by Paul Van Essche, Director, ERP Project
5 February 2009

Dear colleagues,

I send warm wishes from a very wintry New York. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Paul Van Essche, and I head up the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Project. I’d like to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet with my colleagues.

They are on an ambitious road trip to get to know as many of you as they can and to do their best to understand the ways you and your colleagues work as you strive to meet the diverse and demanding needs of this organization.

I hope you’ll welcome them and engage in frank and open discussion together. They are there to learn from you.

As many of you may already know, the goal of the UN ERP project is to enable more effective management of human, financial and physical resources to support fully the needs of the United Nations. This will be achieved by reengineering our processes and practices to be more efficient and implementing them on a single, global information system that will ultimately replace more than 250 outdated systems.

In December last year, the General Assembly authorized initial funding of $20 million for the 2008/2009 biennium for the ERP project, and we’re not wasting any time in moving ahead.

Over the coming few years, the ERP team will collaborate with colleagues across the global Secretariat as we progress through the phases of this project: analysis of needs and practices, design of new procedures, configuration and testing of a new information system and finally training for users as the system is deployed globally.

Right now, we need your help to analyze current processes and requirements. In the future, we will seek your input to design new and more effective working methods and procedures. Later, colleagues and consultants will cooperate to configure the information system, and then an extended network of ERP supporters will help test the solution and train staff to use it effectively. Likewise, implementation and support will be a widely shared effort.

As the analysis phase comes to a close with your help, the documentation of existing processes in four functional areas – finance, human resources, supply chain/logistics/procurement and central support services – will be completed and validated soon after this “world tour” of offices and field missions ends.

During their visit, my team will work with you and your colleagues to ensure that the list of business processes across all functional areas is complete; to document any of your systems, processes and data repositories that have not already been captured; and to ask you to confirm whether processes already recorded elsewhere in the Secretariat match your own. If not, they will record your variations.

Members of my team are visiting your duty station in person to ask for your input because you and your colleagues know your jobs best, and we want to hear from you directly. Your participation – even at this early stage of the project – is critical to the success of the ERP implementation. I do hope you will think of the ERP as your enterprise management tool.

Although the design phase is yet to come, please also use this visit to begin discussing challenges, risks, and opportunities for improvement. These will be important in shaping the future system. We want to learn from your good ideas and explore the possibilities of harmonizing processes.

In fact, while my colleagues are with you, they will be looking for potential participants for the subsequent phases. When the time comes, my team will again reach out to the UN world to hold workshops on system design and other activities.

No matter what your job description, we are always looking for enthusiastic individuals that we can count on to be part of a Secretariat-wide network of project supporters. I hope you will consider becoming an active ERP supporter and Ambassador.

Before closing, I would like to ensure you that the ERP project is a strategic part of the UN reform process. It enjoys the support of UN management at the highest levels – the Secretary-General is squarely behind the project, seeing the great potential to do business better and improve service to our beneficiaries. We are also pleased to call the Deputy Secretary-General, the Under-Secretaries General of the Department of Management and the Department of Field Support and the Chief Information Technology Officer strong partners and advocates.

Please accept, again, my sincere thanks for being a part of this Secretariat-wide effort. My team and I are very pleased to be working with you over the duration of this project.

We look forward to the day that all – United Nations staff and those whom we serve – will benefit from our hard work.

Thank you very much for your attention.