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In the Member Insights series, SAPinsider reports on success stories from the SAP end user community. These insights highlight the strategies and actions that enterprises are taking to achieve business outcomes as a result of internal or external pressures.
26 results
Salling Group Expands Its Market Reach with SAPFeb 7, 2022 — As the Nordic’s largest retail group, Salling Group serves 11 million customers per week through its department stores, supermarkets, discount stores, and hypermarkets. Its brand diversity makes Salling Group unique in the region, with SAP playing a central role in the company’s expanding customer base.
The company is the only Danish retailer to have stores outside of Denmark. In addition to its presence in neighboring Germany, Salling Group is also present in Poland. Due to a growing Polish economy and an increase in personal disposable income, extending the company’s market reach into Poland is a strong focus.
Equally important is growing its e-commerce business in all markets, particularly in online food and meal delivery. To successfully extend its footprint across borders and expand its service offerings requires effective and efficient supply chain processes.
Read this article and learn:
• How Salling Group ensured data uniformity across all of its supermarkets using SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) and its function codes.
• What the company did in its warehouse to set replenishment rules to synchronize the inbound and outbound processes most efficiently.
• How the organization collaborated with Redwood to help consolidate all logistics transactions in SAP and enable 24/7 supply chain operations.
• The criticality of uniting the SAP BASIS team with the application team to gain full operational transparency and tackle problem resolution.
6 minute read
Aspen Moves to SAP S/4HANA While Protecting DataJan 6, 2022 — South Africa-based Aspen Pharmacare responded to recent global challenges by upgrading its IT infrastructure to improve productivity and regulatory compliance. The drug firm had multiple ERP systems worldwide, both SAP and non-SAP, which created inefficiencies and compliance risks.
The company decided to move to SAP S/4HANA and deploy it on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to address these issues. It opted to use cloud infrastructure because its on-premise infrastructure was inadequate to handle SAP S/4HANA's requirements.
Aspen Pharmacare subsequently moved from SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud to AWS. The company plans to shift everything to SAP S/4HANA over the next five years.
5 minute read
Motor Oil Tests SAP Predictive Maintenance to Reduce Refinery DowntimeDec 9, 2021 — To improve efficiency and reduce downtime, Motor Oil decided to test SAP predictive maintenance capabilities at its Corinth refinery. It was looking for a more accurate way to predict and address potential equipment problems before they occurred and use sensor data to better forecast abnormal events. “For the majority of sensors, the predictions are extraordinary. I couldn’t imagine having a forecast 24 hours before predicting how our equipment would behave for the next day. It is fantastic,” says Dimitrios Michalopoulos, Industrial Applications Head of the IT Division, Motor Oil. Michalopoulos recommends that organizations analyze the available data before beginning a major IT project like implementing predictive maintenance. “Before deciding the full scope of work, explore the data that you have available with subject matter experts. Let the data instruct you if it can answer your questions or not. The data will show you which questions to ask to get the right answers,” he advises.
6 minute read
SAP S/4HANA in Private Cloud Helps Build up OrganizationNov 15, 2021 — Since COVID-19 struck the United States, the building products industry has undergone unprecedented growth. However, the industry has also experienced significant impacts associated with a lack of resources to meet demand.
SAPinsider sat down with Marty Menard, CIO for Pacific Coast Companies Inc. (PCCI), one of four major subsidiaries generating revenue for Pacific Coast Building Products, Inc. (PCBP), a family-run, private, third-generation company in the building products industry. PCCI serves as the shared service organization supporting all of PCBP and its family of companies — in such areas as human resources and information technology.
When Menard joined PCCI in 2017, he recommitted to investing in technology. “The biggest investment we’ve made has been moving from our legacy ECC environment into the SAP S/4HANA environment. We realized that there had to be an investment in technology equal to that growth in the business, otherwise we wouldn’t be competitive.”
PCCI continues to accelerate its business results by innovating across new SAP platforms using a “no blink” deployment approach.
Read more and learn:
• How PCCI is encouraging its sister subsidiaries to innovate across new platforms and expand their SAP usage.
• What benefits have occurred for the logistics subsidiary of PCBP since implementing SAP Transportation Management.
• How PCCI approached the conversion process of moving from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA with the help of two partners — NTT Ltd. and NIMBL.
• How PCCI created a culture of compromise, eliminating 56% of SAP customizations.
10 minute read
Large Brazilian Renewable Energy Company Predicts the WindNov 15, 2021 — The clean energy industry is expected to grow as governments develop regulations that require businesses to consider their impact on the environment. In fact, according to the Brazilian government, almost 83% of Brazil’s electricity matrix originates from renewable sources.
