Project Facts
Integrated PortfolioThe integrated portfolio for release 2 was for over 11 projects that were tightly integrated.
Complicated InterfacesThe 11 projects were tightly integrated and required a high degree of architecture work.
Business CutoverThe business Cutover for this Release had to be highly coordinated as most of the business processes were changing affecting most customers.
Change Management
Change Management was a large portion of the project. Training the Internal company on the new business processes changes was a large effort. Not only did this group do the business process training, but they developed all the training materials. The program used the train the trainer process.
Zethos Implements SAP AFS at Columbia Sportswear
Columbia Sportswear engaged Zethos Consulting to Program/Portfolio manage the Release 2 of their projects. This included rolling out SAP -AFS to all of North America along with 11 other major projects. This included the retail and wholesale divisions of Columbia.
Zethos rolled out a new methodology to manage the R2 release and redeveloped the time lines, budgets and resource plans to deliver all projects to North America. The new methodology changed the build and testing process and put in new measurements to monitor both. This was a very complicated portfolio of projects. This spanned all major applications in Columbia Sportswear.
Zethos was responsible for the Project Management Office (PMO) and the Organizational Change Management (OCM) teams as well as being responsibility to run weekly Operating Committee meetings and Monthly Steering Committee meetings. Sponsored and structured the "All Hands" meeting to provide updates to the program to the business and IT.
Zethos delivered on time and within budget. The business ramped up ahead of schedule and this was a huge success across all the applications.
SAP and Columbia
SAP AFS was an industry verticle built by SAP that fit Columbia's business. We minimized customizations and modified process when it made sense and forced all enhancements to be challenged by the Operating Committee.
