It's Alive! It's Alive!

October 20th, 2008 - David's first day at the office in Kuala Lumpur.  Meet and greet the primary characters that will influence his life for the next 2 years.

January 2009 - Brand new office space is opened, and Accounting Services hires their first employee, Jocelyn.

February 2009 - 4 new employees hired, "The Pioneers".  Official announcement is made that the 1SAP project (the reason we are here), will be delayed until July.  Mixed feelings of joy and sadness felt amongst the centre.

May 2009 - The "New Settlers" begin and the full training suite is delivered.  The centre is now fully staffed (Just under 40 people in Accounting Services).

June 2009 - The 1SAP Go-live is pushed out to September.  Training is delayed to ensure retention and the leadership team plans out what to do in the month and a half of down time.  We didn't see it then, but the work we did in this time really paid off down the road.

August 2009 - Banking access and testing is delayed, which raises a major issue with the project.  David under more stress during this time than any other point in the project.

September 8th, 2009 - "It's Alive!  It's Alive!" The 1SAP system is turned on and the Cash accounting team (which I look after) successfully processes a week's back log of banking entries in 1 day...new team, new system, new process...it was a baptism of fire.  

October 1, 11:45 pm - The days were long, but the preparation paid off.  The Cash team signed off our final month end milestone at 9:59:12pm, when it was due at 10:00:00pm.  A couple extra hours to clear out queries that came through and we were out of the office.  The month end was the true test and we pulled it off; pulled it off very well!

October 2, 7:45am - David is drafting up the improvement projects that will be implemented in October, in order to get us through the next close with even less noise.

Saturday, October 3, 1:20pm - Kim wakes David up with a cup of coffee and a hearty breaky.  Lost hours of sleep are caught up, the weekend is open.  Time to write a blog.