SAP-Centric Projects

Why is it that so many project professionals and PMOs are hesitant to embrace SAP while they often have such fierce loyalty towards Primavera? In my experience a lot of this can be attributed to issues that are straightforward to be resolved. Simply stated, the solutions these people work with typically are not comprehensive and streamlined.

Fact is that these tools are not exclusive. Both have in certain areas clear advantages for project control. Since these strong points rarely conflict, a well-functioning integrated process provides very significant advantages for everybody involved.

SAP is unique in its ability to tie materials demands into the supply chain control of the enterprise, in its control of purchasing and thus also collection of actual hours and costs, and in the enterprise-level project cost and budget control. Primavera has unsurpassed ease of use and functionality in the most often used scheduling, resource leveling and management functions.

Unfortunately most large capital, make-to-order, or even maintenance projects (i.e., turnarounds or outages) are insufficiently integrated. They often run the two systems in parallel, do not pass on information properly, do not assign clear systems of record for data or business functions, and so on. Among others this leads to duplication of effort without direct benefits, inconsistent data, and a lack of the flow of critical information. In summary it eliminates practically ALL the benefits of SAP for the scheduler, planner or project manager! No wonder that they prefer to not having to deal with SAP at all.

But show them the beef and they are not likely to reject SAP at all. Why should they then, if it gives them greater control, better information flow, reduces their work effort, and reduces risk! Maybe somebody should tell them to pick up the phone and dial 941-375-7377...?