Danny Hudson has been a business solutions architect at Tyson Foods since December 2007. He has been involved with Tyson’s implementation of SAP Process Control and also has been involved with configuration and design of other SAP applications, including the SAP General Ledger. He is currently implementing SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). I asked Danny a series of questions about his experience at Tyson.

How long did it take Tyson to implement SAP Process Control?

The SAP Process Control project covered five months with implementation during February 2012.

What challenges did you face during this implementation?

The major challenges were related to the following items:

• Mapping master data from the legacy system to the master data upload generator (MDUG) template
• Populating reports with custom-defined fields
• Combined reporting for testing results covering the first half and second half of the fiscal year

What needs did Tyson have before implementing SAP Process Control?

Tyson requires approximately 600 team members to complete Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) 302 certifications quarterly. The legacy system required team members to log in to the system and complete several steps to perform the quarterly certification. A major goal of the SAP Process Control project was to simplify the quarterly certification process.

Could you cite an example of how SAP Process Control helped the company meet these needs?

The offline workflow process in SAP Process Control was selected to send email surveys to team members required to complete quarterly certifications. Surveys are completed by team members and returned by email without requiring access to SAP Process Control. The Policy Survey Results report captures survey results by team members.

Did Tyson’s implementation team become involved with any special integration of SAP Process Control with other applications? If so, did this integration pose any challenges to the team?

Tyson has a current project to upgrade SAP Access Control from version 4.0 to version 10.0. The second phase of this project will include continuous controls monitoring opportunities with SAP Process Control.

What advice would you give to anyone at a company that is planning to implement SAP Process Control?

Allow project time to design the solution by including business owners and clarify limitations, if any. Tyson did not implement the scoping solution in SAP Process Control due to differences in how scoping is currently performed by process owners and process control scoping functionality. 

SAP Process Control relies heavily upon workflow to send items to recipients’ work inboxes along with email notification and attachments. The workflow configuration along with the search tool TREX requires assistance from the Basis team and coordination during the project. Additionally, the technical installation of SAP Process Control was a challenge for our Basis team. I recommend adding a technical resource to the project plan to assist the Basis team during the technical installation of SAP Process Control.

Do you have any lessons that you learned that you can share?

SAP Process Control version 10.0 provided regulation functionality that Tyson used to facilitate separate test plans for SOX regulation users. Process owners along with the internal audit group required three separate test plans that were assigned to three separate regulations for SOX that allowed combined reporting of test results for all regulations.

You also have been involved with configuration and design of the SAP General Ledger (ECC) and SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC). Could you comment on any challenges you faced or lessons learned during those projects?

One challenge we encountered with our BPC project involved importing ECC hierarchies into BPC to generate a legal entity hierarchy for consolidation. Tyson uses ECC profit centers to determine legal entities instead of using company codes. Additionally, Tyson has three controlling areas in ECC with profit center hierarchies. The legal entity hierarchy in BPC required combining all three hierarchies from ECC with some manual steps to roll up to a consolidated view.

Tyson uses the ECC parallel ledger functionality for international locations that require a calendar month and year end. Tyson is on a September fiscal year with a 4-5-4 week quarter that always ends on Saturday. The parallel ledger facilitates reporting requirements for international location statutory reporting and Tyson consolidation.

Does Tyson plan to implement SAP HANA for its financial operations or to use SAP HANA with SAP Process Control?

A proof-of-concept project was initiated for BPC and BW on HANA, and we are still in the evaluation stage.

How aggressive has Tyson been with regard to adopting mobile applications? Does the company have any plans to invest in any of SAP’s mobile applications for finance?

Tyson has received several requests to provide the SAP Process Control quarterly certification survey on mobile devices. When SAP Process Control was implemented in 2012 the Adobe form that is used for quarterly surveys was not available on most mobile devices.

What about the cloud? Has Tyson moved any of its business operations to the cloud?

Tyson Foods does not have any infrastructures using the cloud. We have a few things like BrassRing (our HR open position site) and workmans’ compensation uses a service provider.

How do you think the role of a finance manager or CFO is changing?

I think the role of CFO has changed from the traditional roles of steward and operator to preserve assets of the organization by minimizing risk and running an efficient and effective finance organization to a strategic role to help shape the overall strategy and direction of the organization along with being an agent for change and to establish enterprise accountability for results.

What do you think the biggest concern of a CFO is now?

Providing direction and a financial perspective to enhance business performance, improve risk awareness, and translate the expectations of capital markets into business strategic decisions.  

Gary Byrne

Gary is the managing editor of Financials Expert and SCM Expert. Before joining WIS in March 2011, Gary was an editor at Elsevier. In this role he managed the development of manuscripts for Elsevier’s imprint responsible for books on computer security. Gary also has held positions as a copy editor at Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based IT market research company, and as an editor at Internet.com, a publisher of content for the IT community. He also gleaned experience working as a copy editor for International Data Corp., a Framingham, MA-based IT market research company. He earned a bachelor of science degree in journalism from Suffolk University in Boston. He enjoys traveling, sailing as a passenger onboard schooners, and helping his wife, Valerie, with gardening during summer weekends. He’s a fan of all the Boston sports teams and once stood behind Robert Parish in a line at BayBank. He felt small and didn’t ask for an autograph. You can follow him on Twitter at @FI_SCM_Expert. His online footsteps can also be found in the SAP Experts group on LinkedIn.

You may contact the author at gary.byrne@wispubs.com.

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