CASE STUDY

Hershey Foods, Inc., completed an upgrade to their SAP/R3 enterprise software installation on schedule in September 2002, and they did it below their projected budget. This was considered a big achievement for a company that had experienced $150 million in lost sales due to problems associated with its new ERP system just a few years earlier in 1999. Hershey's CIO, George Davis, wondered why things went so smoothly with the upgrade compared with the original installation. Was it a technology problem? Or was it a people and organization change problem?

Hershey began its ERP journey with the Enterprise 21 Project late in 1996 when management approved the project in an effort to fix the Y2K problem and, at the same time, upgrade Hershey's IT environment to a twenty-first century system. This system was supposed to be an integrated system that used the client-server architecture and an SAP/R3 application suite. This was a complete overhaul of existing legacy enterprise system involving replacements of current Information Systems (IS) with packaged software solutions with the following goals:

• Establish a single company-wide supply chain strategy across all divisions.
• Streamline entire business process by reengineering all the functional areas throughout the company.
• Use new supply chain efficiencies to help increase gross margin.
• Maintain sales growth of at least 3-4 percent per year.
• Save $75-80 million by the end of 2002 through corporate restructuring and the closing of older distribution sites.
• Replace existing legacy software due to Y2K date-related problems.
• Replace legacy mainframe IS with an enterprise client-server architecture.

The initial plan of implementation was for four years with a budget of $112 million. Although Hershey's management vision was excellent, they lacked the necessary people at the top management level to make proper decisions on the implementation plan. Hershey did not have any high-ranking IT executive before hiring George Davis sometime in early 2000. They had lower-level managers making decisions that were aligned to their functional areas of business with no one at the top integrating these decisions to create a system that would work for the whole business. They had lots of committees with little or no oversight. As a result, Hershey's confectionary manufacturing and distribution operations' entire supply chain system ground to a halt in 1999, making it impossible to fulfil $100 million worth of orders.

The initial implementation was riddled with several problems from the beginning. First, Hershey tried to implement too many changes too fast. The Enterprise 21 project went for a complete discarding of the older mainframe legacy system used at Hershey and replacing it with the following three new software applications at the same time:

SAP/R3 enterprise application suite

• Manugistics (demand planning and transportation) Systems
• Siebel Systems (CRM and sales tools)

The complexity of integrating SAP with Manugistics software and Seibel software was so overwhelming even with the help of an experienced consulting firm that this integration was dropped. In addition, due to project delays and Y2K, the Hershey's IT department decided to go with a direct cut over strategy (Big-Bang implementation) instead of a phased-in approach during their peak sales season right before Halloween.

Data entry in the new ERP system was another problem. SAP is very rigid software in terms of how, when, and where the data must be entered into the system for inventory tracking and management. Hershey's employees were not trained for this rigid data entry because their legacy system was flexible in terms of how the data were stored. This created a major crisis when the new system was used during the Halloween season. Customer orders were missed despite sufficient inventory on hand. System workarounds caused many headaches for workers. Extra capacity in warehouse space was not recorded into the SAP system, which caused communication failure between logistics and IT.

Finally, a lack of top management support and involvement also played a role in the Enterprise 21 project. In addition to lacking a CIO at the top decision-making level, Hershey's management took a hands-off approach by not getting involved in the decision-making process. For example, some managers recommended supplementing the major consultants for this project, IBM Global Services, with another consulting firm that had more experience with SAP-Manugistics. Top management stayed away from making any decision in this area. In general, Hershey's management did not understand the amount of effort necessary for both the technical and organizational change issues for this project.

What do you think about Hershey's ERP strategy? What lessons can be learned from the Hershey experience?