In Brief
- Exertis struggled with finding insights in its data, spending hours on reports and not getting the answers it needed.
- Angles for SAP helped Exertis gain insight into the data, giving teams detailed answers to stakeholder questions.
- Angles for SAP has improved inventory and supply chain management at Exertis, giving leaders clarity during times of unpredictability.
- With deep integration into SAP ECC and S/4HANA, Exertis adopted Angles for SAP to help its future S/4HANA migration.
Based in Ireland, Exertis Benelux is a multi-national organization that serves as a value-added distributor of consumer electronics ranging from audio and video, networking, business continuity, and security solutions.
Navigating Through Uncertain Times
A loyal SAP customer, Exertis Benelux has been using SAP ECC6 since 2008. To complete essential tasks like operational reporting and supply chain management, Exertis relied on Excel and business intelligence tools. Eventually, leaders and their teams found their existing tools weren’t providing the level of detail they needed to answer important questions.
“We noticed we had a lot of data in SAP that we weren’t able to connect together. We had to made pivots and exports from the SE16 transaction in SAP. It took us hours to compile those pivot tables into one and we still didn’t have the answers we were looking for,” said Jeroen Huijben, IT Manager at Exertis Benelux. “We made a lot of decisions in the past based on gut feelings rather than being data-driven.”
During a time dominated by market uncertainty, inflation, and tariffs, organizations across the globe are contending with rising costs among other roadblocks. This forces businesses to become more efficient with the resources they have. Managing a small team, this is a challenge Huijben is all-too familiar with, and he set out to find a tool that would help him and his team get daily insights on data, allowing them to improve processes at the granular level.
Introducing Angles for SAP
With a thorough understanding of its data needs, Exertis set out to find a tool that would not only streamline reporting but also give them deeper insights. The key Exertis was looking for from the outset was ease-of-use, as the organization couldn’t afford to wait months to install and train. As a result, the team searched for a solution that would get them up and running quickly with an easy user experience, flexibility, and a smooth implementation.
“We’re quite a small company with 140 people employed and an IT team of four to five people. What we were not looking for was a solution that required extensive training or one where you should have a developer background,” Huijben said. After narrowing its search to a few solutions, the organization found Angles for SAP.
“We stumbled upon Angles for SAP,” Huijben explained. “We noticed immediately after a demo the ease of use, the ease of implementation, and the flexibility.”
Smoothing Out Implementation
Exertis made quick work of implementing Angles for SAP. Although the organization enjoyed a smooth implementation process, Huijben grew concerned about buy-in from the team. Angles for SAP quickly assuaged his fears by being a tool that’s quick and easy to train on.
“You have 50% technology and the other 50% is the human aspect,” Huijben explained. “The technology was fairly easy to implement and get operational. It’s the change of the way of working, change of mind, change of process that’s still the biggest challenge.”
After implementing Angles for SAP, Huijben is confident that the technology will continue to prove itself in time and usher in an improved data culture at Exertis. “It doesn’t require a big amount of training. As long as you understand the basics and structure of SAP, it’s easy to understand.
A Clearer View of the Data
With the help of Angles for SAP, Exertis has greater visibility into its organizational data while allowing it to improve how the business uses SAP. Angles enables the team to fill SAP with cleaner, better data. It also gives them greater insights on their internal processes.
“Angles is not only suitable for large organizations or big corporate companies. Even when you have an IT team of four to five people with 140 people employed, it can still have a lot of benefits compared to the cost, especially if you’re not used to doing detailed reporting,” Huijben said. “The data doesn’t lie.”
Exertis also uses Angles to evaluate and improve customer service. “Before, we weren’t able to put a figure on what our service level is, but also what our service level was per customer and per vendor,” Huijben explained. When talking to Exertis’ vendors, Angles gives the team metrics they can share, which helps them strengthen client and vendor relationships. “The technology speaks for itself.”
Improved Supply Chain Management
Angles for SAP has allowed Exertis to make great strides in its supply chain management, allowing them to pivot quickly even when the supply chain outlook is murky at best. “We can make an analysis of what stock will be aging in a while,” Huijben said. “We can see what our fast-moving products are and how much stock we need to fulfill, for example, 80% our customers’ needs. Those are insights we’ve never had before.”
“We already have a few departments using Angles on a daily basis for their operations,” Huijben continued. Every morning, his team exports reports from Angles to a SharePoint location. The departments can then access SharePoint to easily open orders and stock for daily insights.
Easing S/4HANA Migration
Recently, SAP announced it will end support for all its ECC offerings by the end of December 2027. As a user of ECC6, the team at Exertis is already looking ahead toward its inevitable S/4HANA migration. One of the biggest challenges with migrating to a new system is ensuring the data and technology you already have will remain accessible throughout the migration and beyond.
Because Angles for SAP seamlessly integrates with SAP ECC and S/4HANA, Huijben is confident Exertis will have a smoother migration. “We immediately noticed the integration it has with SAP, with ECC, also with S/4HANA potentially in the future, it became a no-brainer to use Angles,” Huijben said.
Angles not only helps Exertis now, but the technology will be able to meet the organization where it is in the future as executes its S/4HANA migration.
A Bright Future for Exertis
So far, Exertis has been using Angles for about five months. At first, Angles had a few key users, and that has grown to a user group of 10 people who are trained in Angles and can build their own reports. As awareness of Angles increases, stakeholders are asking for reports on the type of data Exertis didn’t have access to before. Now, they’re able to get more detailed and accurate answers to their questions. In the future, Huijben hopes to encourage even more conversations about data within the organization.
Exertis also plans to combine Angles for SAP with Process Runner from insightsoftware. Process Runner will help Exertis identify any polluted data, clean it, and bulk upload it into SAP.
Currently, Huijben uses Angles in harmony with SAP and Power BI to gain deeper insights into data. Because Angles doesn’t clash with Power BI, it allows Exertis to use both tools more efficiently.
“If you’re still running on SAP ECC and you’re looking for a reporting tool, it’s a good idea to not solely look at Power BI or other reporting tools that take a lot of time to develop,” Huijben said. “Use Angles not as a replacement for Power BI, but as an addition. Angles is especially good for the operations side of the business where you can translate the data to the management level.”
