Client Problem

This SMS client delivers vocational rehabilitation and other services to people who have an injury or disability. The objectives of this client are to professionally assess the needs of these people, develop and manage individually tailored rehabilitation programmes, help them acquire and maintain jobs and assist them to live as independently as possible. In addition, this client provides a range of expert consultancy services including helping to prevent injury in the workplace and reducing economic and social costs of injury or disability to the individual and employers within the workforce. They have around 2,000 employees operating in all states of Australia.
 

SMS Approach

The client’s core business functions use the SAP system. These include Finance, HR and Case Management. The client wanted to ensure that during their major SAP upgrade, staff were trained and supported to achieve a smooth transition that ensured:

• business continuity through the upgrade
• understanding an effective uptake of the new capabilities.
   

Recommendation

• A training needs analysis which assessed the client’s process areas and the SAP user roles involved, considering the specific training need for each role. Audience change management needs were also analysed in the course of carrying out a training needs analysis.
• Modularised SAP user procedures were documented detailing the SAP user task within the client business process context. The user procedures were modular in that they related to SAP process areas and transaction codes and were combined into user manuals, according to the SAP user role as required.
• Role-based training workbooks were created from the user procedures documentation based on the training needs analysis.
• Trainers' notes, training administration, training scenarios and training data reflecting the real business of the client were developed to permit trainees to practice SAP user tasks in a realistic way. A training data refresh strategy was also developed.
• Training administration assistance was provided to ensure the communications, scheduling and logistics around the training delivery program were addressed.
• Quick Reference Guides were developed to summarise key user procedures and to express important reference information to support SAP users both during the training programme and after the system go-live.
• Training delivery program focused on providing hands-on instructor led training courses for priority one audiences and processes. 
• Online help was developed by converting the end user documentation to a format suitable for both web delivery and integration with the SAP application itself. 
• PowerPoint presentations were created for audiences whose use of the system did not justify an end user manual and whose location might prevent them from being able to attend formal training. The PowerPoint presentations focused on some of the more straight forward concepts to be covered such as an Introduction to SAP and Workflow.

Outcome

Overall, more than 400 SAP transactions were documented and over 40 days of training was provided nationally, in an intensive program that addressed all of the organistion’ SAP user roles. The program was timed to meet the implementation Go Live in a way that enabled a smooth transition to new processes and which ensured the organisation was able to immediately realise the benefits of the improvements afforded by the system upgrade.