Hitting it Out of the Park

If you have ever swung a bat,ridden a bike (Schwin or Harley), swooshed a slope or played any kind of organized sport, you have used an Easton-Bell Sports (EBS) product.

In March of 2006, after more than three years of company acquisitions, Easton Sports, Bell Sports and Riddell Sports merged to create a powerhouse brand portfolio consisting of: Easton, Riddell, Bell, Giro and Blackburn. Each brand holds market leading positions in baseball, softball, football, cycling, ice hockey, snow sports, action sports or power sports. Each business came with its own infrastructure and set of processes, thus presenting an opportunity for benefit realization through adoption of common processes and technologies.

EBS, a culture populated with "can do" performers, holds dear the value of continuous improvement and the belief that the greatest gains come with managed risk. The company says, "By taking risks and avoiding complacency, we push ourselves to achieve innovation and continuous improvement." This is undoubtedly evident in the company's recent and ongoing implementations of SAP -- "from top to bottom."

According to Sharon Nelson, CIO and vice president business process, EBS manages the enterprise by the activities the products support: Action sports such as power, motor, bike and snow, and team sports such as baseball, softball, ice hockey and football. And while this is a mid-market business, with approximately $700 million in sales, it has the business requirements of a much larger company due to its channel and product diversity.

"The SKU complexity can be compared to some of the larger Tier 1 consumer goods companies, with EBS having multiple tens of thousands of SKUs," points out Nelson. Yet, this is familiar territory for her, as much of her prior experience was with bigger organizations. She joined EBS for this reason and for her business transformation and SAP expertise. "Because of my background I was familiar with many of the business requirements without having worked in the company for years," she says. "This enabled our selection and implementation processes to go faster, achieving results at a rapid pace. Speed is very important to the company at this state in our evolution."

FROM THE BOARD
Although it is not uncommon for the business side to drive an implementation such as this one, Nelson says the EBS initiative has exceptional support from executive management and the Board of Directors. "The key point driving this major venture was risk around Sarbanes Oxley. As our company was going through its growth process, just preparing for a board meeting was a monumental undertaking because all the businesses had different information; nothing had the same meaning; different systems meant different definitions," she explains.<

Nelson built the supporting business case from a process standardization approach, looking at ways to leverage technology and take advantage of existing synergies. She worked with the business leaders who were essentially operating in their own systems/process environments and needed support to realize the scope of what they could achieve. "Company personnel came from smaller businesses, for example earlier acquisitions, and each one of them knew their own specific needs, but those were needs of a smaller business not a billion dollar business," she notes.

Being well prepared to compete and grow, and become a sought after organization going forward, meant transforming the environment. "We had to maintain all of our core strengths and yet change how we operated to continue to grow and evolve," says Nelson. As one of the smaller players, EBS has the advantage of being nimble, and Nelson believes it continues to gain ground by its focus and goal orientation. "This is the environment I have tried to create within IT," she affirms.

EASY SELECTION
Upon joining the business, Nelson visited all the sites and did the assessment of the current environment herself. She hired her implementation team within several months, selecting people that could add the value of best practice knowledge to the business units.

The business teams made the software selection decision, which Nelson credits as part of getting the "buyin." She can still hardly believe it herself, but the choice of vendors was close to unanimous - SAP

Nelson did much of the initial legwork, negotiating the contract and presenting the proposal to the board. She knew what the software and services would cost and recommended hiring an in-house team to build up business process capability.

Recognizing the importance of the initiative, the board simply said yes. Nelson received approval for all of the project's funding up front and this simplified the implementation process considerably

Eight facilities went live in Phase 1 last October, and included financials, order entry, sales and distribution, operations and warehouse management and BW for reporting. Nelson says the reason for this large scope was two fold. In some cases multiple units were using one system, but using different business processes. Chiefly, she wanted to aggressively drive the execution of common business processes and avoid costly interface development. SAP enabled this by providing the company an integrated solution and common business structure. Two additional facilities were deployed this past April.

Nelson calls her team "exceptional" and explains that being from the business side they were able to help the user community during go live. "Our strong commitment to team work allowed us to implement and still meet our planned goals for the year," she says.

COMMUNICATION WAS KEY
The remarkable adoption of the solution, Nelson notes, had much to do with her "very receptive audience." Such openness does not come without the appropriate attention to speaking to that audience and keeping them aware of their role in the project. Nelson explains, "I had incredible top management commitment. The CEO discussed the initiative at almost every meeting. He made it clear that it was top priority."

COMMUNICATION WAS KEY
The remarkable adoption of the solution, Nelson notes, had much to do with her "very receptive audience." Such openness does not come without the appropriate attention to speaking to that audience and keeping them aware of their role in the project. Nelson explains, "I had incredible top management commitment. The CEO discussed the initiative at almost every meeting. He made it clear that it was top priority."

They went so far as to lay out the plan and expectations week by week, letting the staff know exactly what would happen, how they would feel and the problems they would see. There was no unrealistic belief that "flipping the switch" would be a panacea.

They also used a newsletter that came out every two weeks, talking about what was going on in the project. "Heroes" of the implementation were named and recognized in the newsletter. Nelson says, "This kept a lot of interest in the project, plus people felt motivated to participate."

GOING FORWARD
Nelson says the company is still pretty early out for benefit realization, especially considering the speed of the implementation -- February to October. From the system perspective, EBS is certainly realizing benefits, but it will take a bit longer for full scale business benefit realization from common process adoption. By the end of this year the rest of the Riddell business will be implemented, with Easton slated for early 2008. Beside the obvious ROI of future cost-savings, strategically, the establishment of this common platform enables EBS to quickly rollout systems and processes for its remaining businesses and those it might acquire. CG