Ford Russia (1C)

On the basis of experience of functioning of the plant in Belarus and the recommendations of the Russian management of a part of the plant as the ERP platform for automation of the Russian business the product of 1C was selected, and today this system is one of the main nodes of a system landscape Ford in Russia. A system is not homogeneous and represents several interconnected modules of these vendor finished under requirements of the company.

Choice of 1999

The choice for benefit of 1C was not least dictated by reasons of economy of the IT budget. When in 1999 production in Russia only began to be based, nobody was sure of success of the enterprise and to spend big money for implementation of the western ERP system it was represented inexpedient.

Besides, there was a negative experience of implementation of the western product in Belarusian "subsidiary" of Ford: after the first annual report submitted to the tax inspection it became clear that the European standard of the reporting does not conform to requirements of the Belarusian legislation at all. As a result the company paid a considerable penalty. Besides, all transactions of reporting year had to be transferred manually to 1C that was remembered very firmly.

After 10 years a system still copes with all tasks assigned to it, support of the solution requires the minimum human resources. In support group – three regular analysts and five programmers from the company integrator. When in 2008 reengineering of a system was performed, the group of programmers was temporarily expanded to ten people, but then was again laid off to five specialists.

Certification

All solution modules underwent full certification on compliance to requirements of the global headquarters of Ford, and costs – both on support, and on start – turned out 10 times less those which would accompany implementation of the global ERP solutions used by the company outside Russia. The operating system successfully supported all initiatives of business, including expansion of production and start of the Russian campaign of sales for the Land Rover and Volvo brands. Internal and external auditors did not reveal any shortcomings of a system. At the same time it is necessary to understand that internal auditors carry out very tough and scrupulous inspections, and audit can take up to six weeks. If the slightest mismatch of a system and the reports created in it to corporate requirements is found, then its correction will be carefully controlled from the company headquarters in the USA. A system also should conform to requirements of the law Sarbanes-Oxley completely.

A system was rewritten approximately for 90%

A system was rewritten approximately for 90%, and it is caused by the fact that in the company the tough standards developing for years regarding business processes work. Nobody, naturally, was going to change these standards for rather small Russian market, and therefore it was necessary to change a system. Here little depended on the selected platform. The scale of completions would be approximately same if even the SAP product was selected. Such is specifics of the large companies with long history: auditors of Big Four with whom I had to communicate confirmed what at SAP implementation or Oracle in any large international company existing in the market several decades from a standard configuration remains to at most 20%.

Reengineering of 2008

In the course of reengineering the company postaralyas to minimize changes of functionality. Arrangement already existing and building of a logical structure of a system taking into account all changes of area of automation of a system in 8-9 years which passed from the moment of the first start was a main objective. Nevertheless, by preparation for reengineering accounting made the list of wishes consisting of 14 points. Having analyzed these wishes, the IT department came to a conclusion that functional changes need to be made only in 2 cases, and for the rest it is possible to use the operating functionality of a system. The more strictly initially outlined area of the solution of a task is controlled, the success probability is higher. If the circle of tasks changes chaotically, it threatens all project of automation and practically guarantees a release of the project for the set time frames.

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