There’s nothing so constant as change! This assertion, true to the times, emphasizes the significance of Change Management for businesses, especially where organi-zational change is concerned. Every organization experiences major changes brought on by external circumstances, such as changes in laws, fusions, acqui-sitions, or by internal changes, such as restructuring, mergers, outsourcing. The implementation of these changes involves a host of organizational and software-related tasks. Outsourcing certain organizational units, such as company codes or cost centers, must first be prepared at an organizational level and then provided for in the software with relevant customizing and master data.

Depending on the specific scenario of organizational change, questions are raised as to its implementation. The shutting down of an asset or the outsourcing of existing organizational units, such as cost centers, requires that all relevant customizing and master data be identified and decisions made as to its use. Simply blocking the pertinent master data in the ERP system will not complete the shutdown, since continued use of the cost center in allocation cycles or in Human Resources master data will cause problems in productive operation. The assessments and allocations will be recorded with reference to the blocked cost center, but these references must be followed up on. The payroll cannot be transmitted from the HR system, which in turn delays the retrieval of data in Controlling.

When organizational units are absorbed or merged, it is essential to know about the functional scope, the master data used and the transaction data generated. Com-parison of the functional structure between the absorbing and the absorbed or-ganizations provides the necessary transparency of functional differences. This is, in turn, used as the basis for making a decision on how to deal with the existing dif-ferences. For example, if you determine that the absorbing organization uses the parking functionality for vendor invoices and the absorbed organization does not, a decision needs to be made about the future use of this function, and what measures should be taken, such as training, authorization or discontinuation of the function.

It is crucial that the questions posed above be answered and that the answers be converted into adequate solutions in the ERP system, since the ERP system must be constantly adjusted to the company’s operative requirements. An ERP system whose structure does not correspond to the user’s operative requirements, because it con-tains unnecessary customizing, master data and functions, generates an approxi-mately 10% increase in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This can be attributed, for example, to the lack of system ergonomics or to the use of superfluous custom-izing, master data and functions.