I just joined my company a few weeks ago and they have been on SAP 5.0 for about 1 year. The consulting group set up investment management for tracking projects but no one knows why or how to use it. I've personally never worked with it and I believe that for the size of the company (approx. 300 end users), it is overkill. Can anyone tell me the advantages of using investment management rather than budgeting to a wbs element so that reports can be run to view budget and actual at the wbs/cost element level? By the way, it seems that everyone is up to removing IM sooner than later because they too do not see the benefit.
The number of users is really not that interesting...much more interesting is how much investment activity you have to manage in your company (i.e. number of capital projects, investment amounts, complexity of projects, etc.).
This is a great question, and appropriate for the apparent size of the company! But, before you throw out IM, I would ask these questions:
1. How many projects are authorized each year?
2. What is the total annual budget for these projects?
3. What is the average project budget, and the high and low budgets?
4. What is the strategic window for planning projects? 2 years? 5 years?
5. How many 'wish list' projects are queued up waiting for approval?
The higher the volume, the larger the budgets, the longer the strategic planning view, the greater the competition for scarce funds, then you have a stronger case for managing the projects at a higher level with IM. If you only have a few projects, a small queue of wish list projects, and scarce competition for funds, the you can probably use MS Excel.
Now, I have seen IM made very complicated compared to the needs of the company. IM is very flexible, and can be sized and managed to any type of company. You don't always need every bell and whistle.
Also, you may want to look at the reports. You probably need to customize 1 or 2 of the reports to meet your needs.