Content Enabling Enterprise-Wide SAP Transformation Project

Following both organic growth and numerous acquisitions and divestments, made over many years, Orica’s SAP landscape had become overly complex. With dozens of core business processes implemented in different ways across the 57 countries it operates in, the decision was taken to undertake a global transformation project to standardize processes and to take better control of documentation and other unstructured content.

Chris Crozier, Orica’s Chief Information Officer explained further, “We had content managed across many different applications and content silos. This often made it challenging to identify the most current version of a document. We determined we needed a reliable, single source of the truth.”

Orica set out with an overarching mantra for the project of “simple, standard and single SAP”, or “4S”, and any additional capability not available within SAP had to adhere to this. Before embarking on the program, Orica had used SAP Document Management System (DMS), however it was not able to provide the level of governance and accessibility required, consequently an alternative solution was needed. Added to this, unstructured content was often stored in Lotus Notes, Microsoft SharePoint and network file shares, only exacerbating problems further. A new solution to complement SAP was needed.

“Orica had already been using OpenText Content Server to manage our health and safety documentation, group policy and procedure documents, so we investigated using OpenText for our 4S program too,” said Crozier, “Thanks to its deep integration to SAP and roadmap alignment, we chose OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions to best enable us to align to our vision of a single view of content, managed in one place.”

Working in Partnership to Implement the 4S Vision

Implemented in phases, the complex, business-led project required the right mix of skills, knowledge and experience, focusing on implementing standardized business processes across 57 countries of operation. The driving principle being that every country should use the same business process, using globally common master data, measuring processes and outcomes in the same way. The OpenText platform provides the required multi-lingual capabilities required to achieve this.

Cathy Christy, Orica’s Head of IT Applications explains “To achieve our goals, we see OpenText and SAP as key enablers to make standardized processes a reality for Orica. As well as these critical solutions, we also required the right people and so we engaged Chrome Consulting, experienced OpenText and SAP consultants, who have provided invaluable guidance and consulting services throughout the project”.

The 4S program has been implemented in phases, the second of which included the deployment of OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® SuccessFactors to manage HR documentation for Orica’s 12,000 employees. Employees, managers, recruiters, HR and others now have access to standardized processes with all documentation securely managed by OpenText.

The third phase saw Orica move to a single SAP S/4HANA instance, with further integration of OpenText to all core business processes for unstructured content.

“As well as OpenText Extended ECM, we also implemented OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) for SAP® Solutions,” added Christy, “This enables us to manage the complete source to purchase to pay process, consistently and efficiently, within SAP and OpenText, anywhere we operate, in 8 languages for users.”

Orica followed a cloud-first strategy and determined early in the project that it would deploy such a large, complex, enterprise solution on cloud infrastructure partly due to the global nature of Orica’s manufacturing operations, many of which are in remote areas with low bandwidth. Microsoft Azure provided the required high availability, disaster recovery and scalability needed. OpenText Professional Services provided additional, value-added services in areas such as performance analysis and tuning, to ensure maximum performance and business benefit.

In keeping with the standard element of the 4S principle, customization of the solution was limited, except where necessary, for example around master data governance and integration to custom financial approval workflows, which was expected for an organization as large and complex as Orica.

One Simple, Single, Standard Consolidated Source of the Truth

The 4S program at Orica has touched every one of its 12,000+ employees across the globe. Key end-to-end business processes including recruit to hire to terminate, source to purchase to pay, controlled documents at manufacturing sites, asset management and maintenance, business planning to reporting, issue to resolution and master data management significantly leverage the capabilities of OpenText.

“We have to manage the lifecycle of tens of thousands of controlled documents, including for safety-critical manufacturing processes and maintenance procedures,” said Rachael Sandel, Orica’s Head of Integrated Planning and Architecture, “Having all documentation centrally managed by OpenText gives us one single, reliable source of the truth as well as review and approval workflows through the entire lifecycle”.

By standardizing and structuring processes, they can only be followed in the way they were intended, removing the possibility of workarounds and shortcuts. For example, it is no longer possible to pay vendor invoices if they have not been processed through OpenText Vendor Invoice Management, supporting compliance in every country.

“Using OpenText Vendor Invoice Management, we have much greater visibility and control over the payment process,” said Sandel, “We process over 55,000 documents through VIM each month”.

Users predominantly use the SAP Fiori interface and OpenText Smart User interface, seamlessly providing the content they need to go about their daily tasks. The SAP and OpenText systems are available securely from any device, anywhere, making remote working much simpler.

The 4S program covers hundreds of business processes across the organization. More will be added over time and as new businesses are acquired or created, each will immediately move to the robust, reliable and scalable platform that has been created working in partnership with OpenText and Chrome Consulting.

About Chrome Consulting

Chrome Consulting (Chrome) is a strategic consulting firm specialising in document enabling business processes within and beyond an SAP landscape.

The company was founded in 2014 and has grown to be the largest OpenText consultancy in ANZ specialising in the deployment of OpenText in an SAP context. Implementing over 80% of the OpenText Extended Content Management (xECM) projects in ANZ has given Chrome real-world experience from complex commercial sites with over 15,000 users dispersed across 120 countries to smaller state government based utilities.

We also have the largest and most experienced OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) team in ANZ with over 40 projects delivered to date. Together both solution areas represent significant experience when it comes to understanding SAP processes and how they should best be enabled with documents to achieve both business support, security and records compliance.