The offsite group members eventually decided that to finish the project they would need to begin at the beginning, starting with the business requirements then reaching an end date, rather than trying to fit the project into a mold shaped by a predetermined end date. They also concluded they had to do a better job of making sure that they had support from key divisional heads and that all the employees knew exactly what changes were taking place, when, why and how.

The End Game: Sadder But Wiser

By April 2001, the end-state design was complete, giving the project team a highly detailed road map to follow. A month later, Tom James came on board as director of process change for the Best project, having the sole responsibility of acting as a liaison between the divisions and the project team. James says that he was shocked by the still poor relationship between the divisions and the project team. He and Dunn began meeting with more of the division heads. They also started conducting regular surveys of how the employees affected by the new systems were dealing with the changes.

They were not afraid to react to what they found. Dunn says that Nestlé recently delayed the rollout of a new comanufacturing package for six months based on feedback indicating that the would-be users were not prepared to make the process changes that were involved.

ERP projects are notorious for taking a long time and a lot of money. Jennifer Chew, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, found that 54 percent of respondents to a recent survey said that their project lasted more than two years (the other 46 percent brought theirs to fruition in less than two years). Nestlé USA’s project "sounds on the high side" for both time and money, says Chew. Still, success is ultimately measured by what the project accomplishes. Chew points out that Kmart had to write off $130 million for an ERP project that was never completed.

Dunn herself is not ashamed of the length of the project or the numerous dead ends. She insists that slow and steady wins the race. Nestlé USA has already achieved significant ROI, she says, with the largest chunk of savings from better demand forecasting. "The old process involved a sales guy giving a number to the demand planner, who says, ’Those guys don’t know what the hell they are talking about; I’m going to give them this number,’’’ Dunn says. "The demand planner turns [that number] over to factory, and the factory says the demand planner doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about." Then the factory changes the number again.