Inside SAP Yearbook 2011

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The independent magazine for SAP professionals

www.insidesap.com.au

October 2010: Issue #11 Australia & New Zealand

Yearbook

2011 Your essential resource

PP 255003/09024

• Case studies on the year’s best SAP projects • Roundtable: what’s ahead for 2011 • Comprehensive SAP provider directory

Find the RIGHT partner for your next project

SAP Customer Awards of Excellence winners

Top 10 Most Influential PEOPLE, tech trends

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Inside SAP Managing Editor

Freya Purnell t. (02) 9929 5465 m. 0412 602 579 freya.purnell@insidesap.com.au

Journalist/Editorial Assistant Elizabeth Kelleher t. (02) 9929 5465 elizabeth@flapjack.com.au

Creative Director & Production Manager Justin Knights t. (02) 9929 5465 m. 0425 292 075 justin@flapjack.com.au

letter from the

Editor

Welcome to the very first Inside SAP Yearbook.

Advertising Sales

Having published online editions of Inside SAP for the last year (and noticing more than a few dog-eared copies of the printed magazine on coffee tables around town), we thought it would be timely to bring you this bumper ‘best of ’ edition of Inside SAP to serve as a reference tool over the next 12 months.

Stuart Whitmore t. 02 9029 6028 m. 0403 003 703 stuart@mwmedia.com.au

In this Yearbook, you’ll find case studies of the best SAP projects from the past year, together with the rundown on innovative new projects. Other features include our Top 10 Most Influential People in SAP for 2010, our survey of emerging technologies and trends, and the winners of the most recent SAP Customer Awards of Excellence. To give you the jump on 2011, we have brought together industry leaders in a roundtable discussion on where they see the greatest oppor tunities and challenges in the SAP market in the Australia and New Zealand. And because the Yearbook is designed to be a year-round information resource, we have included a comprehensive SAP provider directory, with detailed profiles of a wide range of market-leading companies providing SAP solutions and services.

MW Media Darren Matthews t. 02 9029 6028 m. 0411 259009 darren@mwmedia.com.au

Contributing Writers

Nathan Dukes, Miriam Hechtman

Published by

FlapJack Media Pty Ltd Suite 7, Level 9, 122 Arthur St North Sydney NSW 2060 ABN: 93 142 878 135 Inside SAP is published six times a year by FlapJack Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced in whole or part without the written permission of the publishers.

FlapJack Media Pty Ltd makes no representation or warranties with respect to this magazine or its contents including, without limitation, material communicated by third par ties. FlapJack Media Pty Ltd does not warrant that the information available in this magazine is accurate, complete or current.

Opinions expressed are those of the respective authors and not necessarily of the publisher. Neither FlapJack Media Pty Ltd nor any persons involved in the preparation of this publication will be liable for any loss or damage as a result of use of or reliance upon advice, representation, statement, opinion or conclusion expressed in Inside SAP magazine.

A big thank you to our sponsors for embracing the Yearbook concept and enabling us to bring you this special edition. We hope it is a valuable resource for your business.

If your colleagues would like to request a free copy, please email editor@ insidesap.com.au and we will have a copy sent out to them.

Thank you to all who responded to our reader survey – your feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated. We have plenty of changes planned for the Inside SAP website and magazine, so look out for some new features. But the headlines are that from December, we will be returning to a quar terly publishing schedule for Inside SAP, and will resume publishing the magazine in print (in addition to producing an online edition). We are excited about this new phase of development for Inside SAP, and invite you to turn to page 61 to see our special subscription offer for Yearbook readers.

As always, we would love to hear your feedback on the Inside SAP Yearbook 2011 – and I hope it finds a place on your desk (or coffee table) for the year to come.

Freya Purnell Managing Editor, Inside SAP

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[ contents Features [8] Roundtable: Looking ahead to 2011 [13] Projects honoured in SAP Customer Awards of Excellence [17] Top 10 Most Influential People 2010 [21] Blue sky thinking: top 10 trends and technologies of the future [23] Beyond Copenhagen: the next stage for sustainability solutions

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Case studies [26] Retailing made easy: EziBuy Group [29] Off to the right start: Layby Services Australia [30] Data migration made boring: Kraft Foods [32] Bridging the gap: Sanitarium Health Food Company [34] Overhauling reporting and analysis: Woolworths [36] Mastering master data management: Lexmark International [38] The strongest link: Centrelink [41] Improving warehouse operations: ACCO Australia [42] A super solution: Superpartners [44] Platform-as-a-Service: NSW Department of Education and Training [45] Providing practical, powerful reporting: Fletcher Insulation [48] No fire-fighting needed for SAP implementation: NSW Fire Brigades and SES [50] Intelligent and integrated transportation: Queensland Motorways [51] In the nick of time: Queensland Nickel

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Company profiles [56] BackOffice Associates [58] Wipro Technologies [60] IBM [63] Consulting Networks [64] Innogence Limited [67] IQX Business Solutions + Excel4apps [68] HCL AXON [69] CIBER [70] Novell [71] Oxygen Business Solutions [72] Revolution IT [73] Readsoft [74] Kaba [75] Esker [76] Lodestone Management Consultants [77] Revelation Software Concepts [78] Zer01 Group [79] StoneBridge Systems [81] Articulate [82] TIK Consulting [83] Speller International [84] Everjoy Consulting

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[85] SAP Provider Directory

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roundtable ]

Looking ahead to 2011 Inside SAP brought together leading representatives of the SAP market to discuss how market forces have affected IT requirements over the last 12 months, where the hotspots for growth will be in 2011 and other key trends.

Freya Purnell: Looking back over the last 12 months, what are the conditions and challenges businesses using SAP have experienced and how has this climate impacted on their IT investments?

Paul Rogers: It has been an interesting year. I have only recently taken over this role and seen a much broader view of clients on how they are investing in and utilising SAP. I think coming out of 2009 into 2010, we saw a very broad set of clients and sectors who were continuing to invest in SAP and run projects, although I would say it was quite heavily dominated by the public sector. But we saw fairly unprecedented growth and interest in new SAP projects from the beginning of this year. Some are standard ERP implementations, but also a number of them are looking to expand their investment into some of the newer products such as BPC and BusinessObjects.

But then just in the last two months, I’ve seen a real tightening of the belt, and backing off from investments. All of a sudden the brakes have gone on and a lot of organisations are saying, let’s just take a step back, and see what happens both nationally here in Australia and globally.

Paul Detering: I would preface my comments with the fact that I have been out of the Australian market for part of the second half of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. However, observing the market trends from an SAP perspective for Wipro across the region, the business remains strong. A core part of Wipro’s business is very much providing end-to-end services across the full SAP spectrum, and we are seeing a cost focus around the ongoing operations of organisations’ SAP solutions. So we’ve certainly seen an increase of requests for application support and trying to drive cost out of their basic day-to-day operations. Some of that is leading to more nearshore and offshore delivery, obviously with the objective of channelling those savings back into core products and ongoing

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investments – and we have observed this more in several key utility organisations both in the Sydney and Melbourne metro area. In more recent times, we have seen a renewed focus back in consumer packaged goods, but generally over the last 12 months we have seen a decline in activity in the manufacturing area.

FP: Tom, you have more of a global perspective – what are your observations on the last year?

Tom Kennedy: Over the last 12 months, there have been more robust applications that require more data governance to help ensure that they operate efficiently with minimal business process interruptions. SAP customers are trying to get more value from their existing licenses and want everything to work together. There has also been a great deal of focus on instance consolidation, and a real need for simplification and standardisation of business processes, data and configuration and design. SAP has a great deal of capability and it is now about matching that capability to the user needs.

FP: John, what is SAP’s view on how things have unfolded?

John Goldrick: I agree with a lot of the points here, because I think what we saw 12 months ago was the start of reinvestment cycle after companies really slammed on the brakes two years ago.

Where we have seen some of the big changes are the public sector, the resources sector, utilities and even the retail sector.

We have also spent a lot of time getting people upgraded to the ECC6 platform, and that means they now have the ability to actually consume functionality differently through Enhancement Packs. We are pretty close to having 50 per cent of the Australian customer base now on the latest release, and New Zealand is one of the top

The panel countries in the world – they have 55-56 per cent on ECC6. We are starting to see people actually use these Enhancement Packs as a way of continuously upgrading the system.

We are also seeing a move to consumability. Looking at the use of mobile and on-demand devices, and the way Gen Y and Millennium kids consume technology, it is very different to the way SAP systems have typically been set up. When the SAP UI came out originally, it was amazing, but it didn’t progress probably as fast as it needed to. It is extremely functional, but now people are looking for a consumability model.

Tom Kennedy, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, BackOffice Associates, LLC

Analytics is another area where there has been a change. We see as much potential in those areas as the ERP components.

PR: In the last 12 months we haven’t really seen too much movement on upgrades, but now we are starting to see a lot of organisations say, we need to upgrade, and there are a number of very strong business drivers about why they need to do that.

The only caveat on that is that they tend to be technical upgrades, whereas perhaps previously there has been an upgrade plus a fair amount of functionality extension.

Paul Rogers, ANZ SAP Practice Lead, IBM Global Business Services

The challenge that a lot of CIOs are going through at the moment is working out where the real value drivers are in extending their footprint versus the constraints that they have in their budgets at the moment. So we certainly see upgrades as a major driver in the future.

JG: I think the driver behind that is the Enhancement Pack process that we have now, where you can actually consume much smaller pieces in eight- to 12-week cycles. But you have to be on ECC6 to do it. So there is a limitation if you’re not on the latest platform.

FP: What else is topping the list of priorities for CIOs, and have you seen a change in those priorities over the last 12-18 months?

TK: Cost saving is still the number one priority – fewer platforms and more focus on business applications that work for end-users.

CIOs tend to be more focused on technology to support the business user and are getting away from the pure technology play.

The focus is on usable business applications so IT is more of a provider to the business than just a technology cost centre.

PR: IBM recently released its CIO study, and that shows the priorities haven’t changed, but there is a real conflict that seems to come out of this report. There is a desire to innovate, but even though they have invested in an SAP platform, actually they have invested in a reasonably small set of components and what is possible is much greater. So they are now asking how to take that innovation forward and justify the investment in that innovation, versus the current economic concerns and constraints. So I think there’s less clarity in the minds of CIOs as to which way to go at the moment. At the same time, they are being driven much, much harder by their internal customers to provide the right level of information at the right time, the right quality of information, and the right cost per user, and that’s why business analytics is such a key focus.

John Goldrick, Director, Industry & Solutions Group, SAP ANZ

Paul Detering, SAP Regional Lead, Wipro Technologies

Freya Purnell, Managing Editor, Inside SAP

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roundtable ]

There’s starting to be a much broader awareness and understanding of what SAP as a set of solutions can provide.

Paul Rogers

PD: There has certainly been increased investment in the area of analytics and increased focus in making core business decisions based on the analytics. But I think across the board in much of the SAP installed base, there is still long way to go in terms of what is possible.

The other key trend is around agility and speed to market, and we do face a legacy of new investments in a number of SAP projects, where timelines make it very difficult for the business to embrace the changes. Companies are certainly wanting to move much quicker and going back to John’s point, with those customers now being on the latest release, the ability to take on an Enhancement Pack approach to innovation rather than waiting for what has traditionally been a large package upgrade, will go down very well.

However, we are just on the cusp of seeing that level of agility and implementation.

JG: Yeah, it’s interesting. We monitor the Enhancement Pack take-ups of our customers who are now on ECC6. When the Enhancement Packs first came out, the take-up was actually quite slow. Now we are starting to get this exponential curve going, where it’s like they have dipped their toe in the water by implementing one, it worked, so they are happy to go back again and take the next package, and we are seeing people actually look through the catalogue and see if it’s functionality they want to use.

The CIOs are then able to map out a process that the business can be involved in as well.

FP: Looking forward to 2011, what do you think will be the hot spots for growth?

TK: The hot spot for 2011 is going to be master data management (MDM) as a concept. MDM will support things like simplification.

There will also be a continued focus on enterprise information management (EIM), business intelligence and good reporting. MDM and ERP will need to be bi-directional.

PR: I think the opportunity is for organisations to ensure they are getting the right level of return on their SAP investments. The first part of that is making sure they are on the current release of SAP. That not only helps around support and maintenance costs, but it

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also reduces a lot of the customisations that they may have done in years gone by, and therefore reduces that overall cost of supporting an SAP solution.

A lot of the programs that we have seen come through have a much broader scope than perhaps they traditionally have had in the past, bringing in new functional areas around Real Estate Management, Environment Compliance, and Business Planning and Consolidation. There’s starting to be a much broader awareness and understanding of what SAP as a set of solutions can provide.

That in itself brings some challenges, because a number of those products are fairly new and the skill sets are not as prevalent, and we have gone through quite an aggressive training program over the last 6-7 months to make sure that we have the right skills to support those clients’ requirements.

Interestingly, the other area touched on earlier was around the application support stream. IBM has made a pretty significant investment in being able to provide application support, and yet we are seeing quite a slow take-up from organisations within Australia on that specific SAP application support structure. And it’s certainly not the same globally – I think in Europe and the US, there has been a much more aggressive take-up from clients, but it seems perhaps a little sluggish from our perspective.

The other thing for 2011 from our point of view is around quality of resources. I think there will be a much greater demand by our clients to ensure we have the right skills, the right capabilities, and the right experience. So we’ve gone through a program to fully certify all our SAP consultants.

FP: We’ll come back to that question of resources, it’s obviously a big one for the market. Paul, where do you think the areas of growth are?

PD: I have similar observations perhaps with the exception of the application management support area. Certainly there is a strong push from the business community for much better analytics and much better ability to link and support their decision-making process with the data that we know is in SAP, but unfortunately historically perhaps has not been available or not in a form that directly supports the business processes.

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[ roundtable

In the area of application management, I have just come back from working in the broader Asian region and particularly north Asia where the market is quite immature in terms of application management ability and the benefits of using offshore/nearshore, and I see that many of the larger customers in the Australia/New Zealand market have been very early adopters in this area. Many of those organisations are probably going through their second or even third supply discussions where they have experience with a range of application management options, whether it be with the key traditional large global systems integration providers or others, but there is a maturity in those large customers.

What we are now seeing is the next tier organisations coming out and looking to drive cost out of their businesses in the same way.

That’s not to suggest that the solution in all those cases is simply taking an offshore approach, but we are seeing an increased demand for service proposals in that area of application management.

Obviously the major driver there is reduced operating costs.

Just from an industry perspective, while the maturity and the footprint in the market share is very strong for SAP in the utility sector, that is one area that we did see grow in 2010 and we expect that trend to continue in 2011. This is a scenario where many utility organisations are further expanding their footprint in SAP and also surprisingly, again we are seeing a number of those medium size retailers coming to market looking to replace legacy systems.

JG: I agree the big areas of growth will be where we are expanding outside the core of ERP. You look at the core banking solution, the core utility solution where we are very strong and the retail components, where we are expanding down further into each one of these businesses. That’s good, but it also has its challenges because you need different resources, you need different capabilities and you need different understandings. You can’t take a banking guy and throw him into a retail sector because changing a core banking system is very different to changing your point of sale. You not only need people who understand SAP, but you need people who understand the business side as well.

On the analytic front, what is driving CIOs to do more in this area is that people on the business side actually understand the power of analytics more than they did before. I think the whole market is looking for much greater real-time analytic capability that is actually providing forward indicators rather than historical indicators.

The increased use of embedded analytics is also driving greater consumability by the end users.

FP: Looking at on-demand – what is your view on the role that could play for organisations of various sizes moving forward?

TK: The Sybase integration will play a big part, along with mobile computing. There will be some re-platforming onto Sybase and a continuing effort to address the mid-market with Sybase. We will also see instance consolidation continue and accelerate.

PD: Yes, what we are seeing is that in the mid-market arena the opportunities of using an on-demand model are significant. I’m not suggesting that the on-demand offering is only linked to that market segment, but for all sorts of reasons, such as the accessibility, design, not having to build internal IT capability, speed to market and so on, it will be very attractive to that part of the market, particularly

around customer relationship management (CRM). I believe across Australia and New Zealand the maturity is there. We’ve gone beyond the concerns around the locality of critical business data – I think organisations understand the safety and security aspects.

There is no doubt on-demand will become more critical even for large enterprise customers, with that scenario of utilising both onpremise solutions and mixing and matching on-demand, depending on the size of the business unit.

JG: I’d agree with that. We see large enterprises wanting to use the on-demand capabilities around non-core functions such as CRM, procurement, analytic components, maybe even areas such as travel management. If they are integrated, they can still be used as part of the core process, but they can actually take cost out of their business by not having that function residual on-premise.

PR: On-demand service has been around for quite some time, it’s not a new term. I think what’s starting to happen now is that people are beginning to understand what they want from an ondemand solution. From SAP’s perspective, I think it is absolutely the right strategy. SAP is still very, very strong in its core products and surely wouldn’t want to dilute that in any way, but a lot of the enhancements and innovation that SAP is doing is certainly moving in the right direction. The challenge I think we all have is how we make it simplistic.

FP: What about the capability of the IT function within an organisation to actually support a proliferation of mobile devices – how do you think they will manage that?

JG: As you know, we have taken over Sybase, and one of the really cool things they have is a product called Afaria, which basically allows the IT organisation to manage all their disconnected devices. So all the monitoring and management of the applications on the mobile device occurs from a central point, which is your IT organisation, and all the security can be managed centrally.

PR: Which is again where I think SAP’s strategy is spot-on, because the vast majority of organisations still have a spaghettilike application footprint with hundreds of interfaces and bespoke development, which then makes that whole support mechanism very complex. Whereas the strategy that SAP is pursuing is that the broader your common footprint and application framework, the easier it will then be to start to integrate on-demand, on-device, and we are plugging it into a robust, stable platform, rather than this morass of different types of applications which may or may not work. So I think this is a crucial component helping to drive some of that commonality.

FP: Moving onto resourcing, how do you think that is going to change over the next 12 to 18 months and is getting the resources you need to deliver to your clients something you are concerned about?

PR: Coming into this role, I recognised it was going to be a major challenge for us – not only keeping abreast of the enhancements to standard ERP, but as we saw more and more demand from our clients around some of the new products, how we would ensure that we get the right capability and skill sets in areas such as BPC,

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roundtable ] In Australia and New Zealand, we face the challenge of an ageing expert community.

Paul Detering

Real Estate Management and so on, and on top of that, how do we get industry capability.

The danger is that you try to be all things to all people, which very few organisations will ever achieve, because the investment required and the amount of people required is huge. So one of the things I think we’re all doing is targeting the industry sectors that we believe we have both functional business process and sector skills in, and targeting some of those functional components as well.

Now that’s a little bit of a challenge because a lot of organisations want to implement the whole package, and that package may have components that we might not have the skills in.

Recently we’ve undergone quite an extensive training program.

One of the requests that I have for SAP is to perhaps make some of those training courses more readily available, because the technology, the applications and the functionality changes fairly quickly, so having training programs on CRM or Real Estate Management every six months isn’t really going to help. So we need to have more immediacy or a different type of training medium or mechanism that we can more readily access, and therefore we can have that agility.

Certification is also key because SAP as a product has been around for many, many years, and there are many people with various degrees of experience in it. I think as the implementations become more complex and sophisticated, we’ve got to be very careful that we all provide the right quality of resources in those projects. I think certification is a key enabler with that.

In terms of resourcing, the other advantage for us is obviously having a broad set of relationships both nationally in Australia and globally. So where we may have resources in Europe or the US that may be further advanced in implementing some of these newer applications, we look at how we can bring our global capability in to support clients locally.

classroom-based training and being able to deliver more material online, and I know there are moves underway with SAP to improve the way training can be consumed.

But the bigger issue, if we take a 10-year view, is how do we build that next generation of SAP resources? What I see happening is many of the large investments are building up new capability primarily in offshore and nearshore centres. I believe sometimes that comes at the expense of building local capability, and we all know in terms of delivering programs successfully you need an appropriate blend of quality on-site, domain experts, and management experts working day in, day out on-site, obviously complemented well with a quality offshore/nearshore team. I believe that needs to change where we are really investing now for what is going to be that next generation of experts.

JG: Do you see a lot of Gen Y SAP resources coming into the industry?

PD: We do, but not to the same degree that we saw that trend in the last five to 10 years. I don’t believe it is biting organisations today, but I’m sure if we all were to profile our age demographics of our key SAP resources, it would be a concern to many of us. It’s at a point where we need to be investing in the next generation of experts now. Australia is not alone in that, but it will be an ongoing challenge for us. Now part of that will be influenced by on-demand – the way we deliver and service those projects will be different, but we will still need in the longer-term those product, domain and industry capabilities.

FP: Paul, what’s your view?

PR: I think it is geographically spread. So certainly locally the average age of a SAP consultant is somewhat higher than it was 10 or 15 years ago. But in our offshore locations in China and India in particular, it is Gen Y that is coming through the universities into the SAP space.

PD: I see similar levels of demand going into 2011 as in the past 12 months. However I think in Australia and New Zealand, we face the challenge of an ageing expert community – many of the individuals have grown through perhaps 10-plus years in the industry, and the better of those are keeping their skills current. We see significant benefits in the certification program, but the best certification program needs to be kept current and that’s obviously an ongoing investment. A key way of doing that is moving away from traditional

PD: Those offshore investments have gone very well – speaking on behalf of Wipro, the utilisation is incredibly high. But I think the challenge we have in the more mature markets is how do we find that right balance. At times, maybe we have invested perhaps too long and too high solely in building up offshore and nearshore capability. We need to balance that to make sure that we do have the deep industry components so that we can complement that offshore with the appropriate level of on-site delivery.

