U2K2 project and SAP execution

Abstract

Unilever Bangladesh Limited was initiated a project called U2K2 on August, 2010 which is basically a Business transformation program to support achievement of the AAC “Serve, Grow, Deliver” Vision by strengthening the One Unilever operating framework in the Region, leveraging Unilever’s scale further and implementing one way of working enabled by SAP. Although it had various benefits such as it helps to make faster decision, manage price and Forex volatility efficiently, improves operating cash flows and provides greater information visibility, etc. but it changed the total way of working of Unilever Bangladesh Limited. To manage this organizational change and cope up people with this change, Change Management Team of U2K2 Project has been done several activities such as Change Impact Assessment, Leadership Alignment Workshop, Stakeholder Management Plan Development, building Change Network Strategy, Loyalty Program, organizing training program, doing survey on user readiness checking. However, SAP is a leading Enterprise Information and Management Package which helps Unilever Bangladesh Limited to track and manage sales, production, finance accounting and human resources, in real-time. The main benefit that Unilever Bangladesh Limited gets from this software is integration because SAP is designed to allow any organization to operate variety of business processes within a single integrated information system. Although Unilever Bangladesh Limited gets various benefits from SAP, several departments have been affected due to implementation of this software and Finance Department is most affected one. Different finance functionalities like Financial Planning Processing, Internal Orders Processing, Month end Closing, Value Chain Reporting, Product costing, Cost centre Hierarchy, Collection Process, Profitability Analysis, Planning from Retail Selling Price, etc. have been changed because of the SAP Financial Accounting Module and SAP Financial Controlling Module. Although SAP helps Finance Department of Unilever Bangladesh to improve their collection process, Month end Closing process, monitoring and controlling activities, reduce billing cost and speed up data processing, etc. but it requires high understanding level regarding SAP application and great discipline among the employee of the Unilever Bangladesh Limited.