibit
4). The APN IT resource already based in Taiwan was
responsible for the telecommunications infrastructure to sup-
port system access by five business partners in Taiwan. The
R/3 Basis expert from APSS worked offsite until a week
before the Go-Live date, when he spent two weeks in
Taiwan. The third person on the technical team was respon-
sible for creating ABAP reports. Later in the project, she was
replaced by a programmer from SAP Malaysia. Just prior
to Go Live, this programmer spent three weeks in Taiwan to
ensure that all the reports were functioning correctly.Kickoff Meeting
A one day project kickoff meeting was held in Taiwan at the
end of September and was run by the manager of finance for
BAT Taiwan. Most of the project team members and all of
the business process owners were present, as were the brand
and trade marketing managers. The project co-leads from
APSS and APN talked to the whole office staff—both expert
and casual users—about the need to be supportive of the
project team members over the coming months.
They made a presentation to the whole office—
whether they would be actual users or a final user at
the end of the day. They said, “These people are
taking on a lot in a short period of time... and you
should not make too many unreasonable demands
during this time period.” They were told that the
project was a critical part of the full potential initia-
tive, so let’s pull together on this one.
— Mr. Lee, Project Co-Lead, BAT Taiwan
The APSS team members worked in a conference room
just down the hall from the other managers. All the team
members got along well together, both in the work environ-
ment and socially—including some weekend get-togethers.
Exhibit 5 documents the High-Level Work Plan with
the eight week project milestones. During the Business
Blueprint Phase (high-level requirements), the APSS team
members met with the key users to explain the processes in
the template and to learn about local needs. The fact that
the APSS personnel knew BAT’s business really helped,