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[ SAP awards

Best projects honoured in SAP Customer Awards of Excellence 2010 saw a new record set for the number of project submitted for the SAP Customer Awards of Excellence, presented at the SAUG Summit in August in Sydney. By Freya Purnell.

SAP ANZ CEO Tim Ebbeck with CEO Award winners, Alan Oppenheim from Ego Pharmaceuticals and Dennis Michael from Clarity Consulting Group Sixty projects were submitted for consideration for this year’s SAP Customer Awards of Excellence, presenting the judging panel with the tough task of choosing the winners from a highly competitive field.

The members of the judging panel were: Tim Ebbeck, CEO and president, SAP ANZ; Ian Harvison, CIO, Komatsu; Peter Mahler, CIO, AXA; and Mario Scicluna, head of delivery, SAP ANZ. In 2010 a new category was also introduced to the awards – the CEO Special Award, which was chosen by Ebbeck and presented to a finalist who missed out in their category but was wor thy of special recognition.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Mahler said that each year of the awards brings bigger and better proposals, and reflected on the impor tance of winning his own award for an SAP implementation at Officeworks during his time as CIO of Coles Myer.

So you should be proud that you are helping a company to transform,” he said.

Ebbeck also congratulated all the award winners on their achievements in driving change.

“We put in transformational systems that assist organisations to change. We take the responsibility of changing the lives of people very seriously, and I sense in all of these awards that the impact the program had on the people in the organisation, their customers and of course the people surrounding in the ecosystem was a very impor tant factor,” Ebbeck said. “So I look at these awards as being fundamental to recognise the effor t that goes into changing the way not just organisations work, but how people actually operate in society.”

2010 SAP Customer Award of Excellence winners Best SAP ERP with Channel Partner

“That really set us on the journey… this one system got us recognised as an IT organisation in the company, because all of you know that sometimes it is really tough to convince the business of how we need to approach these things. So it got us the recognition, and we went on to do implementations in many other par ts of the business. But we wouldn’t have been able to do it if we didn’t have that success upfront,” Mahler said.

Winner: Porter Davis Homes with Fujitsu For: Project 360

He also commended the winners on their broader role in the businesses they work in.

According to Ray Kloss, SAP ANZ director of global field marketing, one of the reasons Por ter Davis won the award was the creativity of the prospect to cash and design to pay processes and how these were configured within the system.

“These projects are not just an IT transformation, it’s not just an application upgrade, it is a business transformation.

Por ter Davis Homes is a Melbourne-based builder of quality, affordable homes, with over 400 employees over nine offices.

The rapid transformation of the business forced the company to look at new systems, and their SAP implementation project scope included prospect to cash and design to pay processes, as well as construction, maintenance and an enterprise por tal.

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SAP awards ]

The award was accepted by Felicity Nutter from Por ter Davis Homes and Ian Hodge from Fujitsu.

ASICS was a shoe-in for this category, with a world-first deployment of a new digital repor ting facility for salespeople, using a digital pen.

Best SAP Business Intelligence with Channel Partner

With order turnaround times a key metric in its business, ASICS had explored various options to help it get product on customer shelves faster than the competition.

Winner: ASICS Oceania with Fujitsu For: AOP Way

With the aim of improving repor ting and becoming more analytical as the business grew, footwear brand ASICS implemented SAP BusinessObjects and SAP Business Warehouse.

“This comprehensive BI implementation delivered five different views of profit, and allowed for quick wins in terms of management repor ting while the solution was being built,” Kloss said, adding that good communication between the project team and the business contributed to the success of the project.

“Using Interactive Forms by Adobe and now the digital pen solution from Acclimation, they’ve achieved a solution that eliminates lost orders, there’s little or no change management for the account rep, immediate sales order processing and the removal of rekeying errors. Given that this was the first deployment of the technology globally, it was impossible to pass this up as the winner,” Kloss said.

The award was presented to James Stone from ASICS and Rob Todman from Acclimation.

Best Visibility Solution

The award was accepted by James Stone from ASICS and Ian Hodge from Fujitsu.

Winner: Country Fire Authority – Victoria with Fujitsu For: Community Meetings Solution

Best SAP ERP

In the aftermath of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfire disaster, the Victorian Government provided special funding for the Country Fire Authority (CFA) to upgrade its IT infrastructure.

Given the community expected better management of the impending bushfire season, the system had to be implemented in just three months.

Winner: Newcrest Mining with Accenture The solution implemented at Newcrest comprised ERP template solutions for ‘best of breed’ specialist mining system at the operation level, with the centralised ERP cutting across four business functions of HR /Payroll, Maintenance, Supply and Finance. With the project including deployment across Australia and Indonesia, Kloss said its depth and breadth and the ROI achieved on the project were key reasons it was chosen as the winner in this category.

This award was accepted by Stephen Pearson from Newcrest and Rob Mellor from Accenture.

Best SAP Business Intelligence

Winner: Queensland Office of State Revenue with SAP Consulting For: Revenue Management System Responsible for the delivery and administration of simple and efficient revenue management services for the state, the Queensland Office of State Revenue in 2009/2010 alone processed over $8 billion in revenue. But because taxes and grants were managed through disparate systems, the agency had a limited ability to identify leakage across revenue streams.

“Critical to the success of the project was the breadth but most impor tantly, the return on investment within the first year of the application going live. The overall return was achieved within 12 months,” Kloss said.

Liam Cooke accepted the award on behalf of the Queensland Office of State Revenue.

Best Innovation

Winner: ASICS Oceania with Acclimation For: Anoto Tiger project

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“Fujitsu and CFA par tnered on the development and rapid deployment of a solution that leveraged standard SAP CRM 7 to deliver the Community Meetings CRM project, which enables the transfer of crucial information during emergency situations,” Kloss said.

The CFA’s Michael Foreshew and Fujitsu’s Ian Hodge accepted the award.

Best Value Realisation

Winner: AGL Energy Ltd with Accenture For: HM3 – Queensland Gas and Electricity roll-out Between July 2007 and March 2008 (and on an ongoing basis), AGL organically acquired 130,000 Queensland mass market customers from Hansen Technologies. This project covered the full migration of all customers into the AGL SAPIS Utilities and CRM systems.

“The estimated operational cost savings in the first year alone are over $4 million, representing the strongest ROI of all submissions,” Kloss said.

Owen Coppage from AGL and Anthony Cook from Accenture accepted the award.

Best SAP NetWeaver

Winner: National Can Industries (NCI) and Oxygen Business Solutions For: NCI Business Management BI implementation NCI needed a system to suppor t a new Integrated Business Management (IBM) framework, which would enable the

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(left) Best Value Realisation award winner Anthony Cook from Accenture; (above) Rob Mellor, Accenture with Carl Duckinson and Stephen Pearson, Newcrest Mining with their award for Best SAP ERP. creation of accurate repor ts for key review meetings across the business, and chose NetWeaver BI for the job.

cent… It represents not just an upgrade of the business but a transformation of the way the company works.”

According to Kloss, NCI COO Peter Sloane said most users were “blown away by the ease of use of the drag and drop function and the speed with which it could rearrange your data”, while NCI accounting manager, Sam Bostarino said, “SAP BW is by far the greatest repor ting breakthrough in the history of our company. It has changed the culture of many versions of the same repor t.”

Jonathan Eels and Stuar t Shauney from Car ter Holt Harvey and Mike Smith from Oxygen Business Solutions accepted the award.

The award was presented to NCI’s Frank Kennedy and Mike Smith from Oxygen Business Solutions.

Best SAP Upgrade

Winner: Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia with Oxygen Business Solutions For: Upgrade to ECC6 As a result of some rapid growth, Car ter Holt Harvey was operating different ERP systems across its plants in Australia and New Zealand, and customers were receiving multiple invoices, orders and statements – making it difficult to understand what they had ordered and what they were paying for. Car ter Holt Harvey chose Oxygen Business Solutions to conduct an upgrade to ECC6.

On the project, Car ter Holt Harvey CFO Ian Brannan said, “It was clear from the feedback about our service and quality that we were difficult to do business with. After only a couple of months live with our new system, we are seeing benefits. Our key customers have told us we’ve improved significantly and most impor tantly orders are up 75 per

CEO Award

Winner: Ego Pharmaceuticals with Clarity Consulting For: Project EROS Ego Pharmaceuticals is a leading manufacturer of skin and healthcare products, and Project EROS was driven by concerns about processing inefficiencies, and that warehouse facilities would soon reach capacity, stifling growth. The project was deployed across Ego’s operations in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and the United Kingdom, with functionality that covered plan to produce, procure to pay, order to cash, and account to repor t processes, as well as enterprise management and suppor t and business intelligence.

The award was presented to Alan Oppenheim from Ego Pharmaceuticals and Dennis Michael from Clarity Consulting.

Best SAP Consultant

Winner: Tim Woods, NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) Woods was nominated for this award by NSW DET because the organisation’s successful completion of functional testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, business readiness testing, system readiness testing, change testing and integrated

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SAP awards ]

change requests was attributed entirely to his participation and knowledge transfer.

Best Project Sponsor

Winner: Darren Goodwin, CFO, Porter Davis Homes Goodwin’s project team wrote in their submission about his project strategy to ensure the business had the technology and systems to match the growth and market directions of the company. His commitment to the project was shown during the product evaluation stage – although Goodwin had to undergo an unexpected hospital stay, he viewed product evaluations on video.

“He insisted on a team comprised of the best staff with handselected specialist expertise and within the time frames set, he’d achieved the outcomes and turned around the systems for the company, providing the required platform for innovation. He did it with the full support of the board and the admiration of his peers, the project team and the implementation partner,” his team wrote.

Best Project Manager

Winner: Elaine Silver, Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia For: Upgrade to ECC6

Carter Holt Harvey CFO, Ian Brannan, said as project director responsible for the timeline target and deliverables, Silver took over a difficult project part-way through and pulled all aspects together, giving it direction and structure.

“Elaine is very driven and results-focused. While this is an upgrade project, it was complicated by all the new functionalities in the CRM, and we are also adding by virtue of the fact that we had a range of different processes across our plant. Nothing was standard and as a result, Elaine had a myriad of things to cope with,” Brannan said.

Best SAP Solution Architect

Winner: Neil Ferns, Porter Davis Homes for Project 360 Joining the Porter Davis team only two weeks after arriving in Australia, Ferns had a steep learning curve in Australian culture and construction industry practices – but despite this, his project team said he took on every task with “a huge smile, fantastic enthusiasm and incredible smarts”.

“Every project team member was filled with confidence and most impor tantly, the solution that he architected, the Estimates Construction Order Process, alone was attributable to the project going live,” the team wrote.

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2010 Top 10

Most Influential People in SAP Each year, Inside SAP asks our readers who the most influential people in the ANZ SAP community were in the previous year. Here is the 2010 top 10, named in January.

1. Keith Wallis, Total Asset Management Solutions Named as our Most Influential Person in SAP for 2009, Keith Wallis exemplifies a trend he sees gaining momentum in the SAP space – a move towards niche consulting companies with a commitment to providing quality resources and outcomes in their par ticular field of exper tise. Wallis is head, solutions, strategy and development of Total Asset Management Solutions (TAMS), a consulting firm established in 2006 to focus solely on infrastructure, services, mining and capitalintensive industries. TAMS was created to address what Wallis believed was a lack of services and solutions in the marketplace relevant to SAP, and because “the quality of solutions being delivered had diminished” through a drop in the level of consultants’ business experience. Wallis himself has 13 years’ experience with SAP, but gained a solid background in business prior to this. He is passionately committed to getting things right for his clients, demonstrated through some of his career highlights, which include an ongoing asset implementation project for Energy Australia, with 30 maintenance systems replaced and 70 million asset records tracked in the system, as well as the Australia Post SAP upgrade in 1999, which was completed in just two months – despite doubts it could be achieved. Other successful projects in 2009 include implementations for TAB, Sydney Olympic Park and CBH.

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top 10 ]

2. Bala Kalimuthu, Revolution IT As SAP practice principal at Revolution IT, a software testing and application quality management solution provider, Bala Kalimuthu’s effor ts to grow the company’s SAP business in the APAC region cer tainly seemed to pay off in 2009. Among Revolution IT’s successful SAP testing engagements in the last year were projects for the Victorian Police, Leaseplan, Corporate Express, Caltex and Energy Australia. Star ting his career as an independent marketing consultant, Kalimuthu moved into the SAP space eight years ago, beginning into presales, moving into delivery as an operations transition consultant, and later spending five years at Telstra, including a period as project lead on the SAP asset accounting implementation. Among his achievements for 2009, Kalimuthu lists managing the largest independent SAP testing team in Australia, achieving 200 per cent growth in SAP business, establishing a state-of-the-ar t test laboratory and test case repository, and developing a unique SAP testing methodology.

Having carved out a position of influence in the SAP community, Kalimuthu recommends specialising where your passion is and strengthening your fundamentals. “Customers spend millions of dollars on SAP, not for the technical features of the product but for the business value it delivers, so we need to focus on customers’ business needs and we need to keep sharing what we have learned in SAP, especially with our customers and community.”

3. Paul Hawking Melbourne-based academic Paul Hawking had a busy 2009, implementing SAP teaching programs in universities around the world. Hawking began his career in SAP 10 years ago in his own small consultancy firm, before taking up a role

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at Victoria University as SAP academic programs director.

Chiefly responsible for the SAP component in the university’s world-first Masters in ERP Systems, Hawking has developed a curriculum which gives students the skills they need to succeed in the SAP marketplace. “Even though we’re in Australia, the program’s recognised throughout the world

by SAP themselves and other industries,” he says, adding that students who complete the course are consequently “snapped up all over the place”. Hawking has also recently been working with SAP on the University Alliance Program (UAP), and developing and implementing SAP teaching programs at universities abroad. In addition to his work as an academic, Hawking has been involved with the SAP User Group (SAUG). Serving on the SAUG for nine years, he held roles as chairperson as well as deputy chairperson, and has contributed to the development of agendas for the organisation’s events. “I bring my research skills from being an academic to try to understand where the industry is heading and what customers in Australia need to know,” he says.

4. Sandy Eastman, ROC Asia With her global perspective and passion for human capital management (HCM), Sandy Eastman is perfectly equipped to expand ROC Asia throughout Asia in her role as CEO. Having worked in the HCM area since 1980, Eastman moved into the SAP ecosystem nearly 12 years ago. She began as the SAP product manager for HR /Payroll, and while in that role, had a for tuitous meeting with ROC chairman Les Hayman.

One of the key projects of Eastman’s career was the roll-out of a global template to 31 payrolls across 12 countries in just 10 months – with only 12 people working on the project.

“From that we’ve grown into new areas, but the template approach has always been key, because I believe in ‘do it once, do it right’,” Eastman says. In 2009, Eastman was blazing a trail again, approaching SAP to offer an on-demand or SaaS offering for companies with one to 11 employees. “Nobody had ever taken SAP down into that par t of the world using the stock-standard ERP solutions, and so I guess I touched a lot of people in SAP on that journey. It grew from that to now being something we’re doing in Europe and Asia Pacific,” Eastman says.

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5. Paul Kruger, Oxygen Business Solutions Paul Kruger credits his recognition as one of the most influential people in SAP for the second year in a row to the strong relationships he has built with Oxygen Business Solutions’ customers since joining the company in 2008.

As general manager for sales and industry development, Kruger drew on his 13 years of experience in the SAP space to lead his team through the economic downturn of 2009 without losing a single customer to a competitor.

“It’s because of the relationships and the approach we have with people,” says Kruger. “It’s not about bending over backwards for a customer – it’s about being open, honest and trustwor thy.” In 2009, Kruger was involved in a number of large Oxygen projects, including an integration project for National Foods, the amalgamation of two federal agencies into the Depar tment of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and a major SAP upgrade and business improvement project for Car ter Holt Harvey. He was also involved in an SAP project for LinkWater, which came in under budget and was honoured by the Queensland Government as one of the State’s best-run projects. Kruger cites the acquisition of 10 new customers despite the uncer tain economic climate as his biggest achievement in 2009. “The most impor tant thing was to stay in the face of customers and to do some value-added services so that they could see that they were going to get a return,” says Kruger.

6. Sarah Arnold, Articulate Flying the flag for training and change management in our top 10 is Sarah Arnold, ERP practice director for Ar ticulate. Now responsible for business development and project delivery for all Ar ticulate ERP training and change services, Arnold began working with SAP over 10 years ago for Deloitte. From there, she gained client-side experience at several organisations,

most notably Orica Chemicals, before becoming one of the founding members of Ar ticulate. 2009 was a successful year for Ar ticulate – Arnold says the company achieved double-digit growth in revenues and staff despite the economic climate. This success is perhaps a reflection of the increasing recognition of the impor tance of user adoption and enablement in achieving the anticipated return on investment from SAP implementations. “I think there is a growing acceptance that while technology is impor tant, it is the use of that technology that drives business. The more competent the user, the greater the return on investment,” Arnold says. For others seeking to become influential in the SAP community, she has some advice: “Know your area of exper tise inside out. Be diligent in managing expectations with all of your stakeholders. Deliver uncompromising service to your customers. Enable your team for high performance and reward them for it. And because it is a focused community, build strong relationships that last.”

7. Andrew Huntley, CSC Australia Andrew Huntley, principal SAP consultant, CSC Australia, believes the key to success in the SAP world is to learn what you can from the people around you. “I am a firm believer in the fact that you can never have too much information,” says Huntley. “The more you talk to people, the more experiences you can draw on and that enables you to assist clients, assist SAP and recognise any pitfalls in projects.” Andrew Huntley’s career in SAP began 13 years ago with a role at SAP Australia developing modules specific to the Federal Government.

Since joining CSC in early 2004, Huntley has continued to focus primarily on the public sector and has delivered a series of large Federal Government projects. Asked which project has had the most impact on his career, Huntley cites the recent upgrade for the Depar tment of Defence from SAP version 4.0B to the ECC6 environment. In addition to the technical upgrade, which commenced in 2006 and went live in 2008, the project involved the implementation of new functionality and the development of new cash repor ting solutions software. “We worked together with SAP to actually develop that software and it’s now available as par t of Enhancement Pack 4,” says Huntley, adding that the project went on to win CSC two SAP awards.

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top 10 ]

8. Nigel Silver, IBM As IBM ANZ SAP practice leader, Nigel Silver maintained his level of influence during difficult trading times in 2009 to appear in our Top 10 list for the second time. Although the GFC resulted in projects being postponed and downsized, it ended up being a successful year for the company. Some of IBM’s high-profile projects in 2009 were BHPB, Queensland Motorways and Corporate Express. Silver says Q4 brought more positive sentiment, with evidence businesses were back on the front foot and planning for growth in 2010. “Within that context, while we had variable quar terly results, our annual result was very good and surpassed expectations,” Silver says.

However, the year wasn’t without challenges. “I think keeping your people busy, and continuing to keep the business in balance while the number of oppor tunities in the first half were drying up was probably the largest challenge. I think we did that very successfully within IBM.” Silver’s industry track record has clearly given him considerable influence in the SAP community, and his advice for others seeking to attain a similar position is to maintain your network while building your reputation with clients and the par tner network. “It’s about actually walking the talk, delivering what you say you will and growing a professional reputation.” [Since the Top 10 was published in January 2010, Silver has moved on from IBM.]

9. Stephen Hopkins, HCL Axon Stephen Hopkins says his biggest challenge in 2009 was to manage the merger between HCL Technologies and AXON Solutions. As SAP consulting director at HCL AXON, Hopkins led his team through a “tumultuous” year with the company taking on a new name, a new management team, and a new approach. “It’s been quite an accomplishment just staying afloat

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of everything and making sure we’re successful in what we do,” says Hopkins. “Our goal has been to keep our customers and our staff happy and continue to move forward.” Hopkins began his SAP career in 1996 working in an end-user role on an SAP implementation for a pharmaceutical company. He went on to hold regional management positions at Consulting Principles and AXON Solutions, before taking up his current role in January 2009. Hopkins, who is appearing on Inside SAP’s Most Influential list for the second year in a row, says his advice to those looking to make an impact in the industry is to focus on solving business problems. “Keep yourself relevant by answering and solving business problems for customers and delivering benefits to the business so they can keep growing,” says Hopkins. “It’s really just doing the right thing for the customers and focusing on those areas that will bring the biggest benefit, whether it be reduction in costs or increases in revenues.”

10. Iain Macleod, CSC Australia Named last year’s Most Influential Person in SAP, Iain Macleod, ERP solutions director for CSC Australia, continued to influence the SAP space, leading his team through challenging economic times to deliver a number of successful projects in 2009. Macleod began his career with CSC in the United Kingdom 14 years ago working on the Airbus SAP implementation and later taking on a program management role for British Airways. He joined CSC Australia seven years ago and has since delivered a number of projects in the mining and natural resources industries, as well as in the public sector.

He credits his recognition in the industry to CSC’s strong market performance. “We’re very good at delivering on promise and time and schedule, so it’s reflective of the whole practice rather than me as an individual.” SAP implementations with Superpar tners, the Depar tment of Defence and the Australian Taxation Office were among his key achievements for 2009. Recognising the economic pressures and angst around the GFC as one of the biggest challenges of the past 18 months, Macleod says the key for CSC has been to maintain focus and keep a long-term view of the market. “Keeping our head down and delivering in spite of what the economy was doing has been our most successful strategy this year,” says Macleod. “We just kept moving forward.”

