Culturally, that means Celanese must turn itself inside out. And to do that, Carlson says, "we’re going to have to make people feel pain to an almost near-death experience. That’s the only way to get to the ultimate goal."

If Wachs pulls it off, Celanese wins big. OneSAP means decommissioning 14 major systems?both ERP and non-ERP?and the costs that go with them. Wachs has talked to peer CIOs who have realized operational savings in the 30 percent to 50 percent range by reducing the waste that comes from doing the same thing five different ways in five different business units. Analysts suggest returns can be had in less than two years. OneSAP has the power to transform the company.

Or, if it fails, debilitate it. At a time in the chemicals industry when the cost of raw materials is up and revenues are down, Celanese has set a goal to double sales in five years, leaving behind peers like BASF and Eastman Chemical to compete with the Dows and DuPonts. Part of that revenue doubling will have to come from acquisitions. To pay for them, Celanese must boost its stock price (which, for three years, has bobbed around $20) and keep costs in check. All of that depends on the rollup to OneSAP. If that rollup fails, so does Celanese’s aggressive business strategy.

"If we don’t do it," Wachs says, "we’ll be second class. We have to do it."

8:00 AM Workstream Design Meeting
Inside the Sausage Factory

On this day, OneSAP is mired in the muck of the blueprinting phase, when integration happens at an arduously technical level. Developers here will argue over the implications of the ship to schema versus the sold to schema in SAP’s Advanced Planner & Optimizer module. Before that, though, the subject of the tardy supply chain event management module comes up. If the technical team doesn’t get the package from SAP right away, the team will have to postpone its work on SCEM for four weeks for scheduling reasons?and put the project behind.

"Rollups are not so much about replacing ERP as they are about redeploying what you have," says AMR Research analyst Jim Shepherd. "Decentralized businesses are inefficient, and everyone needs to be more efficient now. They want centralized financing, for one, given they have to sign off on this stuff now. Customer requirements, like single invoicing, are driving them back to one system. And they’re also realizing that a single view might give them opportunities to cross-sell and upsell customers between business units."