MIR: Achieve the Real Objectives of SAP and Business Transformation

Ask 10 people to define corporate transformation, and you will receive 10 different answers. While most view it as the implementation of the latest technologies, others consider it as a ‘change’ to improve business processes. Evidently, transformation is not clearly defined. As a result, organizational transformations often come up short as leaders miss the mark in stitching technology implementations with their business objectives.

When it comes to implementing SAP, the technology itself is regarded as the project objectives, and business benefits are not realized. What’s more, many companies try to simply apply the best practices without enough understanding and consideration of what’s going on in the day-to-day business. That’s not all; corporate transformation projects also lead to failure when master integration runs as a separate project from SAP implementation. This results in critical master data going out of sync from SAP, and in turn, a big delay in the later phase of the projects. In this scenario, the question is: how do organizations accomplish their complex transformation project goals successfully?

Tokyo-based MIR has the answers. A group of senior consultants with rich experience in executing complex and challenging projects, MIR is changing the aforementioned narrative with an approach aimed at realizing corporate transformation by leveraging ERP, not just system introduction. The company supports customers’ corporate transformation by combining SAP’s ERP and the team’s corporate transformation consulting experience, which has an overwhelming global record as the de facto standard of ERP. “We especially focus on the initial grand-design phase to clarify the real objectives of SAP implementation and the target business blueprint after implementation, so that implementing SAP itself would never be a project goal,” says Yo Murai, CEO at MIR.

As someone who has worked as a partner of the big consulting firm, Murai founded MIR—which stands for “Make It Real”—in 2006 following his philosophy to always pursue client success. Drawing on its experience in highly difficult ERP upstream phases as well as large-scale global ERP projects in the high-tech industry, MIR maximizes the effect of ERP with an in-depth understanding of both, the customer’s business and the package characteristics of SAP. As a result, numerous companies across the global manufacturing industry rely on MIR for detecting and managing risk and issues based on the company’s experience in massive and complex SAP projects. “We are regarded as one of the few firms who can build consensus for the client as to real objectives of SAP and business transformation,” adds Hirotaka Yuri, Head of ERP business in MIR.

At the core, MIR focuses on the grand-design phase of a project to justify the business case and envision the transformation roadmap. In doing so, the company ensures agreement with key stakeholders, including the top-management, to mitigate the resistance from the operation and result in many add-ons.

To build corporate-wide consensus, MIR repeatedly conducts workshops to propose and convince the effective approach and organizational structure for transformation not only with the top management but with critical stakeholders of the business unit and service line. This allows the clients to clearly realize the objectives of SAP implementation and understand the roadmap–DX, Shared Services, Global SCM, and IT restructuring. The MIR team has built a structured asset and template, with clearly defined process patterns for areas, such as sales, procurement, manufacturing, and finance for electronics, semiconductors, machining, services, and CPGs.

While MIR’s approach begins with attaining a big picture and conducting a “To-Be” design based on business volume and priority, the company also pays close attention to master integration. “Our consultants have solid experience in MDM, and lead the project with emphasis on integration,” informs Taro Matsumura, who leads MIR’s SCM practice.

To illustrate the benefits and expertise MIR brings to the table, Yuri cites a customer success story wherein the company was approached by one of the leading high-tech Japanese corporations. With electronics and service business, the client was faced with challenges with regard to business process standardization, as each of multiple business units had its own independence and history. MIR stepped in and proposed a client-oriented organization and governance structure, led by strong business process owners. “Working with those process owners, we took an approach to get a big picture and define the business process patterns. This way, we achieved business process standardization across various business units and many subsidiaries,” recalls Yuri.

After SAP go-live, the project organization became “transformation office” and continued working on standardization further across subsidiaries and affiliates. The client also realized benefits from shared service in sales, procurement, and finance, both inside and outside Japan.

Scripting similar success stories, MIR will continue leveraging the deep-rooted experience of its professionals in complex ERP, MDM, and global SCM to guide its customers throughout their project lifecycle. “We at MIR possess the expertise of tackling complex and challenging projects for our clients, and we do this through motivation, inspiration, and realization,” concludes Murai.