Who will make the cut in 2011? Send your nominations to editor @ insidesap.com.au.

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[ feature

Blue sky thinking: top 10 trends and technologies of the future Constant innovation and invention mean the future is upon us. So what can we expect from SAP in the coming years?

Nathan Dukes investigates.

The simple fact is Gen Y will never know a world without desktop computers. What are now such a par t of our everyday lives were once a sketch on a drawing board, thanks to continuous innovation and a long line of technological revolutions.

The SAP industry is no different. None but the smallest group of industry stalwar ts will recall life before SAP R/3. While older systems still exist, they are now few and far between; outmuscled by the robust strength of the latest and greatest.

Beyond Gen Z, we must scroll our wireless mouse past the shiny UIs of Business Suite 7 and into the deep unknown.

While the current age could be defined by ECC6 and Xcelsius Dashboards, what will define the next era?

To find out, I sat down with Tim Wilkes, solution manager, SAP ANZ, to get his thoughts on what we could be seeing from SAP in the coming years. In no par ticular order, here is our Top 10 list of future trends and technologies.

1. Cloud computing While the buzz about cloud computing has already risen to an audible hum, there is much to learn and achieve in this space. An early step for SAP will be the relaunch of Business ByDesign, a fully integrated on-demand solution for small to medium enterprise which comes preconfigured for ease of use. A highly anticipated rollout was expected in 2008 but delayed, and the product was rolled out in selected geographies in mid-2010. Latest estimates are for an Australian release in 2012.

While the cloud platform has been largely reserved for point solutions and low business value items, don’t rule out seeing entire ERP suites hosted in the cloud at some time down the track.

“Never say never,” Wilkes says. “I think there’s cer tainly the oppor tunity for full ERP systems to sit in the cloud, but they will be targeted at the more generic end of the market. They probably won’t be industry-specific for a long time, either.

If you look back 20 years to what ERP systems looked like

when they first came out, they are the type of things we will probably see in the cloud first.”

2. In-memory and 3. Search The dark horse in the race to the future, in-memory computing has been receiving a cooler reception than it deserves.

In-memory computing sees data stored locally on a machine, instead of in a database. When a user makes a request for a repor t, the process of going to and from a database to retrieve the information is removed, and as a result, the information is accessible instantaneously.

For SAP, the in-memory concept can be applied most specifically to search and analytics, where the result will be faster response speeds to search queries. The ability to do this brings other benefits as well.

“In the next decade, I believe we will see search indexes with full referential integrity and compliance. This means you can actually star t storing transactional information in them, rather than just indexing stuff that exists somewhere else,” Wilkes says. “It’s the holy grail of search technologies. It’s very exciting.”

4. Augmented reality Augmented reality describes an environment which includes physical real-world environments merged with vir tual computer-generated imagery, creating a mixed reality. In a glimpse of the future, SAP last year built a supermarket in vir tual world Second Life. In a video game format, using keyboard and mouse, your character pushes a vir tual trolley down the isles. As your character picks up the items you chose from the 3D shelves, sales transactions are triggered in an SAP system in the real world.

“Think about the consumer electronics market. You do a lot of research online, but you make the purchase in the real store,” Wilkes says. “Online stores today aren’t bad, but you don’t get the ability as a consumer to see the labels and be familiar with

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8. The future of mobile With the improvement in technology for mobile devices over the last five years, people have come to expect to be able to consume personal information alongside business information and enter tainment wherever they go, whenever they want.

Improvements from an SAP perspective are now dependent on mobile networks reaching a stage where they can handle real-time interfaces and the graphical capability of the devices.

“The devices are important, as is the greater availability of infrastructure – particularly wireless networks and 3G,” he says.

SAP’s 2010 acquisition of Sybase is a major step forward in its mobile strategy, and with iPads hitting the market in a big way, SAP is now a lot more receptive to innovation in the mobile space as well. A number of homegrown SAP applications have now begun appearing on the Apple App Store. the brand. From the other perspective, the retailer doesn’t get the ability to do visual merchandising with end displays and product placement.”

5. Co-innovation SAP was built on a foundation of internal innovation, and is known for its ability and willingness to build everything itself, whether or not best practices already exist. Today though, the company is more accepting of innovation from the greater marketplace.

“It’s recognition that opening the doors to innovation around the edge of SAP is a very smart thing to do. SAP should encourage that because we’re positioning SAP as a platform for innovation,” Wilkes says.

6. National Broadband Network While the NBN is still a way off, its establishment breeds great opportunities for innovation. Not only that, a faster internet service has implications for the people who use it; faster, more reliable cloud computing, and bandwidth intensive data transfer are but a few advantages.

Expect data storage of audio visual file formats to become more pervasive, as the bandwidth to carry these formats increases.

We will also probably see more solutions and UIs that support this information too – namely spatial interfaces.

7. Spatial interfaces Work is underway at SAP to develop spatial interfaces right now.

While it may seem hard to visualise, SAP is the perfect platform for a spatial user interface (UI).

This is because around 80 per cent of all data held in SAP is referenced to objects in the real world: people, places, kegs of beer, and so on. These, compared with numbers, are much easier to reproduce using 3D maps and other developing technologies.

“What’s absolutely coming down the pipeline is not just the ability to see where things are, but augment that visual display with real-time transactional information about those objects and the ability to initiate business transactions from that geospatial display,” Wilkes says.

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9. Continued consolidation A growing trend in the IT industry, possibly fuelled by the global financial crisis, is that of consolidation. BusinessObjects and SAP, Oracle and Hyperion, and IBM and Cognos were the notables. It’s not just the big players joining forces either – a number of small companies have been taken under the wing of the industry giants as well. As such, acquisition will become a large par t of the innovation cycle at companies like SAP. “As a large software organisation, your challenge to innovate is perpetual,” Wilkes says. “There is innovative stuff ‘around the edge’ that does not have to be built by SAP, and often it’s good enough to be acquired and brought into the fold. Expect to see small niche innovative vendors who have an idea that complements SAP do very, very well.”

10. Interface useability When image is everything, the look and feel of the UI is impor tant from both a useability and marketing perspective.

SAP has been working to ensure there is a level of consistency across their applications, by harmonising all the applications with a standard look and feel.

Conversely, expect to see great differentiation in the look and feel in environments specific to a par ticular brand.

“A good example is the iTunes store. Behind the iTunes store is an SAP system doing all the pricing and merchandising and managing all the invoices. But you wouldn’t know it’s SAP,” Wilkes says.

“Something we could see soon is next generation e-commerce.

A lot of traditional e-commerce platforms aren’t all that well integrated between parties. SAP is working on a platform which caters to all trading partners – employees, business partners, customers, suppliers – truly extending the processes very flexibly and seamlessly, all by leveraging the power of the platform.”

With greater SAP connectivity between Microsoft and Adobe, we can expect to see more non-traditional interfaces and fragmentation of the standard look and feel, with interfaces born from technologies like Adobe Air and .NET. This feature first appeared in the January 2010 edition of Inside SAP.

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[ feature

Beyond Copenhagen: the next stage for sustainability solutions With a compliance regime for reporting carbon emissions now in place for major Australian emitters, it seems that the discussion about next steps has already moved on to sustainability management, even in the absence of any meaningful outcomes from the global climate change summit. Freya Purnell reports.

Emission reporting compliance obligations have now been in place for some time, with the first round of reporting for major emitters due in October 2009. The swathe of companies caught by these obligations expands again in 2010, with many more medium-sized companies required to report from October.

Rob Pedler, CEO of Zer01, a certified SAP consultancy which is working with SAP on sustainability solutions, says many companies are taking a slow and steady approach to projects and technology around environmental compliance reporting – partly because it is an evolving area in a fluid legislative environment, and partly because the global financial crisis has constrained investment in all areas.

Those caught by the first round of reporting obligations have spent 12 to 15 months building and establishing business processes first before spending money on solutions, he says, and are now looking at opportunities for process improvement.

Securing the right source data has been one of the greatest issues.

“The challenges that organisations have faced are actually in looking beyond the normal boundaries of an SAP implementation to a lot of data that exists in spreadsheets, in process control systems. The work really goes into defining the business, locating and identifying the data, and figuring out how best to get it into a single SAP system,” Pedler says.

What didn’t come out of Copenhagen…

There’s no doubt that there was considerable disappointment both in Australia and the international community about the failure of the Copenhagen climate change summit to deliver any

clear guidance on emission reduction targets – and therefore, a sense of what action might be required at a local level.

From a business and IT perspective, there is also concern that it may actually have set us two steps back.

CSC principal consultant Eugene Hunt believes the outcome of Copenhagen has created a loss of traction in the local market.

The expectation that decisions may be reached, creating a requirement to move forward with emission reductions, was always in the background of CSC’s discussions with organisations during 2009.

“Unfortunately what happened in December [2009] is that it has come to the fore that the equations are incomplete. What is certain is that there are different points of view in terms of how it’s going to impact on international trade, and therefore how big the local impact is going to be. In my view, it’s probably resulted in organisations taking more of a ‘wait and see’ approach than what they probably had back in September,” Hunt says, adding that to get the attention of CFOs, the “impact needs to be imminent”.

…and why it doesn’t matter While most agree that legislation will be a critical driver for further action and importantly, investment in sustainability management, the very debate about whether there will be further action required is over.

“To me, the real driver is going to be once executives understand what the impact will be on costs. To understand that, they need to know what the target price per tonne of carbon is going to be, and what an individual organisation’s actual carbon footprint is and its consequent carbon liability,” Hunt says.

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feature ]

SAP could not be accused of failing to take sustainability seriously.

Eugene Hunt Not only is there a growing recognition that sustainability must become a key element of business strategy, because of its potential to deliver efficiency and operational performance, for some organisations, brand and reputation is also at stake.

“There are organisations for whom an appearance of being environmentally friendly is important,” Hunt says.

Karen Zwissler, head of sustainability initiatives and Solution Manager, SAP ANZ, agrees that this factor has recently leapfrogged forward in terms of businesses’ sustainability concerns.

“I think legislation is an important trigger, but it’s not the only cause for a business case. If you have regulation, you can accelerate innovation and transformation in the way we do business. But I think if you are doing business globally or locally, it doesn’t matter – awareness is so big in the market, you need to become sustainable to keep your competitive edge,” Zwissler says.

Pedler also believes that as the international picture becomes clear, Australian businesses can either choose to be early adopters or followers.

“I think there is a growing awareness about sustainability reporting, performance reporting and presenting information to the marketplace and investors,” Pedler says.

From a commercial perspective, there are also opportunities for companies themselves to become solution providers for their customers. For example, a utility could offer a compliance reporting solution for energy to its corporate customers.

Next steps So where to from here? There are some distinct phases in how sustainability management will develop, according to Pedler.

The first stage is, of course, compliance reporting, with SAP offering the Environmental Compliance module to tackle this area.

The next is sustainability performance reporting, and in December, SAP released BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management specifically to facilitate this process and provide a more holistic view of performance.

SAP’s focus in offering carbon accounting solutions, according to Zwissler, will be on enhancing existing systems.

“It potentially requires some new configuration and what SAP is looking at is co-innovation opportunities with partners like us and customers to effectively build the ability to account for carbon through the ERP and other components,” Pedler says.

In the future, the final piece of the puzzle will be commodities trading of carbon permits.

“Some organisations will want to do that in-house and some organisations have already outsourced that. SAP is looking at what components might be affected in a commodity trading situation, such as treasury and risk management,” Pedler says.

The frustration for companies such as CSC, trying to build an offering in this area, is that organisations need to see – and act on – the bigger picture in this area, which is an inevitable transition from carbon reporting to carbon accounting.

And it is the progression from meeting compliance obligations – where the price point of a holistic SAP solution exceeds the budget and competitor products for simply reporting – to working towards establishing a strategic solution for the abatement of carbon emissions that is currently a sticking point with executives.

SAP’s sustainability push SAP could not be accused of failing to take sustainability seriously.

In addition to launching new solutions, it is also attempting to present organisations with a clearer picture of the way ahead, by developing a sustainability solution roadmap, and engaging heavily with customers and partners.

With Australia selected as a pilot country for its sustainability efforts, SAP ANZ has engaged with over 500 customers in through roadshows, targeted marketing and customer workshops and the establishment of the Sustainability Executive Advisory Council to develop tailored, industry-specific solution roadmaps.

SAP is also working with partners on co-innovation projects around sustainability, although Zwissler believes this could be extended through a deeper ecosystem approach.

The information gained through compliance reporting forms the basis for the next stage – of carbon accounting through the supply chain.

Zwissler says she has observed a real hunger for information amongst Australian companies.

“What they’re reporting to the government actually provides the foundation emissions when the CPRS ultimately comes into play – and I’m suggesting that regardless of politics, at some stage that will happen,” Pedler says. “This will form the basis for what they need to buy in terms of carbon and permits that then need to be accounted for during the supply chain or their production activities.”

But just how long it takes for this response to translate into action and investment remains to be seen.

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“The response we have got is amazing,” a fact she attributes to the robust solution map and the fact that SAP is looking to leverage existing tools.

This article first appeared in the January 2010 edition of Inside SAP.

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[26]

Case studies From large-scale multi-year transformation programs to targeted implementations designed to deliver quick wins and business value, these case studies showcase some of the most successful and innovative SAP projects from Australia, New Zealand and further afield.

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Retailing made easy: EziBuy Group

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Off to the right start: Layby Services Australia

30

Data migration made boring: Kraft Foods

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Bridging the gap: Sanitarium Health Food Company

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Overhauling reporting and analysis: Woolworths

36

Mastering master data management: Lexmark International

38

The strongest link: Centrelink

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Improving warehouse operations: ACCO Australia

42

A super solution: Superpartners

44 Platform-as-a-Service: NSW Department of Education and Training 45 Providing practical, powerful reporting: Fletcher Insulation 48 No fire-fighting needed for SAP implementation: NSW Fire Brigades and SES 50 Intelligent and integrated transportation: Queensland Motorways 51

In the nick of time: Queensland Nickel

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[42]

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case study ] EziBuy Group

Retailing made easy New Zealand-based EziBuy Group is a multi-channel fashion retailer with 47 retail stores and almost 800,000 customers. After 30 years, the needs of the business far exceeded the capabilities of its home-grown ERP, so it was time for a change. Freya Purnell reports.

EziBuy Group is a group of three primary companies: EziBuy, which has around 700,000 active customers, nine retail stores, an online store and a contact centre; Max Fashions, which has 38 retail stores, an online store and around 80,000 active customers, 20,000 of which buy online; and Profile, a stand-alone corporate apparel business. Around two-thirds of its business comes through the direct channels of the contact centre and online, with operations in both Australia and New Zealand.

Previously, EziBuy was operating a bespoke ERP system called EziBuy Main. According to Hamish Grant, EziBuy’s group manager, technology, the legacy structure was very

Company: EziBuy Group (Ezibuy Ltd, Max Fashions Ltd and Profile Ltd) Website: www.ezibuy.co.nz, www.ezibuy.com. au, www.sarafashion.co.nz, www.sarafashion. com.au, www.maxshop.com.

Key challenges: Replace a 30-year-old in-house developed ERP, cutover without stopping selling.

Project objectives: Data accuracy and consistency, stable ERP environment, reduced cost of ownership, seamless processes, reduced operator intervention, automated production confirmation.

Solutions and services: SAP ECC6 for Retail, BI and PI. Why SAP solutions: Stability, flexibility, scalability.

Key benefits: Accurate reporting, business discipline, opportunity to re-engineer internal processes.

Existing environment: In-house developed on Dataflex.

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fragmented with many small, specific gateways joining ‘best of breed’ products. A large number of servers and software was contributing to the high cost of ownership, exacerbated by the fact that the system required a team of 21 developers for suppor t, and it was “resource intensive to maintain”, Grant says.

Whenever the business changed, another piece was tacked onto the system, resulting in a somewhat less than structured approach, according to EziBuy general manager, commercial, Steve Mackay.

“For example, if we needed to add another digit to the customer code number, it would take several months wor th of code change and regression testing,” Grant says.

It was clear to the EziBuy Board that things had to change – and with the group continuing to experience strong growth, they decided the time was right to establish the group’s future IT platform. So in early 2007, EziBuy began evaluating various system options.

Grant says from a scoping perspective, the key requirement for a new system was stability – “where every logistical action has an equal and opposite financial reaction. In our legacy environment, data inconsistencies had become quite common”.

EziBuy was also looking for a robust, pre-built system that could be treated as the hear t and engine of the business, with the group’s specific differences in the traditional retail, contact centre and online channels effectively dealt with at the periphery of the system, without fundamentally changing the core.

“We wanted something that was scalable, that was going to suit our business in a meaningful way, and we wanted to star t again with a stable environment rather than continuing to fragment something that was already fragmented,” Mackay says, adding that while there were plenty of off-the-shelf retail packages, finding a system that could cope with the group’s direct channels of the contact centre and online was more difficult.

“We have a reasonably complex business model with multiple company codes. We do inter-company consolidations, run some direct wholesaling business under separate company codes, and we supply into David Jones for one of our subbrands along with the three distinct channels,” Grant says.

Implementation EziBuy eventually chose SAP, and in doing so, became the first true multi-channel retailer on SAP in New Zealand.

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When it came time to choose a par tner for the implementation, EziBuy wanted to stay local, rather than receiving suppor t from Australia or America.

“We’re very much cognisant of the challenges of remote suppor t, especially when you’re dealing with a very complex ERP platform,” Grant says.

Of the local providers, EziBuy felt that Ciber NZ had the best track record for SAP-based implementations in retail, and brought them on board for the project.

The project kicked off in May 2007 with a blueprinting process. However, Grant says they faced some initial struggles getting to grips with the SAP-specific terminology and language.

“Cer tainly the subsequent implementations we’ve done have gone a lot smoother, for the simple fact that we know and understand SAP terminology. As a case in point, we now understand just how impor tant master data is,” Grant says.

EziBuy had an internal IT team of 21 staff, including analysts, developers, repor t writers, system architect and project manager working on the implementation, while Ciber provided a fur ther eight team members, including more developers, functional consultants and a project manager.

A group of eight superusers from the business was also identified to be involved in the project.

“Initially we just star ted with a traditional ERP, BI and PI, but we leveraged the SAP development environment to integrate into their existing web shops, their existing third par ty warehouse management systems, and a package called Buy Sell Move for purchase ordering,” says Michael Niestroy, director, Ciber NZ.

The project team used a service-oriented architecture to enable scalability and flexibility. EziBuy also chose to build its business logic and business rules for areas such as crossselling and up-selling – which it felt SAP does not do well – into the front-end of the system, using in-house developed applications.

The first component of the system to go live was financials for EziBuy in March 2008 (including FI/CO, AP and Consolidation), which was delivered on time and on budget.

Financials were then rolled out for subsidiary Max Fashions in October 2008.

While the original scoped live date for the logistics component for EziBuy (including SD, MM, AP, RIS structures and BW and repor ting) was 31 May 2008, the team decided to delay the Go-Live so it would occur in a much quieter period for the business – on 1 January 2009.

“We delayed the Go-Live to minimise any business risks around trading, and during that period we were able to do more testing, making the transition more seamless,” Mackay says.

Grant says while they did find issues with the system during the testing period, and in fact when the system went live, “none of them were train smash issues”. This extra time also allowed the implementation team to reengineer some of the business processes.

The Go-Live was very successful, with Niestroy commenting it was probably the smoothest he had ever experienced.

“We didn’t lose a single day’s trading– we continued with an online presence, a fully functional contact centre, and with active retail stores being cut over overnight,” Grant says.

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<<[ ] 28

case study ] EziBuy Group

SAP version: ECC 6.0 SP 14 Implementation timeframe: 18 months Modules implemented: FI, GL, AP, AR, FICO, MM, SD, RIS, BW

customer information and quite detailed transactional issues,” Mackay says.

Another benefit, according to Mackay, is that management accounts are now finalised within four days of month end.

Previously this would take between 10 and 20 days.

Operating system: Microsoft Server 2003 64 bit Enterprise

“There’s a lot of powerful information in those repor ts – KPIs, return rates, fulfillment and a lot of true management information in terms what brands are selling, which products are working in which countries. We use the past as a guide for how we see the future, so it feels very good to be able to react to those financial results faster.”

Proposed upgrade timing: December 2010

From a management perspective, Mackay says the SAP system has also introduced more discipline around business processes.

Challenges

“SAP requires you to be disciplined and methodical, and we might have been a bit ‘seat of the pants’ previously, without understanding the flow-on effect of something we might do,” Mackay says.

Database: Microsoft SQL 2005 SP2 64 bit

As a fast-moving, dynamic retailer, the main challenge was switching to a replacement ERP without disrupting ‘business as usual’. Getting internal resources from outside the IT space involved in the project was also a challenge.

“There are so many daily work demands on people, and then pulling them aside to be superusers, there was some pressure there,” Mackay says.

From a resourcing perspective, Niestroy also says implementing for small clients is typically challenging because they don’t have the manpower to sustain such a massive project.

“But at EziBuy, the challenge as well as the benefit was they knew their old system very well, and they did have quite a number of in-house developers who we cross-trained onto SAP. The benefit was basically that we didn’t have to develop a lot of interfaces ourselves, it was done by the client, and they did a very good job,” Niestroy says.

