Publicação
Business Intelligence tools in a global ERP system rollout project
| Resumo: | The increasing competitiveness and globalization of businesses have led organizations to rely heavily on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to manage and optimize their internal processes. However, as these systems approach the end of their life cycles, organizations must undertake complex and resource-intensive ERP migration projects. Bosch’s Mobility sector faces such a challenge, as its current SAP R/3 ERP system will no longer be supported by the vendor after 2030, requiring a migration to the newest SAP S/4HANA. This dissertation addresses the Project Management (PM) tools used in this large-scale migration, which involves transitioning 117 globally distributed plants within a six-year time-frame through an ”Industrialized Rollout” strategy, comprising several multiplant yearly rollout waves. An initial analysis of the current rollout project’s working model and employed tools allowed for singling out two critical support systems: the Track & Release (T&R) platform for managing process development tickets and respective workflows, and a Team Availability Tracker used for coordinating the more than 550 project team members. Overall, eight problems were identified for T&R, with emphasis on the poor quality of the information in the platform (61% of the tickets were non-standard) and the lack of a centralized mass ticket analysis tool, which forced users to develop their own solutions. To address these challenges, a Business Intelligence (BI) solution was implemented, consolidating T&R data into a single dashboard, providing up-to-date insights. This new tool improves project progress tracking by enabling an in-depth mass analysis of the information in T&R, thus reducing the analysts’ effort, and helps to identify outliers through a ticket quality analysis based on standards defined by the Project Managers (PjMs). Complementing this solution, a restructuring proposal for T&R, aiming at preventing further data quality issues in the platform, was developed. Furthermore, 12 issues were found for the Team Availability Tracker, with a focus on data integrity breaches, which were further potentiated by a non-user-friendly interface for both data input and analysis. These were addressed by the deployment of an automatically generated Excel-based input file for user availability, connected to a dedicated dashboard, which resulted in improved resource management and project coordination. A prototype for a Power Apps application was also proposed as a potential replacement for the Excel input file to mitigate other remaining problems. Overall, the implemented BI solutions yielded significant improvements in project tracking and resource allocation, effectively addressing 50% of the identified challenges. A subsequent implementation of the proposed solutions is anticipated to increase this resolution rate to 90%. All in all, this work provides evidence of the effectiveness of BI in supporting PM for large-scale ERP migrations. |
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| Autores principais: | Faria, Tiago Francisco Silva de |
| Assunto: | Business Intelligence ERP Migration Global projects Project management Gestão de projetos Migração de ERP Projetos globais |
| Ano: | 2025 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | dissertação de mestrado |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso embargado |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | The increasing competitiveness and globalization of businesses have led organizations to rely heavily on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to manage and optimize their internal processes. However, as these systems approach the end of their life cycles, organizations must undertake complex and resource-intensive ERP migration projects. Bosch’s Mobility sector faces such a challenge, as its current SAP R/3 ERP system will no longer be supported by the vendor after 2030, requiring a migration to the newest SAP S/4HANA. This dissertation addresses the Project Management (PM) tools used in this large-scale migration, which involves transitioning 117 globally distributed plants within a six-year time-frame through an ”Industrialized Rollout” strategy, comprising several multiplant yearly rollout waves. An initial analysis of the current rollout project’s working model and employed tools allowed for singling out two critical support systems: the Track & Release (T&R) platform for managing process development tickets and respective workflows, and a Team Availability Tracker used for coordinating the more than 550 project team members. Overall, eight problems were identified for T&R, with emphasis on the poor quality of the information in the platform (61% of the tickets were non-standard) and the lack of a centralized mass ticket analysis tool, which forced users to develop their own solutions. To address these challenges, a Business Intelligence (BI) solution was implemented, consolidating T&R data into a single dashboard, providing up-to-date insights. This new tool improves project progress tracking by enabling an in-depth mass analysis of the information in T&R, thus reducing the analysts’ effort, and helps to identify outliers through a ticket quality analysis based on standards defined by the Project Managers (PjMs). Complementing this solution, a restructuring proposal for T&R, aiming at preventing further data quality issues in the platform, was developed. Furthermore, 12 issues were found for the Team Availability Tracker, with a focus on data integrity breaches, which were further potentiated by a non-user-friendly interface for both data input and analysis. These were addressed by the deployment of an automatically generated Excel-based input file for user availability, connected to a dedicated dashboard, which resulted in improved resource management and project coordination. A prototype for a Power Apps application was also proposed as a potential replacement for the Excel input file to mitigate other remaining problems. Overall, the implemented BI solutions yielded significant improvements in project tracking and resource allocation, effectively addressing 50% of the identified challenges. A subsequent implementation of the proposed solutions is anticipated to increase this resolution rate to 90%. All in all, this work provides evidence of the effectiveness of BI in supporting PM for large-scale ERP migrations. |
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