Understanding the Model Company

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
  • Gain insight into the model company we will use for this course
  • Get to know the project
  • Identify key stakeholders to interact with
  • Identify key components of enablement planning

The Model Company

For the coming lessons, we use a model company for our exercises. Here’s an overview of BriscoBikes Holding (BBH) and its associated companies.

BriscoBikes

BriscoBikes is a well-established bicycle brand. The company was founded in 1998 by Jane Brisco, a successful professional triathlete. Products range from road, gravel, to mountain bikes, including e-mountain bikes. BriscoBikes addresses the market for keen cyclists.

The company has developed well since its foundation. Currently, BriscoBikes employs 2100 employees. To accelerate its growth and to expand its product portfolio, BriscoBikes acquired two bicycle companies: THE URBAN CYCLIST in 2011 and veloREBELZ! in 2023.

THE URBAN CYCLIST

THE URBAN CYCLIST is a traditional Dutch bicycle manufacturer with headquarters in Amsterdam. The products range from comfortable urban bikes, high quality e-bikes to cargo bikes, foldable bikes, and bicycles for children. The main target segments for the company are single people, families, and elderly people who live in cities and use their bicycles for everyday journeys and leisure activities.

The bicycles aren’t suited for keen cyclists and the range doesn't include mountain bikes. The company has 1500 employees. Overall, THE URBAN CYCLIST products are a good addition to BriscoBikes’ portfolio.​

veloREBELZ!

veloREBELZ! is a small German bicycle manufacturer based in Berlin. Overall, the bicycles range from the mid to upper price segment. The company has 450 employees. veloREBELZ! faced significant financial issues due to high investment in product design, marketing, and digitalization. An impending insolvency was only avoided by BriscoBikes taking the company over.

With the acquisition of veloREBELZ!, BriscoBikes has considerably strengthened its digital competence.

BriscoBikes Holding (BBH)

The different companies operate with a high degree of autonomy, for example, keeping their own brands, market appearance, sales channels, and IT system landscape. BBH manages them. It’s located in San Diego and currently has 25 employees.​

The organizational structure of BBH is depicted in the following chart.

Organizational Chart of BriscoBikes Holding including The URBAN Cyclist and veloREBELZ!

BriscoBikes is still family-owned. However, to finance the portfolio expansion, digitalization, and growth strategy, the company took on board an investor. The Cheetah Sports Investment Group now owns 30% of BBH.

To streamline the product portfolio, business processes, and realize economies of scale, especially regarding market appearance and supply chain, the investor pushes for standardization across the three companies.

Getting To Know the Project

In the case study, BBH has decided to implement SAP S/4HANA cloud in all three companies. Ron Williams (IT project manager) and Lucy Sheng (business project manager) have been appointed to lead the implementation with the "4S project". Grace and the other project team leads receive a welcome e-mail from Ron Williams introducing the project, Ron’s role within it, and the next steps.

Welcome e-mail from Ron Williams

Email form Ron Williams to the 4S Project Team announcing the 4S project. Ron continues as the IT Project Manager and welcomes the Project Leads and will invite them to a Project Kick Off meeting

There's an attachment in the e-mail providing the overall project plan.

Project Overview Diagram for year 1 & 2, displaying the Roll-out Waves, The Prepare Phase when Project planning & preparation takes place. The Explore Phase when Fit to Standard workshops happen. The Realize Phase when System configuration, testing and migration take place, then the Deploy Phase for training.
Now, it's your turn

Ron Williams has introduced the project. You’ve reviewed the high-level project plan. As the enablement lead, what are your immediate thoughts about the project?

What do you start to consider from a learning and enablement perspective?

Key Stakeholders To Interact With

The Enablement Team

Below, you see typical roles that are relevant to an SAP enablement project. In this course, we focus on Grace and how she interacts with her immediate team and the key stakeholders on the project. As we first focus on the immediate team, you get insights into the tasks of Arun, the SAP enablement content developer, Tia, the trainer, and Kenneth, the enablement administrator.

Depending on the size and complexity of your project, the structure of the team and the number of content developers, trainers and enablement administrators differ.

You could have several content developers and trainers in your project. Also, realize that in certain instances, the roles of the content developer and the trainer are filled by the same person.

In an SAP S/4 HANA Cloud implementation project at BriscoBikes, Grace and her team play a crucial role in ensuring the successful adoption and usage of the new system within the organization.

Watch the following video, which introduces each member and breaks down their tasks within the enablement team:

The Enablement Team

The Enablement Team from left to right. Grace Lawson Enablement Lead. Arun Sidu Content Developer. Tia Dahl Trainer and Kenneth Paul Enablement Administrator.

