1. Canadian National Railway
SAP implementation at
Canadian National Railway
Americas SAP User Group – Quebec Chapter
Tuesday March 25th 2003
Thank you. It’s good to be here with you today.
Whenever I tell somebody that I work for the railroad, the response I use to get most often went something like:
“My neighbor’s brother works for the railroad. Maybe you know him. I think he drives trains,” or,
“Gee, I remember taking the train from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay once to visit my aunt.”
When you consider that CN once had 120,000 employees on the payroll and operated dozens of passenger trains each day, those answers really shouldn’t surprise me.
But, CN is no longer in the business of building a nation and we haven’t operated a passenger train since 1978.
CN has changed significantly. But shaking our old image hasn’t always been easy.
Alain Sénéchal, CA
Manager, SAP Optimization
Business Integration - Corporate Accounting
Tel: (514)
Pager: (514) 1

2. Who is CN? One of North America’s largest Class 1 railroads
An innovative, industry-leading transportation company
North America’s only tri-coastal NAFTA railroad
Unmatched access to all three NAFTA nations
A former Canadian government Crown Corporation - privatized in 1995 and now listed on the NYSE and Toronto Stock Exchange

3. CN’s Geographical Operations

4. CN Quick Facts 2002 $6 billion revenues $12 billion of assets
22,868 employees
17,986 route miles of track
1,500 locomotives
61,800 railcars
3 million pieces of signal equipment

5. SAP Implementations – A 3 Phase approach
April 22, 2002
October 1999
January 2001
PHASE 1
PHASE 2
PHASE 3
CN/GT Inventory
Requisitioning
Bar Coding
Purchasing
Network Assets
S&C Configuration Mgmt
Engineering
IC Rollout
Intranet Requisitioning
IC Field Inventory
Procurement Cards
Expense (OCS)
Travel Booking (Pilot Sept 14)
Field Inventory/Rail Shop
Inventory Management
Supply
Management
IC Rollout
Projects System
Asset Accounting
Recoverable Billing
General Ledger
Financial Reporting
Accounts Payable
Business Warehouse (Sept 9, 2001)
Budget Planning (Sept 24, 2001)
BPS/BW
Finance
Workforce Planning/Qualifications
Employee Self-Service
Employee Health & Safety
Net Payroll
Canadian & US Benefits
CN Management
Employee Information
Compensation & Succession
Time & Gross Payroll
US Rollout
All Unionized Employees
Time Reporting
Human
Resources
Mobile Assets (Loco/Car)
Work Equipment
Main Shops (Transcona)
Mechanical

6. Scope of each phase Phase I: go-live Oct 1999
FI: G/L, A/P, Financial Reporting (using SPL for Regulatory Reporting)
MM: purchasing & inventory mgmt (Canada only)
HR: management admin & payroll
Phase II: go-live January 2001
FI: capital, project mgmt, recoverables (Non Freight Billing)
MM: purchasing & inventory mgmt (US), eProcurement (ARIBA)
HR: union admin and payroll, time keeping

7. Scope of each phase (Cont’d)
Phase III: go-live April 29, 2002
Plant Maintenance:
Rail cars and locomotives
Rail network assets
Facility maintenance (one location)
Employee qualifications
Gross-to-net payroll
Travel expenses
EH&S (Risk Management)

8. SAP Quick Facts
27,000 SAP/ESS users
9,000 SAP users
HP/Unix on Oracle

9. Business Warehouse (BW)
Used for SAP financial data used in budgeting, forecasting, Projects and recoverable expense accounting
Budgeting at CN is currently done using a tool called Business Planning & Simulation (BPS) within SEM (Strategic Enterprise Management)
Currently Upgrading SAP BW to version 3.0B and SEM to version 3.1B.
Next cubes to be deployed are A/P for Spend Management and HR for labor relations
The new CN was a dynamic, technologically-advanced North American RR
We were playing in the big league with the other US investor-owned RR
Within 12 months our shares almost doubled from $27 to $55
And our first year as a public company was the best in 76-years
The new CN was bold, serious, resourceful, and focused
Brand attributes: performance, growth, assurance
Like many companies at that time, CN had a web site. And like most ‘first’ corporate web sites, it was built largely as an experiment because “we had to get on the net’
That ‘experimental’ site, allowed CN explore the opportunities of the internet and we soon became the first railroad to offer all customer the ability to track shipments through the internet.
Our webbies were excited and ready to explore further. The timing couldn’t have been better.

10. WHAT’S AHEAD? Integrating Fuel Consumptions
Implementing Service PO module
Expand scope of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) applications to facilitate SAP front-end input
Implement and expand SAP workflow links with Lotus Notes, , fax, documents, forms and SAP transactions with a document management solution
SAP no longer supports the CIV invoice validation module and the migration to LIV is required in order to maintain a stable platform for invoice processing
Today CN is a ‘pure’ rail play company.
We are not in the hotel and telegraph business. We have not been for some time.
We are not in the passenger business nor the oil and gas business and have nothing to do with that tall building down the street called the CN Tower.
We are a freight railway largely owned by US investment funds and we mean to become the best freight railway in North America.
We may not become the biggest, but we plan to be the best in terms of efficiency and service. .