To get its users up to speed, EziBuy worked with an external change manager and had a strong superuser team who were heavily involved in unit and user acceptance testing, and they trained many of the other users. For tunately, around half of the finance team also already had experience with SAP. “Our main area of change was inventory planning and control.

The new system was quite different from EziBuy Main, but it was a blue screen application, so there was commonality of keystrokes, but a lot of features and functionality were added.

The extra five months to Go-Live bought us more time to implement those changes,” Grant says.

Mackay says they experienced some pain during the post GoLive period, when users were seeking information they had access to previously, and which now was provided in a different format. However acceptance increased as users became familiar with the new system, and they are now very positive.

Results A huge benefit resulting from the implementation is that EziBuy now has ‘one version of the truth’ – whereas data consistency was lacking in its previous system.

“That is quite impor tant for us, because that concerns

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Grant says a classic example of this occurred when they ran a daily sales repor t, and found that the cost of goods sold was higher than the value of goods sold in a par ticular channel. The error was caused by a user creating a returns purchase order with a grossly overstated moving average price on an ar ticle.

The team was able to correct the error, and the repor t was distributed only half an hour late.

“Historically, it would have been a week-long task trying to figure out what had gone wrong,” Grant says.

In terms of the technology, Grant now has a team of 14 rather than 21, all of whom have been cross-trained with others’ areas of exper tise, providing in-house disaster recovery ability. As a proven, off-the-shelf system, SAP also provides much better logging and analysis than EziBuy Main. The number of servers has also been reduced, lowering cost of ownership.

The use of SAP as a stable core system with third par ty applications added to deal with the intricacies of multi-channel retailing enables the group to enjoy the best of both worlds – stability and flexibility.

Next on the agenda for EziBuy was rolling out SAP through the other business units: the logistics component was planned to go live for Max Fashions on 1 January 2010, followed by Profile in June 2010.

Key lessons Throughout the project, the EziBuy team used a couple of key philosophies that they would recommend to others undergoing an implementation: keep it simple, and “don’t let the implementation be done to you” – instead work in par tnership with your implementer.

Grant also recommends having a business analyst on the internal team with an SAP background before the blueprint stage, using as many internal technical staff as possible in the integration, and “don’t try and make SAP do the impossible – if you need something ‘left of field’, build it externally and minimise customisations”.

This case study first appeared in the November 2009 edition of Inside SAP.

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Layby Services Australia

[ case study

Off to the right start As a new business, Layby Services Australia chose SAP Business All-In-One to provide a solid platform for growth and a low-cost operating model.

The business challenge

Launched in August 2008, Layby Services Australia (LSA), which specialises in strategic business solutions for the layby, gift card, Christmas hamper and travel categories, bought a business called Hamper King, and was required to migrate out of the previous owner’s legacy platform as a condition of the deal.

LSA CFO Toby Poulson says the company was seeking a completely integrated solution that would enable a low-cost operating model and the ability to market through its customer base.

LSA also required a completely automated payments system.

Poulson says part of the company’s unique value proposition for its customers was that it could offer layby any time to customers – so ultimately the customer could choose the start and end date for the layby, and how much they wished to pay. They therefore required some customisation around the bill planning process.

“We wanted that to be completely automated so that if the customer payment bounced, the system would pick that up, we could collect the ongoing payments and then notify the customer – it could all be automated without human intervention,” Poulson says.

The solution

SAP was an obvious solution for Poulson, who had previous experience with the system. LSA partnered with Lodestone Management Consultants for the initial implementation of SAP Business All-in-One and CRM, which was undertaken in just 13 weeks.

“We found Lodestone to be a great partner, because ultimately we were setting up a new business, so we didn’t have time to sit down and do a full implementation. Lodestone had the capability and quickly understood our business needs,” Poulson says.

“We actually let them run with the project, with very little business input apart from the critical stages and testing at the end.

They have been incredibly supportive during the process, and have managed to hold the hands of the business, because we are not implementation or system experts, and I don’t have an IT team.”

Through the use of integrated SAP CRM, LSA has been able to drive a customer self-service model, reducing the need for core services.

“If we can drive our customers online to adjust their details and view their bill plans, we don’t have to send out confirmation mail

and statements, and we don’t have customers phoning us about their payment plans, so that allows us to have a very low-cost model,” Poulson says.

In February 2009, Lodestone implemented SAP BI, which allowed LSA to conduct analysis of customer buying trends, which is particularly important for the catalogue-driven business.

“That’s allowed us to, for example, bring two products together in the catalogue if we know customers have a greater propensity to buy them, making it easier for the customer and increasing our revenue,” Poulson says.

Then in September 2009, WebChannel was also implemented, enabling LSA to become an outsource partner for other organisations, leveraging its existing infrastructure.

“We have an organisation that we do a Christmas savings club for, and ultimately their website points to our environment, and we manage the process for them,” Poulson says.

The benefits

Through implementing SAP, LSA has been able to reduce its manual processes by 90 per cent. Having an integrated solution from virtually the beginning of the company’s operations has been another bonus, according to Poulson.

“I’ve been in organisations where they have lots of legacy systems all held together, and I didn’t want to be reliant on people to get information out. Therefore we wanted a system that was fully integrated and required less human input,” he says.

Having the technology in place has also allowed the company to leverage the infrastructure for other brands, making the business easily scalable. LSA has recently launched Easysave Holidays, a holiday savings program.

“We could just add another website through our infrastructure and launch a whole new brand without having additional infrastructure cost or operating cost.”

This case study is sponsored by Lodestone Management Consultants.

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<<[ ] 30

case study ] Kraft Foods

Data migration made boring Global food company Kraft Foods overcame challenges with migrating clean master data for its plants around the world with the help of BackOffice Associates® and its DataDialysis® governance tool.

Kraft Foods is the world’s second largest food company. With revenues in excess of US$48 billion, it manages 11 brands which generate over US$1 billion annually, and 70 brands which generate more than US$100 million annually from a global distribution in 160 countries. More than 25 per cent of revenue comes from emerging markets, and leveraging its number 1 positions in biscuits and confectionary, over 50 per cent of global revenue is generated from snacks and confectionary brands such as Lu, Nabisco, Oreo, Cadbury, Milka and Trident.

The business challenge

In 2004, Kraft Foods realised that it faced competitive challenges that required eliminating complexity throughout their organisation. In addition to traditional plant closings and product rationalisation, the company decided to consolidate on the SAP ERP platform and is currently rolling out globally to go live on ECC6. The Nor th American SAP project began in April 2005, and like all global projects, the growing impact of master data definition, rationalisation and migration was becoming apparent to the enterprise MDM team.

There are many teams responsible for different aspects of the project definition and subsequent roll-out. At the same time, Kraft Foods’ restructuring initiative, ‘Organising for Growth’, required substantial changes in corporate alignment and was aggressively cutting costs to remain in a leadership position in its key product and demographic markets.

At Kraft Foods, the enterprise master data group implementing SAP MDM and the SAP data group had not been closely linked in their effor ts until six months prior to Go-Live. The teams came to realise that they had a master data issue and process for implementation that could not be sustained long-term. “Resource projections were the main driver,” says Merri Beckfield, MDM delivery services manager.

“We had a lot of overlapping activities between the plants getting ready to go live, and we knew that the SAP data had to be clean.”

There were too few resources allocated to their target process and it was clear that the current trajectory would continue to frustrate the team and begin to delay results.

That was simply an unacceptable risk – a delay in a global organisation the size of Kraft Foods could cost millions of dollars monthly in lost productivity.

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The solution

Kraft Foods turned to SAP who introduced the company to BackOffice Associates ® (BOA™ ) at SAPPHIRE in April 2007. After discussions with BackOffice, the company saw that the process they were using for data migration and data governance was not sustainable or repeatable, and they chose BackOffice in October of that year. “We saw [CTO] Tom Kennedy’s presentation and were blown away,” says Beckfield.

“He showed us that we could succeed with fewer resources with a different plan.”

Kraft Foods made changes in the way they managed the implementation. Key personnel from a former data integrity group were re-purposed to learn the BackOffice tool and methodology, and focus on data quality as par t of a newly energised Data Delivery Service (DDS). As DDS became more proficient, additional persons were sent to BackOffice for training.

BOA remained key to the early success of the relationship by helping senior resources at Kraft Foods to get star ted quickly.

The changes BOA recommended to the process allowed the ERP project to be much more structured for the deadlines and commitments around data definition and other datarelated project components.

Maturing the delivery organisation

By Q3 2008, Kraft Foods began a knowledge transfer process to take on more tasks, changes and management of the data migration from the BOA senior resource team. As its skill set grew, the company sought additional cost savings through ‘vir tual migration’ lower cost resources. Originally a labour arbitrage play, placement of those resources in Chicago, Mexico and China has become a strategic par t of the DDS organisation. “Our Kraft Foods resources can continue to focus on high-value work while leveraging our strategic par tner for design and development work,” says David Underwood, DDS operations and business services manager.

“We are able to work almost 24/7/365 as we kick off refreshes and development in China and finish up in Chicago later that day.”

“The offshore model has allowed us to control the size of our team,” says Underwood. Strategically, the labour arbitrage and flexibility realised through the organisational maturity has paid off and will continue to be a key component of DDS. The MDM team is in regular contact with DDS. Business processes

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“All the careful data planning led us to be smarter about overall resource planning. BackOffice brought tools, methodology and experts to bridge a critical time in our SAP project and Go-Live to keep us moving forward and respond faster, better and more efficiently.”

David Underwood, DDS operations and business services manager “Before BackOffice, we would say ‘Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something with it.’

With the BackOffice DataDialysis toolset we know where and how to take action.”

Brad Krause, DDS master data manager “The components of people, process, and method are critically intertwined – you need all of them to be successful.

We learned to stick to the phases and BOA methodology for best results.”

Merri Beckfield, MDM delivery services manager “Business is branching into new areas not used in the past.

Although we’re not 100 per cent SAP until the last Go-Live, as long as we can get a hold of the data, we can report on it.

Our DataDialysis team has a proven track record of success.”

David Underwood

are defined for all business data conversions, requirements and mapping, and then in collaboration with DDS those are verified and transferred to the data migration team structure.

Data governance

Once clean data is in an SAP production system, how do you keep it ‘clean’ ? Kraft Foods answered this question through early use of the BOA™ DataDialysis ® data governance tool. SAP brought a new awareness of complex business rules and processes to the company. But not all business processes can be handled or enforced systematically – that’s where DataDialysis has played a key role. “The goal of the DataDialysis group is to help discover and define rules that weren’t known or that needed modification – it’s a continuous process,” says Brad Krause, master data manager for DDS. Since the company is in migration through 2011, much of the early repor ting requirement was temporary (legacy systems versus SAP) and consisted of crossrepository, cross-system repor ting.

“We want to get to a ‘management by exception’ framework,” notes Krause. “To get that, you have to trust in the rules and that the data is not masking some other cause from something else.” Business confidence has risen as DataDialysis has delivered rules that star t out as broad-based and get more granular. Since Kraft Foods star ted the SAP roll-out, the company has also acquired Cadbury, which is migrating simultaneous to the company data loads. “Because of the combined data volumes, the only way you can quickly perform exception rule iterations is through DataDialysis,” says Krause. “The rules are getting better and better as we run these daily refreshes and the exceptions begin to

drop toward zero. Now we ask whether errors are actually parameters that should be excepted from the repor t.”

The benefits

DataDialysis repor ts Kraft Foods runs with its team of three people to keep data clean: • 492 daily repor ts for 413 users • 1801 weekly repor ts for 122 users • 90 per cent of repor ts are exception repor ts.

When they first star ted the team in 2008, the focus was on product and material, but has since expanded to customer, vendor and location master data. The company impor ts 195 million rows of data daily. This is growing as more and more plants come online, and it can grow exponentially with different pricing contained in the material master. Nightly impor ts begin at 9pm and end in early morning to avoid performance issues. Large tables run separately on nearly 400GB of memory.

Some remarkable results have been achieved through the implementation of the BOA solutions. More than 40 plants have now been migrated using the BOA tools – all of them have been Boring Go Live ® migrations. The balance of Nor th American plants are to go live through 2010, and 35,000 customer records have already been harmonised, with continuous business improvement achieved through data quality. The knowledge transfer to Kraft Foods resources has facilited the speed of migrations, while vir tual migration has helped repeatability and lowered costs.

This case study is sponsored by BackOffice Associates, LLC.

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<<[ ] 32

case study ] Sanitarium

Bridging the gap Sanitarium Health Food Company took a step closer to the fully integrated plant, with the implementation of the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII) module at three of its manufacturing sites. By Freya Purnell.

Background First established in 1898, Sanitarium Health Food Company is something of an institution in Australia and New Zealand. The company has a portfolio of 150 products, including the iconic Weet-Bix, and around 1500 staff, with 11 sites across Australia and New Zealand, eight of which are manufacturing sites.

Sanitarium originally went live with SAP in 1999, and the latest round of projects was initiated in response to a need identified by the business to achieve real-time production confirmations, automated generation and application of serial shipping container code (SSCC) labels, and the generation of real-time production information for the shop floor.

John Broadbent, business relationship director at MillenniumIT*, which partnered with Sanitarium for its MII implementations, says many manufacturing systems work completely differently to ERP systems, which becomes a challenge when data needs to be transferred from one system to another.

“The world of ERP and SAP is highly transactional, while in the world of manufacturing, data is mostly analogue, real-time and constantly changing. They’re actually quite disparate and quite different landscapes,” Broadbent says.

Sanitarium chose the SAP MII tool to act as a “bridge” between its ERP system and manufacturing solutions on the plant floor, by facilitating the collection and normalisation of large volumes of disparate plant floor data, which could then be fed into SAP. The manufacturer was one of the first Australian companies to implement MII. By using an SAP solution, Sanitarium had the assurance of guaranteed support, and certainty around integration when it comes time to upgrade its ERP system.

Importantly, the product conforms to ISA 95, the international standard for the integration of enterprise and control systems, which was created to structure and standardise the exchange of data between SAP and the plant floor. The MII module also has native connectors into most systems, so new interfaces do not usually need to be created.

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Implementation The first MII project was undertaken at Sanitarium’s Cooranbong plant, where the company had decided to replace manual packing with case and pallet packing robots. These robots pack items into a carton and place the cartons onto a pallet.

Completed pallets are wrapped and labelled, then collected by an automatic vehicle which stacks them ready to be loaded onto a truck.

“The business was keen to link this process with SAP to automate the production confirmation,” says Alan Myers, IT business process manager at Sanitarium. “Basically the way it was originally envisaged, the production would be set up in SAP, and then an operator would have to set up each robot as a separate process. However, once we understood the capability of the MII tool, we realised we could store the information for setting up the robots in SAP, and MII could push the information out to the robot, so each robot would be set up the same way as SAP. This eliminated any opportunity for having a keying error, or getting confused and setting it up for product B instead of product A.” This concept was taken one step further – so that the MII installations would receive production schedules from SAP, allow allocation to lines by operators and contain additional information such as sequence number, configuration data for robots and so on. Once a pallet of goods was palletised and in the wrapping station, MII would access the line number it came from, the process order it was made against and the quantity on the pallet. It then performed a partial confirmation so SAP could produce the SSCC label, which is applied to the pallet for retailers.

“That is basically the numberplate that uniquely identifies that pallet worldwide. That forms the basis of any further B2B conversation we have with a customer, and is also the basis for our Warehouse Management system,” Myers says.

“We can also pass that pallet information electronically to our customers as part of standard B2B processes, so they don’t have to key the expiry date and the quantity into their system.”

The second project in the Auckland plant originally began as three separate projects. In addition to the objectives of the Cooranbong project – to integrate to existing palletising robots to perform automated production confirmations, and generation and application of the SSCC label – they wanted to provide graphical, real-time visibility of production against targets for each production line via large, wall-mounted flat panels on the shop floor, and to provide reporting and analysis of production metrics.

“It was identified that combining these objectives into a single project with multiple deliverables would produce an improved solution in terms of data quality, reduced data entry, and a significant cost saving,” Myers says.

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The third recent project was undertaken at Sanitarium’s beverage plant at Berkeley Vale. While the business approached the IT team wanting to modify a standard SAP program to meet a specific business issue, the team proposed an improved solution based on MII. By using the same underlying transaction engine as in the two previous implementations, Sanitarium was able to achieve cost efficiencies.

Aside from the assistance Sanitarium received from MillenniumIT, the company undertook the implementations inhouse.

Challenges Myers says the implementations occurred relatively smoothly.

“There were some initial challenges with reliability of label application and the work processes surrounding the solution, but the technology itself was very robust and has met requirements.”

Company name: Sanitarium Health Food Company Website: www.sanitarium.com.au Key challenges: Establishing common language and understanding across areas of competency (factory team, PLC team, SAP team).

Project objectives: Seamless processes, reduced operator intervention, automated production confirmation.

Solutions and services: SAP MII

However, he notes that cross-organisation cooperation was a key element in the success of these projects.

Why SAP solutions: Met business requirements, certainty of SAP interface compatibility for SAP upgrades, off-the-shelf integration with SAP and PLC systems.

“Your factory team, your SAP team and your PLC team have to work together on process design, solution design and the implementation plan.”

Implementation highlights: Cross-functional optimisation.

He says the most significant learning from the project was that full integration brings additional and perhaps unexpected issues.

Key benefits: Integration, minimised manual entry, accurate inventory and expiry data, streamlined downstream processes.

“You have to remember that you are making the scope of your enterprise system bigger. While you get the benefits of having all the elements linking together in a seamless process, you also get the other half of the sword – now if something unexpected happens in one area, it can affect the whole system,” Myers says.

SAP Version: SAP 4.7 Modules implemented: MII

Results

Database: MS SQL Server

With an end-to-end, automatic and real-time solution now in place in three of its manufacturing sites, Myers says the business has been very pleased with the outcome of the MII projects. The primary benefits include accurate, timely data, and improved workforce utilisation. From a strategic perspective, two disparate processes are now one single process.

Operating system: Windows Server

On a practical level, the simplified screens are a significant benefit offered by MII, particularly for machine operators who don’t necessarily need comprehensive training to become a fully fledged SAP user.

“The ability to include graphics on their screen makes it easier for them to visualise what is going on. For example, we can display a simplified diagram of the product line, and points where they can click and see the detail of what is on that part of the production line, rather than a traditional table of information on a screen,” Myers says.

Having direct access to an error log through the interface also allows operators to check details if a problem has occurred, so they can take steps to fix it, without needing to call for assistance – particularly useful in an after-hours manufacturing context.

MII implementation include the consistent application of correct labels, an approximate saving of 30 per cent compared with the cost of running three separate projects, a significant reduction in both manual data entry and ad hoc Excel reporting, as well as timely, accurate update of production output. Another benefit is the visibility of actual production levels versus target across the whole production floor, via multiple LCD screens.

“There was also an unexpected benefit of having immediate access to information to support retrieving product for re-testing or re-working.”

Sanitarium now has other MII projects firmly on their threeyear roadmap, with other potential opportunities in the early feasibility and investigation stage.

“System reliability is very important. An extended outage of the MII system could bring a factory to a standstill,” Myers says.

This case study first appeared in the September 2009 edition of Inside SAP.

On the Auckland project, some of the results achieved by the

*MillenniumIT was acquired by Plaut IT in October 2009.

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Innogence was engaged by retail giant Woolworths to provide the BI strategy component for its massive project to replace core merchandising systems, Program Galaxy.

Overhauling reporting and analysis

Overview Woolwor ths Limited, Australia’s biggest retailer, operates supermarkets, petrol stations, hotels, liquor stores, consumer electronics, hardware and general merchandising stores across Australia and New Zealand. Employing over 191,000 people, Woolwor ths Limited is considered one of the largest private sector employers in Australia.

Woolwor ths established a program of works, called Program Galaxy, comprising a number of projects to collectively deliver the replacement of the majority of Woolwor ths’ core merchandising systems over a tight five-year timeframe. Innogence was selected by Woolwor ths to provide leadership and direction for the SAP BI solution. The first step in this process was to develop a five-year Repor ting and Analysis Strategy, to be utilised by Program Galaxy’s Business Intelligence (BI) implementation team.

Background Woolwor ths’ initial implementation of BW covered the Financials modules only (FI, CO, PS, IM and SEM-BCS).

The majority of users run Business Explorer (BEx) Analyser repor ts in Excel, with select repor ting available via the SAP Enterprise Por tal (EP) and select repor ts distributed to users via PDF. The BW system is used as a data source for selected information to a few satellite systems and the Corporate and Enterprise Data Warehouses.

Woolwor ths also has a number of repor ting and analysis tools in use, including BusinessObjects Webi and Crystal as well as Oracle Discoverer.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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Woolworths [

case study

Innogence consultants provided valuable direction to the project leading to a successful outcome. I have received very positive feedback from internal presentations of the strategy to other areas within Woolworths. I personally found them knowledgeable, structured, motivated and articulate.

Rob Brayshaw, Woolworths Limited

Program Galaxy is expected to have a major impact on the existing SAP ERP and BW solutions due to the activation of SAP’s IS-Retail solution, the implementation of new functionality (such as POSDM, Billing, Inventory Management and Procurement), increased data volumes as well as a new and larger user base.

Objectives Woolwor ths engaged Innogence to develop a Repor ting and Analysis Strategy for Program Galaxy. The scope of this was to include:

• Current and future repor ting from SAP BW;

• Alignment with SAP’s BI roadmap, including BusinessObjects; and

• Alignment with Woolwor ths enterprise repor ting strategy.

