IT department and what would be more appropriately provided by non-IT staff, such as management accounting ‘super-users.’ The implementation was championed initially by the CIO and CFO of the reporting unit within BBB and one of the business unit managers was appointed as overall sponsor. The implementation took more than 2 years to complete. The Management Accountants received generic (i.e. non-company-specific) training in the use of SAP but it was only when the system started to take shape in terms of being aligned to their business and business processes that they really started to use it. It was virtually two-thirds of the way through the implementation that the20 or so Management Accountants in the six business units all began to recognize the value of the new system. The ‘real’ training in the use of SAP started at that point. Up until then, the only way to try to convince them of its merits was through description, theory and examples in the generic training sessions. Despite their ultimately accepting the merits of the new system, more than 5 years after completion of the implementation, some of the Management Accountants continue to ignore some of the facilities within SAP and do much as they did on the old system, providing the same reports as before, produced the way they always did, using spreadsheets: ‘I still think management accountants tend to be spread sheet jockeys – they love their spreadsheets and I don’t know how you ever move them away from them completely.’ There were clear corporate governance and Sarbanes–Oxley implications in this, but they were being ignored. One of the six business units was divested during the implementation. How ever, the SAP implementation continued within it, but as a distinct and separate exercise to the one being done with the remaining business units. At the end of the implementation(1999), five business units were reporting into one reporting organization. There was little change in the number of Management Accountants within there mining five business units over the period of the implementation. Immediately the implementation was completed, BBB switched its attention to divesting the remaining five business units. Within 5 years, all five had been sold to in dependent companies and the reporting organization has ceased to exist. The implementation was viewed as a success: ‘Their reason for implementing was because of the threat of the millennium, so it was a replacement system as opposed to one that was driven with a “heavy-benefits” case.’ It faced many challenges but these were overcome and, in the end, it was seen as a success by the major players in the parent group, such as the MD, CIO and CFO, because it successfully met he primary objective: ‘it did operate and nothing fell over and the business continued to produce products, invoice customers, etc.’ For the same reasons, it was also considered to have been a success by the Management Accountants in the business units, by the consultants and by the technical implementation partner in BBB.
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