For Casa dos Ventos Energias Renovaveis (Casa dos Ventos), a pioneer in Brazil’s renewable energy market, the company is particularly interested in wind, and solar, and green hydrogen. The company is the biggest wind developer in Brazil. Nearly one-third of all the wind power being generated in Brazil is developed by Casa dos Ventos, says Chief Information Officer (CIO) Roberto Oikawa.
Oikawa is focused on expanding the company’s operations and expects to become one of the largest energy generators in Brazil with the completion of new wind farms. To get there requires the essential task of digitizing the energy sale.
His first step was to change the culture of the company’s IT enterprise. And second, Casa dos Ventos needed a partner and IT infrastructure that allows the company to perform machine learning and artificial intelligence studies with the flexibility and agility that the business requires, says Oikawa.
That partnership came in the form of hosting SAP S/4HANA on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Read more and learn:
• How Oikawa transformed the culture of the IT enterprise by focusing on IT staff that knows how to get information, learn, and be proactive.
• What led Casa dos Ventos to choose SAP and Google as strategic partners for its wind farm initiative.
• How Oikawa learned to get the most from the company’s cloud environment and achieve the outcome he needed.
• What the keys to success were for making Casa dos Ventos’ projects a success and the road ahead.
6 minute read
SAP S/4HANA To Support Supply Chain Modernization at CBSOct 26, 2021 — A combination of changing customer and employee expectations, and an increased need for digital engagement and business agility in the healthcare industry have acted as a catalyst for an SAP S/4HANA business case at Canadian Blood Services (CBS). Shifting its interactions with hospitals and donors to an online experience and improving overall user experience for all of its stakeholders — including its employees — is informing digital transformation across the organization.
SAPinsider talked with CBS’s CIO Ralph Michaelis, who heads up the organization’s enterprise IT group, to learn what is inspiring CBS’s latest innovations. One specific key performance indicator (KPI) noted by Michaelis is to become more agile and dynamic in collections planning and inventory management for plasma-protein-driven products. “We collect about 800,000 units of blood and we do that through about 1.2 million appointments every year. It’s a large volume,” Michaelis says.
CBS was able to increase the frequency of its collections planning to be done on a quarterly basis, rather than annually. Michaelis says the next goal is to conduct planning every few weeks. And, Digital donor engagement has improved from 5% to 80%, says Michaelis. He refers to the results as “not a boom but a game of inches,” explaining that continuous innovation in bursts happened over a five-year span. “If your horizon for delivery is too long, you risk the context of that project changing within that timeframe.”
Read this Executive Insight and learn:
- How CBS is “crossing technology boundaries” to deliver exceptional user experience;
- The skills that CBS is investing in to fundamentally re-engineer business processes and achieve outcomes in weeks as opposed to months; and
- Advice from Michaelis about where to “color outside of the lines” and how to innovate in short bursts when planning an SAP S/4HANA deployment.
6 minute read
Breakthru Beverage Uses E-commerce to Expand DistributionOct 25, 2021 — For Breakthru Beverage Group, a leading North American distributor of the world’s top luxury and premium wine, spirits, and beer brands, the company’s core mission is to be the best and most assessable distributor in the industry to work with. The company operates 36 facilities (including more than 15 distribution centers) throughout all of Canada and 14 U.S. states.
Breakthru Beverage’s response to the impacts of the pandemic is helping to make its mission a reality. A transformation initiative was already underway prior to the pandemic, which enabled the company to pivot more successfully as demand and distribution patterns shifted. Joe Bruhin, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Breakthru Beverage, says the company greatly accelerated the design, development, and implementation of its e-commerce solution. Originally slated as a three-year plan, the company’s e-commerce initiative was completed in one year.
“We’re able to move fast and adapt to changing demand patterns because of our end-to-end SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Customer Data Cloud solutions, as well as SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) for our ERP, which has helped us tremendously in meeting customer demand,” Bruhin says. “Our New Horizons project involved the harmonization of the company’s internal data into a single source of truth within SAP HANA. All the noise about the data not being accurate or inconsistent has been eliminated as a result of that initiative.”
Read this article and learn:
- How Breakthru Beverage expedited its transformation timeline through e-commerce;
- How BBG achieved a fully data integrated business with SAP at the core to drive insights, actions, and other capabilities is a true competitive advantage for the company;
- What Breakthru’s single integrated system looks like and the technologies that it’s leveraging.
- What the next phase looks like as the company implements all the technology into the cloud and integrates third-party data.
8 minute read
Bentley Systems Explores SAP S/4HANASep 30, 2021 — Bentley Systems serves architectural engineers worldwide with its innovative software products. The company’s mission is to advance the world’s infrastructure.