The required deliverables included:

• A vision consisting of a series of BI functional requirements (no specification of technology);

• A strategy outlining the technical solutions required to achieve the vision; and

• A roadmap to categorise the vision and strategy according to shor t-, medium- and long-term priorities.

Realisation A Working Group was established consisting of senior representatives from Program Galaxy as well as the wider Woolwor ths organisation. An Innogence Strategy Consultant was appointed as Team Lead, and working together with a Woolwor ths Enterprise Architect, an activity plan was created. This activity

plan was split into two main areas of focus: (i) an analysis of Woolwor ths’ existing Repor ting and Analysis environment, with par ticular focus around business KPIs and mission critical repor ting, and (ii) the development of the BI vision, strategy and roadmap.

It was agreed that the Working Group would meet weekly to discuss progress as well as provide a forum for the senior representatives to contribute to the strategy during the course of its development.

Once the activity plan was approved by the Working Group, a Strategy Development team was created, consisting of subject matter exper ts from Woolwor ths as well as BI specialist consultants from Innogence. Key staff within the organisation were identified and a series of discussions were held.

The team members were given specific areas of analysis to focus on, and PowerPoint slides were created to present the outcomes back to the group.

The team delivered the BI strategy as a PowerPoint slide deck, which contained a high-level overview of the BI vision, strategy and roadmap, and was used to present to the working group and key stakeholders across the organisation.

Several Word documents, containing more detailed information by subject area, were also created to suppor t the BI strategy in different subject areas.

Successes It was agreed that Repor ting and Analysis should be considered as two different decision-making techniques, with different technical solutions.

Repor ting was defined as “providing information to decision makers in a fixed

format, which answers specific business questions, or triggers fur ther analysis”.

Analysis was defined as “providing capability for data manipulations by selecting different dimensions (for example, time, location, product and so on) to perform drill-downs (expand) and roll-ups (collapse) of the data”.

An example of the vision created included BI requirements such as “timely and fast repor ting and analysis”, “system generated repor ts”, “governance”, and “data quality”.

An example of the strategy developed to achieve this vision included the following solutions:

• Timely and fast repor ting and analysis that could be achieved by using technology such as SAP’s Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA);

• Governance models established including a decision-making tool selection process to ensure “fit for purpose” repor ting and analysis (that is, the most appropriate tool being used by the right audience);

• A high data quality environment achieved by developing automated data reconciliation solutions so that users can confidently make decisions on repor ted data.

The roadmap split the vision and strategy according to shor t-term (<6 months), medium-term (7-18 months), and long-term (>18 months) priorities.

The shor t-term strategy was executed directly after the acceptance of the BI strategy by the Working Group.

This case study is sponsored by Innogence Limited.

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case study ] Lexmark International

Mastering master data management Printing and imaging industry leader, Lexmark International Inc, needed clean, trusted data to feed into its new SAP ERP system. SAP global services partner Wipro Technologies worked with Lexmark to manage master data enterprise-wide and provide a governance structure to continually maintain data quality. Lexmark has started going live with its vastly improved master data and is already experiencing reduced costs and improved customer service.

The business challenge

Lexmark develops, manufactures, and markets printing and imaging systems, including laser printers, inkjet printers, and multifunction devices for homes and offices. Lexmark also provides supplies for these devices and a variety of related services, including a distributed fleet management service that is a key competitive differentiator. Under this service, companies outsource the management of their printing operations to Lexmark, which assures that its printing devices are continually operational and adequately stocked with necessary supplies.

To provide excellence in this service and meet other strategic and operational objectives, Lexmark needs a reliable source of information regarding its customers, products, materials, suppliers, service staff, and much more. This information – Lexmark ’s master data – is critically impor tant to the company. It is the basis for the business decisions that keep Lexmark competitive, and its reliability is crucial for optimising efficiency and meeting compliance requirements.

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Fur thermore, to strengthen collaboration throughout its distributed global operations and productively engage business par tners (especially those to whom Lexmark outsources operations), this information must be readily accessible from a centralised source using common business processes. In shor t, master data must be managed as a strategic asset.

In the past, Lexmark was challenged in these areas. Too often key data elements were held locally, unavailable to the rest of the enterprise. Data cleansing was performed in repor ts, not at the source, and so inconsistencies remained as barriers to productivity. Call centre agents often could not bring up accurate information about customers. A long-term user of SAP BusinessObjects solutions, Lexmark wanted to reap more benefits from the software’s analysis powers but could not rely on results because data quality was always suspect.

“To stay competitive in today’s complex business landscape, a company needs to make quick decisions based on timely analysis,” explains Joe Young, senior manager, enterprise

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information management systems for Lexmark. “But what good is analysis if you don’t trust the data it’s based on? ”

The solution

Lexmark found the ideal occasion to address these challenges when it decided to replace its former enterprise resource planning software with a single instance of SAP ERP. Infecting SAP ERP with problematic data would cause many of its benefits to be lost. Therefore, concurrently with the implementation of SAP ERP, Lexmark conducted a master data management (MDM) program.

This program entailed integrating, cleansing, and consolidating master data from 15 disparate applications and creating a single, consistent, global source of master data along with a governance structure to keep it trustwor thy. For tools, Lexmark relied on its SAP BusinessObjects solutions, especially SAP BusinessObjects Data Services software, along with the SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management component, SAP NetWeaver Por tal component, and SAP NetWeaver Process Integration offering. These applications combined to provide all the functionality required for such a massive data management under taking – a rarity for a single vendor to offer. In addition, their tight integration with SAP ERP greatly simplified data flow throughout the software infrastructure.

“We looked briefly at so-called ‘best of breed’ applications, but for a project as ambitious as ours a company needs suppor t for its processes end to end,” says Young. “Of the very few suppliers that qualify, SAP quickly rose to the top because of its data management vision. We knew we could trust SAP to be a key par tner.”

“SAP offered another big advantage: its par tnership with Wipro, which has successfully conducted many MDM projects for large enterprises,” Young adds. The integrator had developed a framework and tools for performing such projects, along with considerable exper tise. Wipro was an easy choice to perform the bulk of the project work, and Lexmark asked SAP Consulting to join on as well to provide guidance in using the new SAP software.

Lexmark ’s MDM project is massive by any measure. It covers all the company’s widely dispersed operations around the world. Source data representing millions of records are extracted from Lexmark ’s heterogeneous IT infrastructure, which includes 15 major business applications.

While many companies begin with a single data domain, Lexmark took on five domains simultaneously: products, materials, customers, suppliers, and people (including employees and contractors).

Lexmark formed a multi-year plan to complete the project with a phased implementation, including initial production use in just nine months. To meet this goal, Lexmark relied on a team of over 70 MDM exper ts from Wipro. SAP Consulting assigned several data quality specialists to the team as well, including a program manager. Recognising the criticality of senior management involvement to a project of this scale, Lexmark appointed its CFO as the executive sponsor and formed a data governance council of line-of-business VPs chaired by the CIO. These executives are more than mere

sponsors; they actively par ticipate in the program as key decision-makers. Lexmark also involved its application and business process owners around the world to collaborate on globally consistent business processes using SAP ERP and the newly cleansed and consolidated master data.

Lexmark and Wipro created a reusable framework for migrating master data. During the initial data readiness stage, the team developed an understanding of the data sources and how they are used. Next, it integrated and cleansed data, delivering only trusted information to the central repository.

The team then consolidated and harmonised data elements into a uniform landscape for ready accessibility, and created metadata regarding their relationships and the business processes and applications that use them. Finally, in the data governance stage, business users followed rigorous processes to maintain quality.

These processes were managed using an MDM por tal that the team developed as a key par t of the program. Since governance is one of the project’s most challenging aspects, considerable attention is devoted to organisational change management.

The business benefits

Lexmark has achieved success in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) by going live with its new SAP ERP implementation and master data. This master data includes more than 180,000 customer account records, 29,000 material records, 4,000 product records, and 8,000 supplier records. Over 100,000 master records have been delivered to SAP ERP, along with over 1.5 million non-master records.

Lexmark extracted, harmonised, and consolidated this information from nine core systems. Key business users access this data daily over the por tal. To help ensure data quality remains high, Lexmark has established a data governance organisation of seven data stewards and over 20 business process owners. The project’s technical success is already translating into business results. With clean customer, product, and material master data, Lexmark is star ting to be able to leverage true business intelligence. Business analysts can now go into the new SAP software, apply a few filters, and see the performance and profitability of a product, family of products, or individual customer.

Lexmark ’s Nor th America region is next to enjoy integrated master data management, followed by its Asia Pacific operations. The firm also has additional data domains in mind, including char ts of accounts, cost, and price. The company can look forward to enhanced benefits in the coming years from this implementation, in par tnership with SAP and Wipro.

“Any project this massive in scale requires just the right tools, skills, and experience,” concludes Julian Karpinski, Lexmark ’s program manager for MDM. “The results we have achieved prove that our close par tnership with SAP and Wipro is working well.”

This case study is provided by SAP, and sponsored by Wipro.

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case study ] Centrelink

The strongest link Centrelink has had a long journey with SAP, and its experience displays some familiar themes in the public sector: integration across massive systems, application consolidation and ultimately, streamlined services.

Miriam Hechtman reports.

Background As Australia’s national welfare agency, Centrelink ’s organisational footprint is big.

The agency is in the top 100 of Australian companies in terms of size and turnover and distributes $86.8 billion in social security payments on behalf of policy depar tments. It has over 6.84 million customers, employs more than 27,000 staff, has more than 1,000 service delivery points, pays 10.43 million individual entitlements and records more than six billion electronic customer transactions each year.

Using SAP business tools, the agency has steadily worked to upgrade its Financial Information (FI) and Human Resources (HR) systems over the last 13 years. Since the company’s initial implementation in 1998, there have been four upgrades, including the most recent upgrade in December 2008.

The agency’s previous FI system was an off-the-shelf product that had been heavily customised over the years, wasn’t year 2000 compliant and had basically reached the end of its useful life without going through an expensive upgrade process.

“The previous HR system was an in-house development,” says Brett Bottom, Centrelink team director for Infolink (the term used to describe the SAP installation internally).

“It didn’t contain impor tant functionality like payroll and it did not have a lot of automation of high volume transactions. One of the major issues was that the previous FI and HR systems were not integrated and it was very difficult to reconcile the two systems.”

In 1995, the Office of Government Information Technology decided to rationalise the number of FI and HR systems in the Australian Public Service. As a consequence, Federal Government depar tments were given a panel of software products from which to choose the product that best suited their individual needs. After evaluating various options, Centrelink selected SAP. During the initial SAP implementation project, Centrelink par tnered with ICS Deloitte. For subsequent major projects and upgrades, Centrelink has relied mainly on internal staff.

These resources have been complemented by a pool of external contractors and the direct use of SAP consultants.

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Initial implementation and key challenges The implementation of the FI component was a separate project to the HR component and commenced in early 1997, being rolled out in April 1998 as a pilot implementation. After all issues encountered during the pilot were resolved, the FI functionality was rolled out to the remainder of Centrelink from the beginning of July 1998.

In preparation for the initial implementation, Centrelink business teams under took a comprehensive business reengineering process to best meet the needs of the organisation. “One of the big issues that had to be addressed was the fact that Centrelink is so big and spread all around Australia. What we had to get around were the change management issues,” says Bottom. Within Centrelink, at the time of the initial SAP implementation, there were 16 area offices, over 300 smaller sites Australia-wide and the national office in Canberra. Each of the 16 area offices and the national offices were responsible for accounts payable processing and HR personnel processing. “There was some inconsistency as to how business processes were applied. So one of the challenges for the Centrelink FI and HR business teams was to review all the business processes and to implement standard ways of doing things across the agency,” says Bottom. With the large number of staff working in various geographical locations, organising classroom training for everyone was not possible, says Bottom. “The business teams had to develop change management strategies to help get the message across to all staff about the implementation of the new system, as all staff would become ESS users when it was implemented.”

To manage this, an in-house employee self-service (ESS) function was developed. “So we had to develop a userfriendly interface for employees to help them to navigate around the system. This also enabled managers to have information about their team and individual staff members presented to them without having to go into the SAP GUI,” says Centrelink national manager, corporate and payment systems, Edmund Tee. Another strategy applied to handle the change management issues was to appoint area coordinators or ‘champions’ in each area. “These individuals received extensive classroom training and then it was their responsibility to go back and

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Company name: Centrelink Website: www.centrelink .gov.au

promote the system and try to inform the rest of people in their areas,” says Bottom. The area coordinators also became first point of contact for any future help desk queries. Classroom training was provided to staff in roles that required frequent use of the SAP GUI. Onsite suppor t was also provided by the project team to all areas for a minimum of two weeks after implementation.

Upgrade journey In November 2001 Centrelink upgraded from 3.1H to 4.6B which included a migration from the Australian Government Template to the Public Sector HR Template. In June 2003, the agency fur ther upgraded to 4.6C and then again, in December 2005, upgraded to 4.7 Enterprise.

Centrelink ’s most recent upgrade was in December 2008 to ECC6. The agency purchased the software for the ECC6 licensing in August 2006 and carried out extensive analysis, before commencing the implementation in July 2008. “The technical upgrade provided Centrelink with the latest SAP platform to suppor t key business initiatives. The business imperative for commencing the ECC6 upgrade project was to implement capability that would suppor t the Centrelink National Learning Strategy. The SAP Learning Solution was identified as a tool that would suppor t this strategy. The ECC6 upgrade was a prerequisite to the implementation of the SAP Learning Solution,” says Tee. There was also an issue in that the suppor t for mainstream maintenance for version 4.7 was due to end in March 2009, says Bottom.

One of the biggest challenges of upgrading from 4.7 to ECC6 was adapting to the new technology, says Tee. “The SAP Por tal functionality was something new for us. Any time you put in something new and you don’t have the exper tise inhouse, it’s a challenge,” he says. At the same time, Centrelink was also upgrading its servers.

“The timeframe for the implementation of the new servers was a little bit behind the implementation of the upgrade, so there were concerns about the system’s performance following the upgrade. But in the end it all went smoothly,” says Tee. “SAP suppor ted us as the main functional consultant for the implementation of the Learning Management System (SAP Learning Solution). As the implementation of the SAP Learning Solution also required the implementation of the SAP Por tal,

Key challenges: To ensure minimal impact on business continuity; the implementation of the first Centrelink Certified Agreement at the same time as the SAP HR implementation; change management.

Project objectives: Improved technical capability to complement new business initiatives; increased management information capability; position Infolink so that obsolete technology was replaced, allowing for new developments with expanded scope; provide Centrelink with latest possible release of SAP. Solutions and services: SAP Financials – FI, CO, GL, AA, MM, TR, PS; SAP HR – HRPS, Payroll, PA,PD, TM and SAP Learning Solution.

Why SAP solutions: Chosen from a panel of software products provided by the Office of Government Information Technology.

Implementation highlights: Successful roll-out to over 25,000 users in more than 300 sites Australia wide; the high level of cooperation between ICT and business teams.

Key benefits: Fully integrated FMIS and HRMIS; high level of automation of high volume transactions; streamlined and secure FI and HR business processes.

System supports better working practices and enables segregation of duties; improved integration with other Centrelink applications; improved and more flexible management reporting capability.

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case study ] Centrelink

Centrelink is now able to provide streamlined and secure FI and HR processes and services.

we engaged an external Por tal consultant as we didn’t have those skills in-house or in the contractor pool,” says Bottom.

Benefits Since the initial implementation of SAP 3.1H in 1998, Centrelink has continued to benefit from implementing SAP. “Essentially, we now have one set of master data to service the various HR and FI functions,” says Tee. “One of the advantages is that we are able to automate a lot of our high volume transactions such as leave, over time and other payroll transactions.”

Staff can now easily view and update their personal information and payment details such as their bank information, allowances and salary deductions without intervention being required from the payroll team.

applications such as the Security Access Management System (SAMS), the Debt Management System and the Centrelink Call Centre Workforce Management System. The interface with SAMS plays a key role in the delivery of security services within the agency.

Having a fully integrated financial and HR system means that Centrelink is now able to provide streamlined and secure FI and HR business processes and services. “Previously, the FI end-of-financial-year system processing took about a week to complete and this meant the finance system was unavailable during this time. Now it is completed overnight, so that’s seen big savings being realised by Centrelink,” says Bottom. This improved performance has also enabled the FI business teams to reduce their timeframes for preparing the annual financial statements.

As a government agency, Centrelink has its own cer tified agreement. “So having a payroll system implemented that is flexible and able to cope with a wide range of employment conditions is very impor tant for Centrelink to be able to deliver HR services to its staff,” says Tee. Additionally, the Infolink system is able to integrate with other Centrelink

Other benefits that Centrelink has achieved from SAP, says Tee, are workforce and workload management, expense and income management and more flexible repor ting management information.

Existing environment: ECC6, Portal 7.0, BI 7.0

“One of the advantages of that upgrade is that at any point in time, especially on a Monday morning, we can have up to 8000 staff logged onto the system at one time – so during these peak usage times the system really needs to be running at peak benchmark to be able to cope with that,” says Tee. “So the upgrade to the version of ECC6 also assisted in reliability and robustness of the system for HR and FI users.”

SAP version: ECC6 Timeframe: Initial implementation: 14 months for FI, 18 months for HR. ECC6 upgrade: six months.

Modules implemented: Initial project – SAP Financials (FI, CO, GL, AA, MM, TR, PS) and SAP HR (HR-PS, Payroll, PA,PD, TM).

Database: Oracle Operating system: Solaris

The agency’s recent upgrade has also provided fur ther benefits.

Around the same time that the database server and the web application servers were upgraded, Centrelink migrated to a new platform – the M9000 servers.

Additionally, upgrading to ECC6 has given Centrelink the ability to implement the SAP Learning Solution as a fully integrated system within the ERP, rather than as a separate stand-alone application. The SAP Learning Solution has provided the capability for the delivery and management of learning and development activity in Centrelink.

“Finally, the ECC6 upgrade has also provided the new capability and SAP functionality that we did not previously have,” says Tee. “And now we have a platform that we can build on by implementing additional modules of SAP as required.”

This case study first appeared in the March 2010 edition of Inside SAP.

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ACCO Australia

[ case study

Improving warehouse operations ACCO Australia worked with Perisoft to not only upgrade its SAP system to ECC6, but also to enhance its goods staging procedure, gaining efficiency and improving customer satisfaction in the process.

ECC6 upgrade

ACCO Australia, a manufacturer of branded office products, was looking to build a solid foundation for continuous improvement activities, to standardise business processes, and to improve integration with other systems. While the company was currently running SAP 4.6B, there was a push by its American-based parent company to move to Oracle, as this was the system in place in both the US and Europe operations.

The objective of the project was to upgrade from 4.6B to ECC6 (with SD, MM, PP, LE, WM, FI-CO and PM), to ensure the extensively customised Warehouse Management solution was re-engineered and brought back to a standard SAP installation, and at the same time, enable an end-to-end Warehouse Management solution, including a Dexion sor tation system. Another key objective of the project was to build a stable and upgradable platform to perform all other business system enhancements, along with a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).

As a result of the implementation, overall TCO was reduced by almost 30 per cent to less than the 4.6B version running cost. By removing modifications to the standard WM solution, ACCO no longer ran the risk of this solution not being suppor ted by SAP. Upgrading to ECC6 also eliminated the need to purchase additional third-par ty BI products, as BI and Por tals were included in the software. The NetWeaver platform’s integration strength reduced the operational cost of running and maintaining third par ty products.

Most impor tantly, the upgrade established a foundation for a strategic platform.

Goods staging module for key customers

ACCO’s EDI customers required Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN), with a number identical to the tax invoice number. Once an ASN was created and sent across to the customer through EDI, the customer would then advise ACCO to deliver the goods to their warehouse at a par ticular date and time.

However, because the ASN number had to be identical to the tax invoice number, the post-goods issue process documentation had to be completed and the stock staged and stored for at least four to five days in ACCO’s warehouse, before it could be dispatched to the customer. To manage this process, ACCO was using an Excel-based solution, and wasting

considerable time and resources trying to keep visibility of the staged stock in its warehouse during the staging period.

Not only was there a lack of end-to-end visibility and system reliability, but there were significant amounts of manual processing and errors, low customer satisfaction, and a lack of integration to electronic data transfer for customers – so driving up efficiency and reducing effor t was a key objective.

Alongside SAP SD, WM, and MM – Goods Staging Module, Perisoft developed an extension solution using ABAP for staging of customer delivery pallets using RF transactions.

The solution allows for an ASN to be first sent to major EDI customers, and once acknowledged by the customer, the physical transpor tation and shipment activities are processed.

This includes putaway of already picked and packed pallets to a staging rack or lane, identification of the packed pallet when the truck arrived, picking and loading of these staged pallets onto the truck, and completing the shipment.

The benefit of this solution is that it is now integrated within SAP, eliminating manual processing and Excel-based solutions.

ACCO now has complete visibility and transparency, making the shipment process fast and easy, and it reduced staffing by one FTE, which was previously dedicated entirely to this purpose. There has also been a significant improvement in customer satisfaction among ACCO’s top clients.

The solution (with shared IP from Perisoft and ACCO) has been selected by Smar t Supply Chain Forum for a potential award for the implementation of this module and connote generation in SAP. This case study is sponsored by Perisoft.

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case study ] Superpartners

A super solution Industry super funds administrator Superpartners has implemented SAP BPC to better equip the business to meet regulatory and other financial reporting requirements. Nathan Dukes reports.

