12.5 Bakery Products Company
The company is one of the major players in the food industry, specializing in bakery products. The company has experienced a quick growth path due to acquisitions that led to a very broad product portfolio distributed in 83 countries, with a direct presence in Italy, France, the United States, and India. It has 1,200 employees and more than 435 million dollars in revenue.
12.5.1 Vision
The project was launched last year as a strategic initiative to support the client’s transformation and innovation strategies. This project is paramount to foster the group growth strategy that will lead to double the turnover by 2025. The client will benefit from the project in many ways: streamlining and redesigning the core processes, defining the new organization, and implementing leading-edge SAP solutions that will enable the company to compete and win in the marketplace.
The client was seeking to achieve the following:
- Increase the efficiency of its activities.
- Rethink the processes starting from the needs of the client and confronted with best practices of their sector and products.
- Make real-time information available to support its activities and decision-making process.
- Measure process performance via key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Be flexible and quick in response to change.
- Comply with international financial standards such as International Accounting Standards/International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS).
The company has successfully completed the first phase of the project comprising the following initiatives:
- Business Process Reengineering Phase 1 scope items
- Review of the organizational model
- Design of the performance management system both on an operational and management level
- Change management support
- Design and implementation of the transactional SAP S/4HANA enterprise system
- Design and implementation of the operational reporting and planning of the SAP S/4HANA enterprise system
Through the functionality of the SAP S/4HANA 1511 Enterprise Management system, the client has activated the following processes: finance and administration, controlling, purchasing and related invoice verification, sales invoicing, and management of the nonproduct-related sales orders.
Operational reporting, including real-time analysis, was implemented directly in SAP S/4HANA by activating the BI embedded models through the use of SAP BusinessObjects and SAP Fiori.
Purchase requisition and order approval process were activated using SAP Fiori, which enabled the client’s management to issue approvals via mobile technology using their smartphones or tablets.
12.5.2 IT Project
The client implemented SAP S/4HANA to replace its legacy ERP system to leverage the digital core and integrate with cloud solutions such as SAP SuccessFactors. The company will also gain real-time insight into the business performance via SAP Fiori and embedded analytics, which reduces TCO; operational reporting via SAP S/4HANA (no SAP BW required); and mobility via SAP Fiori (SAP Fiori frontend server and SAP Gateway server required).
12.5.3 Benefits
This initiative has supported the bakery products client in the transformation into an organization focused on streamlining processes, eliminating paper and manual activities, and enabling specific processes to be performed in full mobility (smartphones and tablets). The client has also optimized its target operating model, centralizing SAP processes and various systems and releasing reporting tools in areas formerly not covered by any application (e.g., analysis of purchasing services).
The implemented financial model ensures full compliance with international financial standards and supports the company’s globalization strategy.
The controlling model is an advanced multidimensional model that uses the block postings capability in table ACDOCA to simultaneously synchronize the sales, procurement, and financial data flows. This enables the client to manage its complex analytical dimensions in real time.
12.5.4 Path Forward
This go-live is the first phase of a full scope implementation project of SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. The next go-live is planned for India operations in the second quarter of 2017. At the end of 2017, the remaining processes will be activated (production management, stock management, quality management, material movements), and the client’s focus will shift to structuring and implementing the new product development and customer service.