The company runs a highly evolved, intertwined infrastructure. Essential, says Barry Carney, Senior Director of Global Business Services, is keeping pace with innovations as they happen. To balance its complex SAP landscape with its ambition to develop an enterprise system of the future and provide first-rate service to architectural engineers around the world with its innovative software products, Bentley is building a business case for SAP S/4HANA. A cloud-first strategy is also driving Bentley forward, hosting its SAP footprint on Microsoft Azure.
Moving to a new system is a monumental project for a company like Bentley Systems. “We don't want to jump in the water. We want to get our feet wet by dipping our toes in.” In other words, he wants to get it right. “Keeping up with demand and the ever-changing business landscape and fighting to win business every day is an important thing for us as a company to gain market share,” Carney says.
Read this executive article and learn:
- Which components Carney is including in his business case for SAP S/4HANA to appeal to the c-suite;
- Three learnings that Carney is sharing at this point in the discovery phase; and
- Resources and support that Bentley Systems has leveraged in its learn-it-all approach to develop the IT landscape of the future.
8 minute read
Automation Transforms Record-to-Report ProcessesSep 30, 2021 — Accounting and finance teams are under near-constant pressure to innovate their processes for greater efficiencies and a competitive edge. This has led to the integration of emerging technologies such as analytic tools and robotic process automation, allowing finance professionals to focus on broader financial strategies across the enterprise.
That drive for innovation and efficiency led a technology company’s shared services business unit (SSBU) focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare to embark on a challenge: Manage the accounting and financial processes spanning across all of the company’s business units. The expanse of SSBU’s responsibilities and the competitive environment has required an investment in innovative automated technology to transform its record-to-report process into a seamless operation.
SSBU’s record-to-report optimization manager says they want to be competitive in their market and in the minds of the customers they service. “As we all know, there’s always new technologies emerging that are critical to our record-to-report world, especially for finances. What we can’t do is believe there’s a line in the sand signifying an end point, because that line keeps moving as new technologies and solutions enter the market.”
In this article, learn:
• How a technology company’s shared services business unit (SSBU) managed the accounting and financial processes spanning across all of the company’s global business units, achieving true end-to-end organizational visibility.
• What the company did to transition from a manual to automated record-to-report process, requiring significant buy-in and change management from employees who needed to adapt.
• How the business used a use-case approach to find its influencers reach the end customer and demonstrate the future state of the business.
• How the company is gaining one source of truth through SAP S/4HANA, and using a financial close solutions provider to manage its several ERP solutions.
5 minute read
How Eczacıbaşı Group Embraced Digital TransformationJul 29, 2021 — Whenever a company undergoes a large-scale digital transformation initiative, an extensive list of possible scenarios can come out of seemingly nowhere to hamper the success of a project. The challenges can range from determining the technical architecture to building a roadmap that connects IT and business process owners across various time zones.
For the Eczacıbası Group – Europe's leading bathroom and tile manufacturer with a global footprint and active in 124 countries – one of the keys to their digital transformation journey was building a program with SAP S/4HANA as its technical core. But for the project to be successful, it needed to be broken down into digestible components.
The in-depth evaluation provided by Deloitte, including architecture and feature roadmap development, was the key to completing the program quickly and efficiently.
The company is realizing the benefits of its technology investments, including an SAP S/4HANA implementation that consisted of 19 different modules. The company also uses other SAP solutions, including SAP HANA, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, SAP Field Service Management, SAP BW/4HANA, to tie all areas of the business together.
Users have real-time insight and a harmonized view of data for a clearer picture of operations. For example, users can see detailed transportation costs for each country and analyze how much it would cost to send products by land or sea.
Among the benefits the company gained, it improved the production and shipment of its offerings. For example, before the digital transformation project, the company could ship 300,000 pieces in a month. Shortly after, they were able to deliver 430,000 pieces without adding a single headcount in the warehouse.
With SAP S/4HANA at the center of its digital transformation journey, the Eczacıbası Group delivers enhanced value to the business, its partners, and customers.
Read this customer story and learn:
- Why digital transformation is primarily a business-driven effort. Technology is a vital component for digitally transforming businesses. But program outcomes should not fall solely on IT. The business must take a proactive leadership role in setting the agenda and expectations.
- How business and technology leaders need guidance from knowledgeable service partners to lay the groundwork for effective digital transformation strategies and requirements.
- About the benefits of SAP S/4 HANA and other SAP technologies to help organizations become more agile and connect all areas of the business.
- The importance of high-value collaboration across business and IT, and the ability to simplify complexity through change management and risk management mechanisms.
7 minute read