Background

Superpar tners is the par tner of industry super funds in Australia. The company has more than six million members with over $75 billion wor th of super funds under management, making it the largest fund administrator in the country.

The organisation has par tnerships with Ausfund, AustralianSuper, Hesta, cbus, and Hostplus, amongst other superannuation funds. Superpar tners provides industry super funds with cost-effective administration services to help them assist members through the milestones of their working life as they transition into retirement.

Since the early 1990s, the organisation has grown in size and complexity.

At the same time, demand has increased from managers and regulators for regular financial repor ting. In turn, regulatory requirements and strict guidelines for consolidating and repor ting company information have become more demanding.

Fur thermore, the GFC raised the regulatory bodies’ interest in superannuation funds.

Superpar tners’ existing financial repor ting systems struggled to suppor t the basic risk needs. Pragmatically, staff filled the gaps with tactical solutions, typically Excel or manual workarounds.

Business processes did not lend themselves to modelling and scenario analysis, lacked data integrity and protection and

had a high risk of error. They fulfilled an immediate need for information but fell shor t of providing the enterprise-wide view required for good financial management.

Malcolm Ferguson, BI lead for CSC Australia, explains.

“Superpar tners had very good Excel tools for the budget, but they wanted to take the next step and become more agile in their planning processes,” Ferguson says.

“No matter how good the tool-set you deliver is in terms of templates, [Excel] tends to fall down when you’re working in distributed environments. Using email as a means of distributing planning templates and returning results for aggregation works inefficiently at the best of times,” he says.

In tandem with its SAP ERP project with implementation par tner CSC, Superpar tners moved forward with an implementation of SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (BPC) for NetWeaver in October 2009.

Implementation

Superpar tners began the ERP implementation in November 2008. The process was smooth and implementation was completed in June 2009.

To handle Superpar tners’ planning and forecasting needs, CSC then introduced SAP BPC for NetWeaver. Originally an Outlooksoft product, the tool was acquired when SAP bought Outlooksoft in 2007. It unifies planning, financial consolidation and management repor ting for the enterprise – improving budget cycle times, driving compliance with regulatory and financial standards, helping reduce external audit costs, instilling confidence, and reducing business risk.

SAP BPC also comes with an Excel-based front-end, offering familiarity and ease of use for business users already accustomed to Excel.

Ferguson, as project manager for the Superpar tners implementation of SAP BPC, says the tool combines that Excel familiarity with an architected, integrated back-end.

“It’s delivering the best of both worlds – the integrity and architecture of data being stored in a business warehouse, with the familiarity and ease of use of Excel,” Ferguson says.

“Once we kicked off the project it was a fairly rapid implementation, keeping in mind that it was a very early release of what was a rearchitected software solution.”

Key challenges

With every new technology or tool, early

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adopters have to be wary that experience with the tool is limited, and the implementer’s familiarity with the processes will be maturing. Ferguson says CSC has had extensive experience with SAP BI planning tools and similar applications in the past, and relied on that experience to prepare for this implementation. In addition, key planning analysts under took extensive training in BPC in preparation.

“Because we have a lot of experience in delivering planning solutions to organisations, we understand the business drivers and the processes. This provided us with a lot of confidence going into this project,” he says.

Michelle O’Brien, Superpar tners financial controller and national manager, shared services, says CSC developers engaged with Superpar tners’ subject matter exper ts to review the solution regularly to validate and fine-tune the design as needed.

“We knew we were taking a huge step and didn’t know what we didn’t know. We just knew that we didn’t want to be where we were and we wanted to take full advantage of the product.

CSC understood the product and where we wanted to go.

We would discuss, weigh up the options and reach our desired outcome,” she says.

Moving on from the implementation at Superpar tners, CSC has been able to take these learnings and incorporate them into new projects with new customers installing BPC. An additional challenge formed as the change process got underway, and Superpar tners began to understand they were going to need to change cer tain processes to produce the best results. Both CSC and Superpar tners recognised some give and take was required to come up with a workable solution which was both functional and effective, but not entirely foreign to the business.

For example, the repor ts and templates Superpar tners used originally in Microsoft Excel were not kept, despite the fact they were still working in the same front-end environment.

These were replaced by new templates which were better suited to the architecture of BPC. The first step was for the project team to understand where Superpar tners was situated, where the pain points were, and what they wanted to achieve coming out of the project. At the same time, CSC fed back to Superpar tners its experiences and knowledge around best practices.

Superpar tners began to question their existing budgeting processes, and considered the alternatives CSC was offering.

“Did we really need to analyse the data at such a low level?

Did the new system offer a more efficient, streamlined way of working? Whilst initially a little nervous, we soon decided to avoid customisation and go in with an open mind, willing to change our ways for a better outcome,” O’Brien says.

they have before moving forward.

Entering the first budget cycle using the new system, Superpar tners has been able to identify a number of key benefits from implementing the BPC solution, including:

• Improved agility, by centrally modelling new business scenarios and consolidating data;

• Reduced cycle time, because managers can collaborate in a streamlined landscape;

• Minimised business and compliance risk, as a result of having a single version of the truth;

• Increased user productivity, due to the intuitive interface and familiar office tools; and

• Enterprise visibility, with two-year forecasting instead of a single annual budget.

This case study first appeared in the May 2010 edition of Inside SAP.

Company: Superpartners Website: www.superpartners.com.au Key challenges: Process design prior to release

of final product; early (if not first) partner led implementation of SAP BPC for NetWeaver in Australia.

Project objectives: To provide a flexible modelling tool and planning methodology which will allow an integrated approach in producing the budgets and forecasts.

Why SAP solutions: BPC for NetWeaver was

implemented as part of a combined solution around SAP ERP and SAP BI.

Implementation highlights: Cooperative

project team approach between CSC and Superpartners; secure, customised input schedules and calculations; implemented solution which is managed and administered by the finance team.

Key benefits: Improved flexibility through central modelling of new business scenarios; streamlined planning process for finance and line-of-business managers; increased user productivity through intuitive and familiar user interface; enterprise visibility through an integrated approach to budgets and forecasts.

Existing environment: Excel template-based solution using email to distribute/submit, with MS Access database for consolidated reporting.

Modules: SAP BPC 7.0 for Netweaver Implementation timeframe: Commenced October 2009. Go-Live February 2010.

Results and future work

Before moving onto new projects and implementations, Superpar tners has made it their goal to first become entirely familiar with the system they’ve put in place.

The company is now working on 12-month annual budgets and 24-month forecasts, so it always has a view into the following fiscal year. Ferguson says they will first bed down the processes

SAP version: SAP ERP ECC6; SAP BW 7.01; SAP

BusinessObjects Xi 3.1; BPC for NetWeaver Version 7.

Database: MS SQL Server 2005 Operating system: Windows Server 2003

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case study ] NSW Department of Education and Training

Platform-as-a-Service SAP appointed Consulting Networks as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) partner to deliver the platform for the whole shared service ERP system implementation at the NSW Department of Education and Training. CN established and now maintains the links between DET and the CN environment. CN manages all aspects of maintenance for the environment and offers SLAs to SAP for the environment.

The business challenge The implementation at the NSW Department of Education (DET) and Training was a public sector transformation project and shared services set-up, delivered in functional phases. The module scope was SAP ERP for Public Sector, including Finance and Procurement, Human Resources, Reporting and Netweaver/Solution Manager.

The solution Consulting Networks led the design, procurement and set-up of the platform. It also proactively supports the SAP platform as part of its ongoing commitment to the NSW Department of Education and Training. Throughout the post-implementation period, Consulting Networks ensures that the PaaS system is ready for transfer to DET for their ongoing operations.

Consulting Networks provides a development, test, quality assurance, training and sandpit environment for the project team based in Australia and in SAP’s Global Development Centre in India.

The environment is disaster recoverable and provides enterprise grade, secure, high availability environment for the developers, consultants and end-users. This enables them to develop, test and train prior to going live and assists in the roll-out of the solutions to multiple business units.

CN provides the entire non-productive, development and test environment to their transformation project.

The benefits The CN PaaS solution provides a ‘one stop shop’ for SAP Australia to deliver a complex SAP implementation with speed and costeffectiveness in a highly cost-conscious environment.

It also provides a ‘plug in’ enterprise grade SAP-ready platform delivered on a cost per system/per month commercial model. For the end-user business community, it gives the ability to focus on its business process design and change programs, rather than holding on to hard-to-find technical capability.

CN provides the entire non-productive, development and test environment to their transformation project. This platform is delivered in a per system per month model to SAP Australia.

This case study is sponsored by Consulting Networks.

The CN solution allows for SAP to offer fast-tracking of the adoption of their solutions by:

Consulting Networks provides a ‘one stop shop’ service to SAP and Microsoft customers who require the best in business and consulting, systems implementation and infrastructure virtualisation solutions.

• ‘Prototyping as a Service’: where new functionality and or stand-alone solutions like BusinessObjects, CRM or HR Payroll’s e-recruitment can be quickly prototyped with the industry specific functions.

• ‘Piloting as a Service’: with niche-based solutions like SAP’s e-commerce platform. CN’s PaaS solution allows a ‘plug and play’ option to pilot business-ready solutions in small parts of the business to prove that benefits can be gained.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

About Consulting Networks

Consulting Networks is the business, applications and infrastructure consulting division of the CN Group, a privately owned Australian IT services company headquartered in North Ryde, NSW. Also comprising the Computer Networks division, the CN Group’s core competencies include IT consulting and infrastructure management for small, medium and large enterprises using Microsoft and SAP-based applications.

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Fletcher Insulation

[ case study

Providing practical, powerful reporting Tight month-end closes and financial reporting were a challenge for Fletcher Insulation.

IQX Business Solutions came to the rescue with the GL Wand from Excel4apps.

Fletcher Insulation is the producer of Australia’s leading insulation brands, with three manufacturing facilities and 14 branch locations located throughout the country.

The business challenge

For Fletcher’s Finance Group, extremely tight month-end closes were a challenge in the company’s SAP R/3 environment. Financial reports were due to the various branches and manufacturing plants just two days after SAP data was finalised each month. Plant accountants and managers could then use profit and loss (P&L) statements to perform variance, ratio, and other types of analyses. By the fourth day, the final consolidated financial reports were due from Finance to Fletcher’s parent company.

For Finance users, creating or updating reports in SAP required programming assistance from busy IT staff, meaning report generation could take up to two months. To bypass this requirement, Finance users would download SAP data into Excel and manipulate it in complex spreadsheets, which required high-level Excel expertise and introduced the potential for error in financial statements.

“We saw that small errors like forgetting to refresh a pivot or extend a range could have compounded,” says Andrew Roberts, finance manager, Fletcher Insulation. “Our financial analysts were skilled but not power users of Excel. Plus, it was frustrating to spend so much time pulling together up to 20 different Excel worksheets for a report, leaving no time for analysis.”

Use of SAP’s Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) software, which Fletcher purchased in 2009, was potentially ideal for creating financial reports. However, Finance would still have required the luxury of a dedicated programmer/developer to quickly produce them.

“Financial reporting is so dynamic that one report often leads to the need for another, driving you back into the development cycle,” Roberts says.

In addition, the data from BPC was not real-time. This presented an issue for Fletcher’s tight month-end closes, when there was often a specific need for fast access to live data for account reconciliation purposes.

The solution

With the demonstration of GL Wand in late 2009 from IQX Business Solutions, an Excel4apps partner, Fletcher’s Finance Group discovered a financial reporting tool powerful enough to bypass painstaking data downloads, yet practical in its ease of use and price point. GL Wand automatically populates Excel spreadsheets with the designated financial data in just minutes and allows users to easily drill down into line item data for further insight. “We instantly saw GL Wand’s potential for dramatically cutting report development time,” Roberts says.

Initially, IT was sceptical about Finance’s use of GL Wand because it was seen as another tool to support, but Roberts explained that his group could easily install and maintain the product. Roberts was especially impressed with the tool’s immediate benefits.

“After users saw the demo, we simply referenced GL Wand’s attached PDF manual for training,” Roberts says. “It is intuitive for any high-tointermediate level user of Excel, meaning the cost to implement is insignificant.”

The benefits

The Finance Group now uses GL Wand to create Fletcher’s monthly balance sheet, as well as P&L statements for the 14 branches and consolidated regional P&Ls. While Day 2 is a tight mont- end, Finance now produces P&L statements in just a few minutes, leaving more time for analysis, whereas it previously took three or four hours for three people.

In addition, Finance has increased confidence in reports, as GL Wand directly accesses the SAP data, which no longer comes from multiple Excel spreadsheets.

“As finance manager, I am much more confident in the accuracy of our numbers, because we access one single version of the truth by reporting straight from the General Ledger and other SAP modules,” Roberts says.

Along with improved productivity and more accurate reports, Fletcher now uses GL Wand for ad-hoc reporting and analysis. For example, Finance capitalised on the tool’s flexibility to rapidly create a report needed by senior managers – actual-to-budget comparative P&L’s for each branch, by month, for the last three years. Quick, easy reports like these are being generated by Finance to help inform complex strategy in a rapidly evolving business environment.

“The business world is in constant motion, with many critical requirements that occur on short notice,” Roberts says. “With GL Wand, our Finance Group is confident that we provide the most accurate information available so our company can successfully adapt its strategy to changes and challenges.”

This case study is sponsored by IQX Business Solutions and Excel4apps.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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case study ] NSW Fire Brigades and SES

No fire-fighting needed for SAP implementation Inter-agency cooperation was the hallmark of this shared services project, bringing the State Emergency Service (SES) onto the NSW Fire Brigades’ (NSWFB) SAP infrastructure. Freya Purnell reports.

>

Background

operational areas at all. Whereas the SES sees it as being a key operational system, so they know where various pieces of equipment are – such as flood boats, chainsaws, and so on. So if there was a major flood or storm, they would be using SAP to move resources around,” Nairn says.

Prior to the current push towards consolidation into a ‘superagency’ structure by the NSW Government, the NSWFB had been in discussions with the SES for a year about potentially sharing technology. NSWFB is the largest emergency services agency in the state, and had begun working on SAP in 2006 – star ting with FI/CO, and moving onto Materials Management (MM) and HR/Payroll coupled with Business Intelligence in 2007 and 2009 respectively. As a much smaller agency, the SES was keen to provide this SAP functionality to its users while leveraging the NSWFB infrastructure. According to NSWFB IT systems unit program manager, Sean Nairn, the outcome of these discussions was to onboard the SES to its SAP system, through a shared services model.

Implementation

Key challenges

Nairn attributes this success to great cooperation and compatibility between the two agencies – a critical factor for a successful shared services model.

Some of the challenges involved in the project were geographical in nature. With the SES based in Wollongong, a large amount of the work had to be done remotely.

“We did most of the initial kick-off work and blueprinting in Sydney, because that’s something you really have to do face to face,” Nairn says. Once this phase was completed, much of the project was under taken on the phone and online.

While there were many similarities between the two agencies, there were some key differences as well, including how the SES planned to use the system.

“The biggest difference is that we presently see SAP as being purely a back-office system, and we don’t use it in any of our

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Beginning in February 2009, the internal IT systems team at NSWFB undertook the project, aided by Finance staff and their counterparts at the SES. Nairn says it was a fairly “vanilla” implementation, completed according to the standard SAP methodology. The project was completed by December – on time, on budget and without any major hiccups.

This began with comprehensive discussions about how the SES was planning to use the system, and whether it would present any problems for NSWFB. The agencies’ background of working together in emergency situations stood them in good stead.

“We have dealt with them more in the operational side of things in the past, so from a back-office perspective, we were complete strangers to each other. We knew that we were reasonably closely aligned. It was just about understanding what the differences were and how we’d cope with those,” Nairn says.

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”The two agencies worked really well together. Both project teams had an extremely good relationship, so there was no conflict over the way things should be done. They accepted that we already had the SAP knowledge so they were happy to take our recommendations.

“They had some areas where they were slightly different from the way we did things, even in the core finance areas, and we worked well with them to come up with solutions to meet their needs.”

Some forward planning also smoothed the path for the SES to be added to the infrastructure.

“When we did our HR/payroll project 18 months ago, we sized all the infrastructure for them to come on board, so that there were no performance considerations that we had to take into account, because that had been planned for previously. They connect directly to our system. So it’s all been really quite smooth.”

Results

The major benefit for the SES has been the ability to retire an existing finance system that had reached the end of its useful life – removing risk from the organisation – and being able to gain a consistent view of its information through SAP, including quality data on stock levels, which is vital to SES operations.

“They had all their information about the location of their boats and so for th stored in spreadsheets and Access databases, so there was not a consistent information store. That’s all now in SAP,” Nairn says.

looking to save money, and consolidating onto as small a number of platforms as possible will certainly achieve that,” Nairn says.

“This project is an excellent example of government agencies cooperating to deliver better and cheaper services to the people of NSW.” This case study was first published in the March 2010 edition of Inside SAP.

Organisation name: NSW Fire Brigades Website: www.fire.nsw.gov.au Key challenges: Geographically remote project teams; different paradigm for using SAP between the two agencies (back-office vs operational focus).

Project objectives: To onboard the SES onto the NSWFB SAP system, using the same client but different company codes.

Solutions and services: SAP Finance and Materials Management.

This also means now that divisions of the organisation such as finance and operations now have visibility of that equipment throughout the system.

Why SAP solutions: Government-preferred ERP solution for NSW agencies.

For the NSWFB, as the largest agency in the sector, the project demonstrates its ability to under take a shared services arrangement with another agency.

Implementation highlights: Excellent rapport between the two project teams and working closely together helped overcome any problems.

This type of project is unique in the NSW Government so far, and there are now plans to do more of these projects and turn on additional modules in the future, Nairn says.

“Typically agencies have been forced to work together, whereas we and the SES had volunteered to do this.”

NSWFB is now under taking a similar project with the Rural Fire Service, to replace its existing finance and logistics systems and online procurement system with SAP functionality. This project is expected to be completed later in 2010.

Following on from that, Nairn says there is a three- to five-year schedule for other projects, such as adding all volunteers to SAP HR, adding Plant Maintenance for all agencies, and turning on other modules within SAP – with all three agencies sharing the infrastructure and implementation costs.

Par ticularly under the new superagency structure, this type of inter-agency cooperation is indicative of how relationships within the NSW Government will proceed.

“Some superagencies are fur ther down the track. The Depar tment of Commerce runs a shared services shop for quite a few agencies already. There will be others that are now clustered together, where obviously the NSW Government’s

Key benefits: Retirement of end of life finance system; replacement of unstructured critical business data held in Excel and Access databases.

SAP version: ECC 6.0 Implementation timeframe: 12 months Cost/value of implementation: <$250,000 Modules implemented: FI, CO, MM Database: Oracle 10g Operating system: Suse Linux Enterprise Server. >> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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case study ]

Queensland Motorways Ltd

Intelligent and integrated transportation Transport officials in Singapore, Brisbane and Stockholm are using smart systems to reduce congestion and pollution as well as providing a better customer experience, more choice and better information.

IBM worked with Queensland Motorways Ltd (QML) for three years to implement the central systems for the Free Flow Tolling project.

The business challenge

Heavy traffic on Brisbane’s motorways was creating congestion, lengthening journey times for motorists and reducing travel reliability for local businesses.

Toll plazas added to the problem, creating a choke point for motorists slowing to pay tolls and also with vehicles required to merge near the toll booths. The Queensland Government, in conjunction with QML, which is entrusted with the task of managing and operating the Gateway Bridge, Gateway Extension and Logan motorways embarked on a major upgrade project to enable traffic to flow more freely.

In February 2005, the Queensland Minister for Transport and Main Roads announced that QML would deliver the Gateway Upgrade Project (GUP), a $1.88 billion upgrade and construction of the 20-kilometre Gateway Motorway and Bridge.

The solution

In order to deliver a smarter, more integrated transportation network to enable the GUP, QML implemented a strategy for Free Flow Tolling, designed to create a safer, more efficient way to travel, value and information to the travelling customer, new product options, real-time traffic conditions and recommendations on travel routes across the network.

QML contracted IBM and Thales to deliver the Free Flow Tolling solution, Thales to provide the roadside infrastructure and IBM to lead, manage, design and deliver the central systems including:

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SAP: Finance, HR, Payroll, CRM, Business Warehouse, Contract and Accounting.

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IRIS: Traffic Identification and Rating system developed by IBM to apply charging of toll fees against video recognition.

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External web interface: Developed by IBM to enable customer access to system, payment and charge information.

The HR and Payroll project successfully went live in six months, followed by Finance within 12 months and the remainder of the Core Tolling solution within 18 months.

The Free Flow Tolling project has not only won a global ‘Project of the Year’ award within IBM but has also been recognised across the industry.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

The benefits The overall GUP program was delivered ahead of time and within budget. QML has experienced “improved traffic flow on the Gateway Motorway, and particularly on the Gateway Bridge, key to ensuring effective network management in Brisbane,” says Phil Mumford, CEO of QML, the company responsible for managing and operating this road infrastructure. “Any congestion or issues on the bridge ultimately affect the whole network: people start to divert to other roads which are already carrying high traffic volumes and soon enough, everyone’s journey is negatively impacted.”

In addition, Mumford says, “By automating the tolling process and eliminating the need for drivers to stop, it immediately increased the average speed of traffic flow, has improved safety and the travelling experience of motorists. Secondly, the solution has allowed us to digitally capture and analyse information about the vehicles that use our roads, which enables us to make dramatic improvements to traffic management now and in the future.”

