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• Find out what strategic objectives the system will help to achieve
• Secure (constant) Top Management attention and support
• Define what success looks like
• Gain user acceptance for the chosen platform and approach and as early as possible
• Make sure the internal team is free to engage within the project
• Make sure you have an experienced project manager on board who understands both, technology and business issues
• Avoid having sales people drive your product, architecture and system integrator selection process - one way to achieve this, is to use an independent external consultant to drive this process - make him dependent on project success
• Gather functional requirements from users and management and shrink them to a level that makes sense
• Have process and functional specifications signed off by stakeholders while managing expectations - both are likely to evolve throughout the project
• Use the Project to simplify business processes
• Combine the above with an open technologically sound platform architecture that enables the end - user to interact flexibly with it
• Obey the finance end-users’ wish to use Excel as a front - end, but force them to work with centralised data and metadata
• Constantly review alignment of delivery with strategy and business processes
• Refine and change even structural and functional details within strategy and architecture throughout the project – Experience has shown many times: People, internal and external project members and sponsors gain crucial knowledge in the course of the project, which is important to utilise
• Follow a very stringent change management
• Work in incremental steps: Create many ‘Quick Wins’ and celebrate their completion
• Communicate, communicate, communicate: Plans, timelines, changes, successes, failures, challenges…- and make stakeholders contribute
• Exercise time, delivery and budget pressure on the project team

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Project Management