Zwas Group

Change Management Services Support Organizational Readiness for North American SAP Deployment

Challenge  |  Develop change management strategy and training in support of a full-scale SAP implementation for one of the world's largest suppliers of bottled water.

Solution  |  Zwas Group created a set of customized business processes for managing all aspects of the training and CM effort, including the definition of training courses, creation of instructor and attendee schedules, practice labs, attendance and proficiency tracking. These processes had the necessary structure and detail to allow in-house resources to build out the training and CM environment with very short ramp-up time. Processes also yielded a set of requirements for a database whose development was also managed by Zwas Group.

With these tools and processes in place, Zwas Group managed 60 unique courses, 200 classroom sessions, 75 instructors, and 500 end users over the course of the 8-week training program. Our standard project management office was modified to provide summarized training progress and real time results of overall proficiency testing to North American and global executives.

Results  |  The client fully supported and tracked the readiness of their SAP end-users by location, business process, and other criteria. The client launched the ERP system with the confidence of having 500 of their workforce as trained and certified end-users.

Rapidly Growing Business Regains Organizational Stability with Startup Support

Challenge  |  Establish operational stability for a startup event-management division within an established business that is struggling to keep pace with its own success.

Solution  |  Zwas Group used its standard methodologies to quantify the current operational environment and goals. From this starting point we then identified the areas where immediate improvement would most benefit the entire business. Zwas Group defined and documented (in operations guides) best-practice processes and policies. The same analysis yielded a robust set of requirements that were used by a third-party developer to create customized order management software that truly met the client's needs.

Results  |  Operational order was established in six weeks. The results included smoother and more professional experience for the client's customers, effective reports that actually met the needs of the client's business model, enabling better service management and helping senior management to identify potential new service offerings.

Startup Design Firm is Guided from Vision to Operational Reality

Challenge  |  Design scalable operations and corporate structure for Victoria and Richard Emprise, the newest design label and shop by Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs.

Solution  |  Zwas Group applied its startup knowledge to guide our client through the very early stages of business growth. Processes were established for standard work like managing client, order, and invoice data and also for the more varied tasks that are associated with any new startup.

Results  |  Zwas Group established an operational platform that provided structure to the burgeoning admin, sales, and back office teams at this new design shop. The structure enabled the founding members to operate with synergy and unified purpose, while freeing up the designers to focus on what they do best without being caught up in the administrative details.

Change Management Planning Supports Global PeopleSoft Deployment

Challenge  |  A global parent company mandates that its North American divisions deploy PeopleSoft HR modules. Zwas Group was tasked with quantifying how this deployment would impact current operations and to develop a strategy to accommodate these changes.

Solution  |  Zwas Group used our standard methodologies to map out the operational environment and the areas that would be impacted by the PeopleSoft deployment. We then partnered with the client to define target processes that would make the most of the new PeopleSoft features while having the least impact on regional (United States and Canadian) requirements. Zwas Group then authored and published web-based operations manuals that integrated procedural and in-system PeopleSoft steps.

Results  |  Instead of being burdened by a distant mandate that did not account for local requirements, the North American divisions were able to seize the PeopleSoft deployment as an opportunity for significant operational improvements. The client overhauled many poorly defined procedures and was able to proactively train its entire HR teams and 50 line managers on the new system and the context of its use. In addition, the client now has a thorough set of operations guides that can be updated incrementally as future changes are made to HR processes.

Operational Due Diligence Guides Selection of Startup's CRM Software

Challenge  |  Manage the selection of sales management software for a leading research and advisory organization that specializes in internet business strategy.

Solution  |  Zwas Group defined a system of client-specific and weighted criteria that were based on how the client would manage its operations in the target state. These criteria provided an uncomplicated and dependable ranking system of potential vendors and applications. Zwas Group then managed the RFP process on behalf of our client and evaluated proposals against the custom-defined criteria. When the winning vendor was selected, our upfront analysis was repurposed as a set of requirements that guided the implementation of the software and the supporting training documentation.

Results  |  The client was able to purchase the software package that best matched its target needs by using a well-structured system instead of reacting to a handful of sales pitches. The product was deployed against a specific set of criteria so that it was fully ready for use from day one.

Hospitality Case Studies

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