More importantly, the introduction of the SAP CRM application is leading to a fundamental change in the way QML interacts with its customers. The company can now see what vehicles are using the roads, how often and at what times they use the roads. In the future, QML will be able to tailor its services to individual drivers – with a profound effect on both customer experience and traffic management.

“For example, a customer making regular trips to the airport on a Monday morning may want to receive congestion reports direct to their phones. The whole experience has the potential to be much more personalised,” says Mumford.

“The idea is to have ‘a motorway that thinks’ – a more intelligent solution that will give our customers a better range of options for their journeys.”

QML will continue to further develop its vision for an integrated, smart and intelligent transport system working with IBM, Queensland University of Technology and its other partners to deliver real value, information and safety to its customers.

This case study is sponsored by IBM.

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>

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Queensland Nickel [

case study

In the nick of time When BHP Billiton decided to sell Queensland Nickel, the new stand-alone business was faced with an immovable deadline to be up and running with its own SAP system. By Freya Purnell.

Background Queensland Nickel operates the Yabulu Refinery north of Townsville in Queensland, and processes high-quality nickel and cobalt from third party mines in New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Previously part of the BHP Billiton group, Queensland Nickel was sold in July 2009 to companies owned by Professor Clive Palmer.

Queensland Nickel chief financial officer Basil Ahyick says the company had to make a decision about replacing the full ERP system.

“The objectives for that decision were the amount of time we had to transition to a new system; the operational stability, as the plant had to be humming and running at capacity as we came out of the previous system; and setting up a good foundation for the future in terms of how we would translate and interpret our business information.”

Queensland Nickel had operated in an SAP environment for some years, and was moved into the BHP Billiton global SAP environment two and a half years before the sale.

As a resources company in the complex minerals processing industry, Queensland Nickel has some particular technical challenges.

The company was effectively stand-alone one month after the transaction date, but as this would not provide enough time to transition the SAP system, Queensland Nickel negotiated a transition agreement enabling it to operate for six months on the BHP system. The deadline for Queensland Nickel to be operating independently was set for 31 December 2009.

“We are similar to a manufacturing facility, so we have quite complex processes for transforming ore to metal. Our ability to continue to translate the production information into business support and financial information in a timely manner is critical.

It is a continual challenge to marry our ERP with our process control information and to continually provide updated targets and operational data back to the operation, and to translate that

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 52

information into key performance indicators that are available to the whole operation,” Ahyick says.

sales and marketing data and 4.6 for Queensland Nickel’s preBHP Billiton data.

Implementation

According to Extend Technologies general manager, commercial, Andrew Powell, the existing payroll system presented specific issues.

There was an immovable deadline for the project – Queensland Nickel would have no access to the BHP Billiton systems after 31 December 2009. This brought the Go-Live date back to 30 November – resulting in a four-month timeline.

When Queensland Nickel went looking for an implementation partner, COSOL was perhaps a natural fit, as it had worked with BHP Billiton for some time, as well as for Queensland Nickel previously.

“We targeted very specific SAP resources that we knew had worked with the BHP Billiton group before, or had worked on our previous implementation of the global SAP system in BHP so we didn’t have a learning curve in our business,” Ahyick says.

“We pulled a team together very rapidly and obviously we took an approach of ‘vanilla’ SAP. We were not going to customise unless it was absolutely necessary, and we needed to look at how varied we were in our processes from the vanilla SAP world.”

Ron Frederickson, director, COSOL says, “We knew their operation very well, and we knew the company that they were actually separating from extremely well. From Queensland Nickel’s point of view, they had a very tight timeframe to do this, so they needed an organisation that could basically ramp up, understand their business and minimise the risk for them.”

Extend Technologies also came on board as a strategic partner with COSOL to assist with the delivery of the HCM payroll solution and some BI consulting.

From an SAP perspective, the key objective was to implement a contemporary version of the system. While there was some discussion about whether Queensland Nickel’s new SAP system should essentially duplicate what they had operated at BHP Billiton, the team instead opted for SAP’s ECC6 Business Suite which included functionality for managing Finance, Supply, Maintenance, Sales and Marketing, Payroll and HR. The business also chose to implement SAP Xi for integration and SAP’s BusinessObjects reporting suite for advanced business reporting.

“Due to the large amount of customisation in Queensland Nickel’s existing system it was difficult to analyse or reverse engineer,” Powell says.

Because payroll services had previously been outsourced to a BHP shared services centre, Queensland Nickel had no inhouse payroll resources until the project was nearly completed, meaning Extend had to undertake blueprinting and testing with limited input from the business. Extend’s X10 HR/Payroll Express template was used as a starting point for the HR/Payroll implementation and helped to accelerate the process, as well as reducing overheads for support and upgrades.

Frederickson says working through the complexity around how Queensland Nickel’s SAP system would integrate with its production control system was critically important.

“You do need to take into account that when you replace something like the functionality of SAP coverage, you don’t actually undo or break other connections or integration that occur, so we had to ensure there was zero impact on production,” Frederickson says.

In addition, while the SAP project was a significant component of the company’s transition to an independent IT system, the hardware, infrastructure and desktop environment also had to be transitioned, and this caused some delays.

“The SAP project obviously had interdependencies with other streams that were running. Open communication was absolutely critical to making sure that on a daily basis any of the latest potential impact points were managed through,” Frederickson says.

Despite the high-pressure situation, the project was delivered on time and on a tight budget. This was due to some very tight controls of the project, according to Ahyick.

“It was full on. We had to bring in the right team, we had very strong management support behind the project, and made sure that we had a very rigid time frame and we had full back-end failsafe where we needed to. It required rapid decision-making and very few customisations unless they were justified,” Ahyick says.

“As a result of that, our ABAP work was quite limited, and it was mainly around some reporting. Nearly all the process work was very straightforward in all the systems, because we had a broad coverage of SAP previously,” Ahyick says.

Challenges

An additional challenge was managing the data extraction from four disparate SAP systems used by BHP Billiton – SAP 4.7 for FICO, MM, and PM data, ECC5 for HR/payroll data, ECC6 for

From the partners’ perspective, with no margin for error, the project team had to be able hit the ground running across a very broad project scope.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

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“The challenge was really to pull together a team that absolutely knew the industry, so it could sit down with the business specialists from Queensland Nickel and speak the same business language from day one,” says Tony Parvin, principal consultant, COSOL. With such a tough timeframe for the project, the team couldn’t afford to be held up at any point, so adopted some approaches specifically to keep things moving along as quickly as possible.

From August, all the work was done on-site, so the COSOL team lived in Townsville and worked at the refinery.

“To manage the risk, have the team get to know each and work collectively together, and be close to the executive and line management to get things resolved, it was the only way it could be done,” Frederickson says.

Steering committee meetings with the executive of Queensland Nickel were held every fortnight, and this strong executive support and availability was key to keeping the project on track and achieving its objectives.

With a project slogan of ‘no surprises’, an open project room helped ensure everything was on the table.

“Basically the entire team of business specialists and SAP specialists were in a big open area, along with myself and the program manager. We talked across the desks, the protocol and etiquette was good. From day one it was absolutely about open communication. There was no time to convene meetings to deal with issues, they had to be dealt with on the run, so it was very quick decision-making involving all the relevant parties,” Parvin says. “We really had an absolutely fantastic team of people from both the business and obviously the SAP staff. It was an absolutely superb effort from all those staff.”

Working on tight deadlines wasn’t without its problems, however.

“Fatigue wasn’t an issue, as we managed that very well. But just running at a high intensity for a very short period of time meant you had to manage different personalities and different views all the time,” Ahyick says.

He adds that probably the most difficult obstacle from the business’s perspective was ensuring BHP Billiton was able to keep up with the pace of the work the project team was doing.

There were also issues relating to the very strict protocols BHP Billiton has in place around its information management processes, according to Parvin.

“It did present some communication challenges. But we had a very competent team involved in data migration and the senior consultants themselves took a very active role,” he says.

From a technical perspective, however, the biggest problem arose with faxing.

“It only lasted a few days, but it’s a bit ironic that the technology that has been around for 30 years actually presented us with some significant technical challenges,” Parvin says.

Business benefits Not only was the project finished on time, there was a window of opportunity to ensure the payroll and accounts payable was working seamlessly before Go-Live.

Company name: Queensland Nickel Pty Ltd Website: www.qni.com.au Key challenges: Deliver full ERP suite in short timeframe, with no ability to extend.

Project objectives: Replace existing ERP and infrastructure and user systems on time without impact; migrate from a multinational integrated shared service operation to a standalone business.

Why SAP solutions: Fastest conversion without additional learning curves for users.

Implementation highlights: On time, no impact to business and under budget.

Key benefits: Integrated foundation platform to enable growth.

Implementation timeframe: Four months Cost/value of implementation: <A$10m

“We could have gone fully live first off, and done the big bang approach. But we were able to run three interim payroll runs to make sure we were on track and we were able to make sure accounts payable was up and running and working as well,” Ahyick says.

With the full transfer of data completed ahead of time, the GoLive went incredibly smoothly.

“The operation didn’t really miss a heartbeat overall, which was fantastic. When we ran live, on the day we cut over, there were no problems. You expect maybe some purchase orders or maintenance requests that don’t get through, but everything just went like clockwork,” Ahyick says.

In terms of benefits for the business, in addition to providing a strong, stable platform for Queensland Nickel to move forward, it also now has Business Warehouse and BusinessObjects capability, which it did not have under the previous ownership.

Ahyick says this new functionality supports the company’s approach to business improvement, which translate into KPIs across the organisation.

“It provides us with an awesome foundation because we have very wide coverage of SAP components now. Our full integration of product is giving us an excellent ability to go to the next stage. So the information capability and the translation of our production data into information to feed our business improvement process is going to be the key that we can now further develop and move forward with.”

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

52

“Strategy to Realisation” Perisoft is the right partner for your long term business success

Established in 1998 in Sydney, Perisoft delivers end-to-end IT services powered by SAP for mid-size companies in Manufacturing, Distribution and Services industry verticals.

With a strong team of experienced consultants and successful long term service delivery partnerships with many of its clients, Perisoft has emerged as a leading provider of SAP ERP, SAP CRM and SAP BusinessObjects solutions and services specifically tailored for Mid-Size enterprises.

Perisoft translates the leading and proven SAP Technologies generally accessible only to large enterprises, into tangible benefits and value for growing businesses.

Perisoft has a dedicated BI practice, i4B (Intelligence 4 Business) to offer SAP BusinessObjects and SAP Business Intelligence solutions and services.

Service offerings SAP Software Licensing Implementation Services – Consulting services – Design, Build and Test – Infrastructure – Training Maintenance & Support Services – Shared Services (onsite/remote) – Upgrades – Basis Support (onsite/remote) – Ad-hoc expert support services Hosting Services

To help our clients achieve Better alignment of IT solutions to business needs.

Faster ROI Lower cost of implementation and support (Lower TCO) Reduced delivery risk Higher solution quality Efficient and consistent delivery via proven, repeatable methods

Highly reference able and long standing SAP services delivery partnership with 8 of our clients (7+ years) Contacts www.perisoft.com.au www.i4b.com.au +61 2 98944111 info@perisoft.com.au

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SAP service provider profiles Looking for a partner to assist with your next SAP project? In the following pages, service providers in the areas of software and solutions, consulting, application support, hosting, testing and quality management, and change management outline their capabilities.

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BackOffice Associates

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Wipro Technologies

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IBM

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Consulting Networks

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Innogence Limited

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IQX Business Solutions + Excel4apps

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HCL AXON

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CIBER

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Novell

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Oxygen Business Solutions

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Revolution IT

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Readsoft

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Kaba

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Esker

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Lodestone Management Consultants

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Revelation Software Concepts

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Zero1

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StoneBridge Systems

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Articulate

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TIK Consulting

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Speller International

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Everjoy Consulting

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company profile ]

BackOffice Associates BackOffice Associates ® is the leading provider of ERP data migration, data governance and master data management solutions for SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Infor and other leading ERP solutions. Concentrating on enhancing ERP data quality since 1996, our products and services are recognised best practice for companies using SAP, Oracle and other solutions. BackOffice Associates delivers the industry’s only ‘Boring Go Live ® ’ process for the uneventful implementation of ERP. For data governance solutions, BackOffice is the choice of customers who require ‘BusinessReady Data Every Day™’.

Our complete and proven methodology, executed by our team of exper ts, delivers 100 per cent success to all of our clients.

This approach ensures a risk-free level of data quality and generates the value required from global ERP projects.

As an SAP cer tified integration par tner, as well as an Oracle Platinum par tner, we have a 100 per cent track record in providing all our customers with solutions and guidance in data migration, data governance and master data management.

With over 450 successful Boring Go Live implementations and no missed milestones due to data, we have delivered on-time Business-Ready Data to every client, resulting in a quicker return on investment (ROI) through zero down-time from data at Go Live.

BackOffice Associates delivers a proven data migration approach for the most successful ERP implementations worldwide. Using our tools, methodology and exper ts we ensure your ERP investment delivers the value you expect and require on Go Live day.

Data Migration Toolset™ Using the BackOffice Data Migration Toolset and proven, repeatable methodology, our business-savvy data migration team effectively and efficiently handles all elements of an ERP data migration.

• Toolset enforces methodology • Easy to implement and learn • Simplifies building and validating in SAP, Oracle or target system

• Toolset is data driven and repor ting is easy • Iterative, repeatable process (Load Early Load Often) • Web-based toolset allows many people to develop either independently or collaboratively

• Toolset allows you to conver t data through automation to a known, successful outcome.

Boring Go Live® data migration

Business-Ready Data Every Day™

Conver ting your data to your new ERP system requires more than mere extraction, transformation and loading. Your legacy data is the hear t of your business operations. You need a repeatable process that focuses on analysis, construction and consolidation. To suppor t this process you need the right tools, a proven methodology, and exper t consultants. BackOffice Associates has the tools, the methodology and the exper ts that deliver Business-Ready Data you can use today, resulting in time and cost savings for your company.

Passive Data Governance

Business-Ready Data is evaluated for business relevance and completeness. Your entire migration effor t is documented and easily validated. Our methodology ensures a seamless data migration in which your data is ready for the new ERP system.

Our Load Early Load Often ® process permits you to better understand the impact on your system and permits the end users to train and build confidence with live data.

Directed Data Governance

BackOffice Associates’ data migration solution delivers:

Active Data Governance

• Easy-to-use tools that do not require coding

Active Data Governance turns master data management into a business process. It is a firewall for master data and includes dynamic, web-enabled applications that empower business users to collaboratively author, review and approve changes to ERP master data.

• Pre-built functionality • Complete BackOffice methodology for data migration • Repeatable processes that ensure Business-Ready Data quality

• Staffing-model designs to fit your unique business needs • Exper ts who provide field-tested experience • Targeted training to educate your team members to facilitate rapid-system productivity.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Passive Data Governance is a collection of repor ts, metrics and analysis that allow you to view data in a business context.

Business process interruptions will be greatly reduced and eventually eliminated using the BackOffice process. With Passive Data Governance you can monitor, measure and manage the quality of your data against business process requirements.

Directed Data Governance is a new way to drive the process of master data creation and maintenance tasks across depar tments and users from star t to finish. It is a business process workflow engine for managing master data in an ERP environment requiring no coding or customisation.

The need for data governance in ERP environments SAP and Oracle are fully integrated ERP systems. They can handle almost any commercial business transaction and can do so with great flexibility, suppor ting many different business process models. However, the range and flexibility of SAP or

<<[ ] 57

BackOffice believes master data management is the process by which business users can gain global visibility and access to their master data stored in multiple and disparate legacy applications.

Oracle functionality requires a complicated master data model.

• There can be over 50 screens required to create a single finished good that is manufactured in a single location.

• In a typical company there may be eleven or more organisational roles involved in defining the different elements of material master data.

• Different kinds of material types and usages need different data – the data for a finished product is different than the data for an MRO material; the data for a manufactured product is different than the data for a purchased product.

• Customer master data can be organised over eight different account groups and four different content views.

• To make customer masters function properly, users are required to specify partnering relationships among customer addresses – for example, when product is shipped to address A, the invoice should be sent to address B. It is little wonder that after their ERP project implementations, many companies struggle to maintain their master data with sufficient accuracy and completeness to make the ERP system work properly. As companies add new materials, customers and vendors, critical master data elements may not be updated or they may be updated incorrectly. This incorrect or missing master data results in business process interruptions – the inability to create production entries, the inability to ship product or the inability to invoice customers. Such interruptions are expensive, time-consuming and negatively impact your ability to achieve the full return on your ERP investment. In some cases master data processing errors can place a company at risk for failure to meet regulatory compliance standards.

To prevent these problems, many of the largest companies in the world have turned to BackOffice Associates ® data governance solutions and methodology for the ongoing creation and maintenance of their master data. BackOffice delivers flexible, easy-to-use web-enabled data governance solutions addressing the most complex data quality issues. We offer a range of pre-configured, web-enabled, configurable applications specifically designed to manage ERP master data.

These applications ensure ERP master data is Business-Ready Data Every Day™.

MDMb™ One View of The Truth™ Global Visibility. Now. BackOffice believes master data management is the process by which business users can gain global visibility and access to their master data stored in multiple and disparate legacy applications. With this global visibility and access, you will monitor, measure, produce metrics and global data standards, leading to a high level of quality and consistency in your global

data. At last you can apply global data standards to data that is hosted by multiple applications! One View of the TruthTM is more than a goal – it can be a reality with the BackOffice MDM b™ solution. You can achieve complete visibility to your master data across all your applications globally within 90 days.

Imagine one application that allows you to find any customer, vendor, employee or material regardless of the source system.

Finding a customer in your EBS, JDE or BPCS system is one mouse click away. Find and track duplicate materials, customers or vendors, all from the same web-enabled screen.

BackOffice Associates’ MDM b lets you reap the benefits of global business-process harmonisation today. MDM b provides you with virtual real-time access to and visibility of your master data in order to apply global standards and build global business processes that improve your efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Master data management for the business MDM b allows you to:

• Use your current application suite as data-collection devices • Gather data in a central repository • Present your data as though it were in a single system • Train a small group of users to define and enforce data standards from a centralised view of all master data

• Identify data replicates vs. data duplicates • Reduce data standards violations via built-in, automated workflow

• Centrally monitor and measure global master data regardless of source system

• Build global cross-references; duplicates and overlaps are identified for remediation and consolidation.

MDM b provides you key business benefits:

• Eliminates costly development time with easy to use flexible web-enabled platform

• Leverages existing resources with no required end-user retraining

• Maintains performance of source systems.

MDM b provides One View of the Truth for your global data in weeks, not months or years.

Headquar tered in South Harwich, Massachusetts, BackOffice Associates is a global corporation with additional offices in Australia, India, Singapore, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

T: +1 508 430 7100 E: info @ boaweb.com W: www.boaweb.com

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<<[ ] 58

company profile ]

Wipro Wipro (NYSE:WIT) is a $6 billion global provider of IT Services, Outsourced R&D, Infrastructure Outsourcing, Business Process Services, and Business Consulting. With over 25 years in the global delivery of technology services, Wipro is the world’s largest third-par ty provider of R&D services and the world’s first PCMM and CMMi level company.

Wipro is the first to perfect a unique quality methodology, the Wipro Way – a combination of Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen and CMM – to provide unmatched business value and predictability to our clients. Wipro’s formal structure for innovation has resulted in reusable frameworks, components, and IP that speeds time to market and reduces the cost of innovation for our clients. Our commitment to listen to our clients and engage with them as par tners for the long-term is a constant, resulting in a repeat business ratio of 96 per cent.

Wipro is the leading strategic IT par tner for companies across Australia – offering integrated IT solutions. We plan, deploy, sustain and maintain the IT lifecycle through our total outsourcing, consulting services, business solutions and professional services.

Backed by our strong quality processes and rich experience managing global clients across various business ver ticals, we align IT strategies to your business goals.

We have more than 1500 employees working for Australia and New Zealand clients, and have development centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Wipro and SAP Wipro is an elite SAP Global Services Par tner, rated by industry analysts as a leader in SAP implementation projects, SOA services and CRM consulting services. Wipro offers a full range of SAP services from consulting and design, development and implementation, upgrades, to maintenance and suppor t.

Wipro’s comprehensive SAP solutions offerings can be broadly classified as business transformation and operational transformation services:

New delivery paradigms: Wipro’s SAP practice has made significant progress in industrialisation of services using alternate delivery models like Flex AM and Flex AD. These alternate delivery models are established as standard delivery models across our entire customer base. These offerings are well received by analysts, the market and among our existing customer base.

• Flex AM – FlexDelivery for Application Management: FlexDelivery is Wipro’s innovative delivery model for application suppor t services. It focuses on benefits of scalability and service standardisation, with a built-in design for handling variability in work volume and the ability to drive efficiencies – thus giving customers year-on-year productivity improvement. We use an integrated FlexDelivery platform of tools and processes that enhances reusability and efficiencies in suppor t process.

• Flex AD – FlexDelivery for Application Development: Wipro’s innovative service model is essentially a catalogue of productised services which will be executed in a modular approach by a set of specialists in the respective streams. Service segmentation, based on market trends and solution lifecycle, is the distinct feature of this model. It offers a catalogue of standardised service offerings ranging from industrialised services like RICEFbased offerings to cutting-edge productised solutions like business analytics, telecom in a box and so on.

Co-innovation with SAP Wipro, in collaboration with SAP, is the first global par tner to host a joint Wipro-SAP (SPARCS) lab. This state-of-the-ar t lab based in Wipro campus in Bangalore has been a key driver of co-innovation between Wipro and SAP, developing next generation SAP-based solutions.