Key Stakeholders the Enablement Lead Interacts with:

As the enablement lead, you must interact with various key stakeholders to ensure that everyone involved is prepared, enabled, and supported to ensure that the business transformation is successful.

Again, depending on the size and complexity of the project, other key stakeholders are potentially important in your particular project.

Grace needs to effectively interact with various key stakeholders within the project. The key stakeholders listed here are important for BriscoBikes to manage enablement effectively and correctly:

The key stakeholders top row left to right. IT project manager Ron Williams. Testing lead Luisa Ramirez. Functional workstream lead Procurement Isa Jacobs. Functional workstream lead Logistics Lars Hendriks. Business project manager Lucy Sheng . Change management lead Paul Bakker.

Note

The names of the roles within your project may differ to the ones in the 4S Project. For example, "functional workstream lead" may be called "business process owner" or "subject matter expert".

Grace wants to be proactive, so she arranges a meeting with the other project team members she must work closely with.

Watch the following video to see how Grace, the enablement lead, interacts with the key stakeholders in the implementation project.

Take 15 minutes to reflect on the situation described previously, where you, as the enablement lead, will now be interacting with the key stakeholders.

Consider the importance of collaborating with these stakeholders and how their input can impact the success of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementation project for BriscoBikes.

Now, it's your turn

Download and complete the following exercise:

Key Stakeholders to Interact With Exercise

Check your answers

Download and review your results:

Key Stakeholder to Interact With Exercise Answers

Identify Key Components of Enablement Planning

As an enablement lead, enablement planning is a crucial part of your role to define the required enablement activities.

You ensure that the project team and users are adequately prepared for the transition to the new system.

Best practice methodologies such as SAP Activate include a list of outputs per workstream for every project phase.

Each output refers to a tangible outcome or result that is produced during the project implementation.

It represents a specific milestone or key point in the project timeline.

Outputs must be broken down into tasks or activities, specific actions, or steps that a project team member must perform to achieve the desired outcome.

Tasks are often smaller in scope and can be assigned to specific team members with clear deadlines.

Develop a structured learning plan detailing the sequence and timeline of enablement activities. When planning enablement activities, it’s important to pay close attention to:

  • interdependencies of each activity
  • overall timeline of the project
  • project milestones and key dates
  • resource scope and availability

Note

The project can use a particular project management tool that you must use to track the progress of your outputs. You can typically find two different types of tools used: 
On left side, General purpose project management tools for scheduling and tracking. Example, MS Project Plan or Trello. Versuse on the right hand side, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools designed to manage the entire lifecycle. Example SAP Cloud ALM or SAP Solution Manager.

Project Management Tools

Learn more about SAP Cloud ALM here:

Introducing SAP Cloud ALM

Implementing SAP Cloud ALM

Also, some projects use process mapping and modeling tools like SAP Signavio, designed to visually represent, analyze, and optimize business processes, facilitating collaboration and decision-making across organizations. 

Creating an Enablement Plan

Let´s recap what you've learned in the previous journey about creating your enablement plan: 

Enablement plan steps from left to right. 1. Define enablement outputs and map them to the project timeline. 2. Break down each output into manageable tasks and activities. 3. Sequence your task list and assign resources.

Step 1: Define enablement outputs / milestones and map them to the project timeline.

Answering these questions:

  • What is the overall duration of the project? Are further rollout waves planned?
  • When does each project phase start and end?
  • What happens within each project phase?
  • Which outputs per workstream can you identify for potential dependencies?
  • Are there enablement outputs or activities included? Is there a deadline defined?

In the following video Grace, the enablement lead goes through the project documentation. Grace talks to the project business lead Lucy Sheng about the project schedule. Lucy explains that the Open Tasks List in CloudALM contains all the deliverables for the project. Lucy shares the tasks and the dates to enable Grace to use the information as a basis for planning enablement activities.

As you saw in the video, SAP Best Practices already include some deliverables for an enablement project. You can find them in Cloud ALM or use SAP Roadmaps to add them to your project plan.

Step 2: Break down each output into manageable tasks and activities.

In the lesson "Defining Enablement Project Scope and Timeline" from our previous learning journey, you can find a high-level enablement task list to use as a basis. 

You can check out the course unit here: Defining Enablement Project Scope and Timeline

Step 3: Sequence your task list and assign resources.

Make sure to plan enough time for each task and ensure availability for the team members. 

Now, it's your turn

Take 20 minutes to download and complete the following exercise.

Using this template,Exercise Template Enablement Project Plan, think about how you can break down the outputs into specific actions and assign them to specific team members with clear deadlines. Download and complete the following exercise:

BriscoBikes Project Plan Exercise

Check your answers

Download and review your results:

Exercise Example Enablement Project Plan Answer Key

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