Some of the activities that will be carried out at SPARCS lab are as follows:

• Business transformation: Includes engagements which enable and manage change; define and implement, harmonise, and optimise ‘business standards’ for tomorrow

• Early experience with new SAP solutions

• Operational transformation: Includes engagements which enhance business efficiency through ‘outcome-based services’ across applications and business platforms.

• Architecture and co-development best practices

Consistently delivering value to customers Wipro was one of the pioneers of Global Delivery Model and have exacted and optimised the model through initiatives around quality and continuous improvements. In fact, Wipro is the first organisation globally to be CMM Level 5 V1.2 cer tified.

The robustness of our delivery models can be gauged from the fact that Wipro has an enviable record of 1500+ enterprise apps engagements in the last 10 years.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

• Create proof points and prototypes with SAP

• Development of tools and accelerators that can be leveraged across projects.

Wipro’s SPARCS lab can be centrally accessed by all Wipro consultants worldwide on a secure network to reuse all the prototypes, best practice kits, and tools and accelerators in their respective engagements.

Wipro has been working closely in the areas of sustainability, supply chain services and co-developing industry solutions.

<<[ ] 59

Wipro’s SAP practice has made significant progress in industrialisation of services using alternate delivery models...

Awards and recognition Wipro has won global recognition and awards for its strengths in the SAP services space, including: • SAP Pinnacle Award 2010 for Application Outsourcing Par tner of the Year • SAP Pinnacle Award 2010 for Run SAP Par tner of the Year • SAP Pinnacle Award 2008 for Thought Leadership on eSOA • SAP Pinnacle Award 2007 for Software Solution Leadership • SAP Pinnacle Award 2007 for Best APAC Par tner.

Key firsts for the company include:

2. One of the largest oil and gas companies: in a major project which lasted for 16 months, Wipro has implemented a number of SAP modules including Finance, Procurement and Data Warehouse. The project involved up to 140 consultants of whom 55 per cent were functional and 45 per cent were developers. In terms of effor t, 70 per cent of the work was done on-site and 30 per cent offshore.

3. Global tobacco company: SAP application management and suppor t for one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, with presence across ANZ, APAC, Europe and Americas. Cross-module suppor t aimed at reducing suppor t costs and backlog of incidents.

4. European forest products major: Wipro used a template

• The only Asian SAP service provider to par tner SAP on SAP Business Suite 7

developed by the client, complemented this template and

• Only offshore SAP par tner to offer RunSAP services

Canada and the US. 120 resources involved at the project’s

• Only SAP par tner to host a joint Wipro-SAP par tner research centre • Cer tified SAP Application Management Services par tner • Leading SAP BPX (BPX Community Projects) • Leading SAP SDN (Highest mindshare in community).

Some key engagements 1. German electrical systems major: presently implementing a par t of their 77-country ERP roll-out project, which will integrate their global operations bringing in significant system standardisation and process integration business benefits.

rolled it out across eight countries, including Germany, peak time.

5. European logistics giant: the project scope includes SAP FSCM implementation and roll-out, ERP implementation and BW suppor t. The SAP FSCM project involves template development and roll-out for 57 countries, with scope covering credit management, collections, dispute management and biller direct. The SAP HR project includes template roll-out for 13 countries and three suppor t entities, and providing SAP HR suppor t for 13 countries.

T: 02 9394 8100 E: info @wipro.com W: www.wipro.com

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company profile ]

IBM IBM ® is a global technology and innovation company with operations in over 170 countries. IBMers around the world invent and integrate hardware, software and services to help forward-thinking enterprises, institutions and people everywhere succeed in building a smar ter planet.

for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) to determine the technology needed to manage the vast amounts of data produced by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project.

•

Smarter Planet

IBM is building a Smar ter Planet – City by City. From Stockholm to London, Hamburg, Singapore and our own Brisbane, IBM is, through smar ter energy grids, water distribution, health systems, environmental sustainability and integrated transpor tation, enabling our cities to become more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent.

More instrumented by providing the technologies required to enable a smar ter city through new technologies, billion transistors per human, 30 billion RFID tags, sensors embedded across entire ecosystems, supply chains, healthcare networks and transpor tation.

Interconnected through networks, processes, communications, applications and social integration resulting in unprecedented amounts of data and information.

Intelligent by developing algorithms, business intelligence strategies and powerful applications designed to analyse the mountains of data, turning it into intelligent, immediate and accurate information enabling suppor table and smar ter business decisions and actions.

Locally, in Australia, IBM has put into practice its framework for a Smar ter Planet, delivering real innovation, environmental sustainability, safety and value to our clients and your customers through:

•

Deployment of a national roll-out of a Chronic Disease Management Network (CDM-Net) with Precedence Health, a tool enabling members of a patient’s healthcare team to share and track the patient’s healthcare plan and to collaborate on treatment.

•

Development of an intelligent network roadmap for Western Power, to enable it to deliver more reliable, sustainable and cost-effective energy solutions to homes and businesses in the south-west of Western Australia.

•

Design and build of IT architecture to suppor t rollout of 12,000 sensing devices across Energy Australia’s distribution network, enabling it to deliver energy more efficiently and reliably, and allow a greater number and range of environmental solutions to be integrated into the electricity network.

•

Design and build of an asset management system for Nor thern Territory Power and Water, aimed at delivering electricity, water and sewerage services to its customers more efficiently.

•

Par tnership with Western Australia’s International Centre

>> www.insidesap.com.au

In Brisbane, IBM delivered a smar ter, integrated and more intelligent transpor tation solution for Queensland Motorways Ltd.

Working with SAP IBM continues to invest in and grow our SAP delivery capability. In 2010, IBM has grown its SAP delivery capability by 20 per cent and provides services across Program and Project Management, Change Management, Business Process, Functional and Technical Configuration, Infrastructure and Application Suppor t.

We have real strength with broad local and global references in ERP transformations and have recently continued to evolve across the new SAP capabilities including:

• • • •

Customer Relationship Management Supply Chain and Warehouse Management Business Warehouse and BusinessObjects, and Business Planning.

In order to enhance our delivery excellence, IBM has invested significantly in 2010 to become the first and only consultancy to achieve SAP cer tification across its SAP delivery team.

“The SAP cer tification program is designed to more accurately validate professional experience, technical proficiency and the degree to which an individual’s SAP skills and knowledge are current,” says Paul Rogers, ANZ SAP Practice Lead, IBM Global Business Services. “We felt it was impor tant to take this step to ensure a level of quality assurance and capability in the work we deliver to our clients, underpinned by the need to ensure our consultants are kept current with the evolving SAP software.”

Mark Hettler, VP Field Services and Suppor t, SAP ANZ, endorsed IBM’s commitment to full SAP cer tification. “The SAP Cer tification Program is designed to help consultants distinguish themselves in the highly competitive market for SAP skills and we are delighted that IBM is our first par tner to make this full commitment and differentiate themselves by taking this step.”

T: 132 426 E : askibm @ au1.ibm.com W: ibm.com/smar terplanet/au

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<<[ ] 63

[ company profile

Consulting Networks Consulting Networks provides a ‘one stop shop’ service to SAP and Microsoft customers who require the best in business and consulting, systems implementation and infrastructure virtualisation solutions.

• Accountability: We adhere to a philosophy of genuine care for our

Consulting Networks is the business, applications and infrastructure consulting division of the CN Group, a privately-owned Australian IT services company headquartered in North Ryde, NSW. Also comprising of the Computer Networks division, the CN Group’s core competencies include IT consulting and infrastructure management for small, medium and large enterprises using Microsoft and SAP-based applications.

Consulting Networks’ core services include:

Consulting Networks’ customised SAP solutions provide a premium service to a wide variety of industry types and business sizes. The loyalty and advocacy of its customers is testament to how well it meets their needs and delivers on its promise. This loyalty has enabled Consulting Networks to grow to a point where it has been able to expand its business operations and offer its specialised services Australia-wide.

Consulting Networks caters for customers wanting to implement and run solutions on their own infrastructure in their own premises, to those looking for a completely outsourced Platform-as-a-Service solution (PaaS) hosted from within our own data centres.

Always innovating and ahead of the pack, Consulting Networks recently became Australia’s first SAP certified Hosting Partner.

What sets Consulting Networks apart from the rest?

Our customers choose Consulting Networks for various reasons, including:

• Delivery expertise: Our team has over 100 years’ combined experience in SAP consulting.

• Innovation: We are the only certified Australian IT services company offering a scalable, virtualised SAP offering for SMBs via a PaaS hosting model.

• Success: We are the fastest growing SAP partner in Australia.

• Value: We offer our customers flexible commercial terms that best suit their business model.

customers, collaborative teamwork and technical innovation.

1. SAP Hosting Consulting Networks is the only locally certified SAP Hosting Partner, which together with our Systems Integration Partner accreditation affords us a unique position and opportunity to provide our ‘one stop shop’ services to the market.

2. SAP Implementation Consulting Networks offers SAP application consulting services in a selection of niche areas. Focusing on a few niche areas rather than trying to be all things to all people is what makes Consulting Networks great at what it does.

3. Project Management Consulting Networks offers a full range of project and program services to cater for small through to large scale global programs of work. We have a proven track record for delivering projects in both the public and private sectors.

4. Business Consulting We work with clients to identify industry opportunities and challenges and determine where and how to compete in the marketplace. Our experience includes customer growth strategies and merger and acquisition advice.

5. SAP Upgrades Consulting Networks offers a full range of services to customers needing to upgrade their SAP environment. We conduct upgrade assessments and assist customers in development of the business cases that are so often needed to justify the expense associated with an upgrade.

6. Quality Assurance Consulting Networks’ quality assurance services are focused on getting it right the first time. Our reliable independent advice and processes give our customers peace of mind and covers project management reviews, gateway reviews and benefits realisation.

T: 1300 886 676 E: info@consultingnetworks.com.au W: www.consultingnetworks.com.au

The Consulting Networks executive team

The Consulting Networks team is headed up by Brian Pereira and Richard Gibbs. The executive team also includes James Gao, Chief Technology Officer, CN Group and Mark Anderson, General Manager, Consulting Networks.

Brian Pereira, CEO, CN Group As CEO of the CN Group, Brian’s focus is on growing a consulting business in the SAP enterprise technology space, focusing on helping organisations run their projects and achieve the hard dollar benefits quickly. With more than 20 years’ experience as a proven and successful consulting and sales executive Brian Pereira in the technology industry, he is known for being an innovative and creative professional who consistently achieves his operating plan objectives while increasing revenues.

Richard Gibbs, Chief Operations Officer, CN Group and Managing Director, Consulting Networks. With over 23 years’ experience in IT, Richard has worked across a diverse range of industries in both consulting and business roles. He has a proven track record of running companies and delivering projects that have re-shaped organisational business processes Richard Gibbs to deliver benefits. Richard is a strategic and tactical thinker who is driven by a need to ensure that information technology is not deployed for technology’s sake, but to achieve tangible business benefits.

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<<[ ] 64

company profile ]

Innogence Limited Innogence Limited is a strategic consulting firm specialising in SAP Business Intelligence and BusinessObjects. We can help you transform the way you understand, derive and use your business intelligence.

• Sizing, installation and fine-tuning of BI systems

Founded in 2005, Innogence is a public company that is Australian owned and operated. Innogence was born from our senior management team’s desire to share their specialist knowledge and insight.

• System reviews and health checks.

Innogence is a recognised leader in the SAP BI and BusinessObjects space. The rapidly growing team at Innogence currently consists of more than 80 permanent employees and with further growth expected, Innogence will continue to employ only the best from around the world.

One of the founding principles of Innogence is to deliver the best BI consultancy services to the Australian market. How do we achieve this? The whole company is dedicated to one area of expertise, delivering BI projects where most of our competitors still believe they can deliver a range of services. Most of our clients want to engage with an expert BI consultancy firm to provide the skills, thought leadership and additional resources to deliver projects that they may otherwise lack.

We are regarded as having the best consultants in our industry and pride ourselves on our flexibility, enthusiasm and common sense approach. By engaging with Innogence, you’re not just getting elite BI staff – you are getting peace of mind that the job will be done properly. We don’t just deliver the standard solution – we deliver the benefits that you are counting on to drive your business to the next level.

Our experience

Innogence has produced some remarkable achievements since its inception in 2005. Our experienced SAP BI and BusinessObjects consultants are specialists in SAP BI with widespread experience across many industries.

As a team, sometimes collaborating with other consulting firms, we have increased information accessibility for leading organisations around Australia.

We have worked with customers from a range of industry sectors to provide greater clarity and visibility of their business data, including Woolworths Limited, George Weston Foods, Olympus, Corporate Express, Cadbury, Franklins and the Federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

We can help you with: • Implementation of SAP BI solutions • Implementation of BusinessObjects solutions • BI strategy • Upgrading of BI systems • Business case development • Executive dashboards • Data management standardisation

>> www.insidesap.com.au

• Project management • Understanding and use of new technologies and best practice Get the most out of SAP BI and BusinessObjects products: • Deliver projects on budget and on time • Generate more accurate reports faster • Implement better budgeting and planning processes.

Helping you explore new opportunities

By focusing on SAP’s Business Intelligence and BusinessObjects, we can ensure you have what you need to achieve the results you want.

We are SAP and BusinessObjects specialists who intend to stay that way. Our insights and clarity mean you can better leverage the systems you already have.

We focus on the BI functions that are most relevant to you, such as: • Business warehousing • Reporting • Planning solutions • Portal integration • SAP analytics • Information bursting.

Whether you are planning an SAP Business Intelligence project, a BusinessObjects project or are interested in what SAP or BusinessObjects can deliver, we know how to scope, design, implement and test the best system for your business.

Delivering reporting excellence with iRekon

Most organisations have workflows, procedures and policies in place to control and minimise the likelihood of data inaccuracy as data enters their systems. In most instances, however, organisations have no such controls in place as data is moved from the underlying systems and into the SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW).

Experience shows that factors such as missing loads, double loads, unexpected downtimes in source or SAP BW system, changes in business rules and other unforeseen factors could affect data accuracy and data availability in an organisation’s SAP BW system.

As such, Innogence has developed the iRekon Reconciliation Workbench, which can form part of your company’s strategy of using an Enterprise Data Warehouse to deliver reporting excellence across your organisation. iRekon highlights to an organisation when data in SAP BW does not reconcile with the information obtained from the underlying data systems. Through regular and thorough checks on the data loading processes, iRekon gives you and your users complete confidence in the integrity and accuracy of the underlying data for reporting, analysis and decision-making purposes.

T: 1300 466 643 E: enquiries@innogence.com W: www.innogence.com

innovation and accuracy

Rapid Implementation of SAP BusinessObjects

More and more organisations are taking Business Intelligence to the next level by implementing SAP BusinessObjects on top of their Data Warehouse. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (BI) solutions empower your staff to make effective, informed decisions based on solid data and analysis.

Innogence can implement your BusinessObjects BI solution in record time, ensuring the value of your information stored in the data warehouse is maximised and integration pitfalls are avoided.

For more information please call 1300 446 643 or email enquiries@innogence.com

Real-Time Flexible Finance & Sales Reporting for SAP® via Excel®

Download FREE trial software today

Interact directly with SAP Data using the familiarity and flexibility of Microsoft Excel • Save time, gain actionable insights and empower your team.

• Harnass existing Excel skills and securely report in real-time directly from your SAP system.

• Perfect for consolidations, management and statutory reporting, ad-hoc analyses, audit lead schedules and reconcilliations.

Other SAP solutions from IQX include: • • • • • •

GLSU for Excel based Journal processing Budget Loader for Excel Based budgeting & forecasting SharePoint web parts for SAP SharePoint InfoPath forms for SAP SharePoint Document Management for SAP Browser and mobile solutions for PO, PR approval and Invoice verification

<<[ ] 67

[ company profile

IQX Business Solutions IQX Business Solutions provides business insight, collaboration and productivity solutions for SAP customers.

Our value proposition is in providing actionable intelligence to all staff, enhancing collaboration between departments, and enabling a greater degree of self-sufficiency and productivity by embedding SAP into the familiar Microsoft Office environment.

By providing packaged solutions and expertise to address usability, adoption, agility, and budgetary challenges experienced by many organisations, IQX helps organisations realise appreciable value from their existing SAP and Microsoft investments.

Excel and SAP

IQX offers several Excel-based SAP solutions that bring together the familiarity and flexibility of Excel with the structure and power of SAP. Solutions include GL Wand and Sales Wand for real-time finance and sales reporting, GLSU for simple, flexible and pre-validated journal processing and Budget Loader for budgeting and forecasting. IQstock assists with processing physical inventory count results by supporting Excel-based capturing and consolidation of actual count results and variance analyses prior to submission to SAP.

SharePoint and SAP

Deliver business insights by combining SAP and non-SAP data and transactions, structured and unstructured documents and visual indicators in powerful dynamic role-based composite workspaces.

IQX SharePoint integration enables the searching of SAP data directly from the corporate intranet for timely ad-hoc information enquiries.

Transform business process efficiency through IQX collaboration solutions by spanning SAP and non-SAP information and transactions and involving SAP, non-SAP and even external users. IQX implements a range of agile SharePoint-centric Business Process Management tools to support complex, real-world business processes.

Rapidly deploy, automate and maintain common business processes including requisitions and master data maintenance requests using IQX template InfoPath forms with embedded SAP integration.

Enable your SharePoint environment to serve as the repository for all unstructured business content (for example, contracts, images, and scanned documents) with IQX, while supporting seamless integration to SAP master data and transactions.

Improve productivity by consolidating system functionality to provide role-based workspaces, in the familiar and intuitive Microsoft Office environment. IQX provides a range of SAP-integrated web parts for common business scenarios including customer service, credit management and procurement.

Duet

IQX is a strong supporter of the Duet solution co-developed by SAP and Microsoft. The current version of Duet is constrained in the scope of scenarios supported, and Duet Enterprise will only be available from 2011. However, IQX together with our broad range of local and international partners is able to deliver the promise of Duet today, with integrated Office add-ins and SharePoint web parts and forms. Our solutions can facilitate and help motivate a subsequent implementation of Duet Enterprise.

In summary, IQX allows organisations to see, share and do more with their investments in SAP and Microsoft technologies. The result is re-energised and delighted end-users who feel empowered to access SAP from within the comfort of their day-to-day system tools, to gain timely input to critical business decisions, to engage colleagues who may or may not be SAP users, and to execute functions in a natural manner in line with real-world business processes.

T: 02 9432 7813 E: sales@iqxbusiness.com W: www.iqxbusiness.com

Excel4apps Excel4apps is a provider of best-in-class Excel-based repor ting software for Oracle and SAP users. Its awardwinning GL Wand products help Oracle and SAP financial professionals save time by delivering accurate and secure information in the familiar Excel environment. The company serves a broad range of industries, including financial services, education, utilities, insurance, hospitality, manufacturing and engineering. All products are available for immediate download and free trial, installing in minutes with no data warehouse and no additional hardware, setup or security configuration needed. Excel4apps maintains offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates and South Africa.

GL Wand for use with SAP is an innovative Excel-based repor ting tool for finance depar tments running SAP Financials. GL Wand enables highly efficient finance repor ting, shor ter month-ends and faster refreshes directly from SAP. GL Wand for use with SAP is easy to install and maintain, easy to use, tightly integrated and enforces SAP authorisations. It requires no data warehouse. The benefits are a tool that makes financial repor ting using Excel simple, accurate and fast.

What our customers say...

“Because the reports access real-time SAP data, we are assured that we are analysing the most relevant data possible.”

Andrew Rober ts, Finance Manager, Fletcher Insulation “Our very first month-end on SAP was made easier by migrating the trial version of GL Wand into production.”

Simon Taylor, Finance Manager, Sphere Healthcare “GL Wand has proven extremely valuable in accessing our Oracle data with Excel.”

Michael Hinck, Finance Systems Project Manager, HBO “GL Wand has been a big hit with Cairn’s Finance team.”

Chris Hebden, Cairn Energy Plc “GL Wand is a fabulous tool, we love it.”

Donna Holley, Spectranetics “It took less than two hours to train report users. The time savings for everyone are incredible.”

Francis Nocom, Application Manager. Cochlear

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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company profile ]

HCL Axon The merger of Axon and HCL to form HCL AXON has created a unique SAP focused consultancy that offers the only truly global delivery model combining onshore business transformation with offshore realisation and application support capabilities.

This combination ensures our clients are able to cost-effectively implement, manage and evolve SAP solutions that deliver tangible business benefits – benefits that we frequently underwrite. The combined synergies created in HCL AXON are rapidly making us the region’s number one consultancy for business transformation.

HCL AXON ANZ is headquartered in Sydney with major offices located in Auckland, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne. Our highly skilled, motivated and passionate local consultants, project and program managers and directors are supported onshore, near-shore and offshore by over 5000 consultants globally in 60 offices and 15 global delivery centres across 24 countries. This global access has been successfully provided to our clients locally for many years and demonstrates our value and ability to deliver on our promises.

Accelerate value

Industry solutions

Our industry reference models define the end-to-end processes for key business functions. HCL AXON has developed detailed best practice business process models that enable the processes in the industry reference model. These process models are designed and adapted to meet our customers’ business requirements and as dictated by both functional and usability requirements in the enabling technology. The requirements are mapped to the SAP Business Process Platform and HCL AXON ’s industry solution to ensure a best fit for our customers.

Guaranteed outcomes

Ultimately our engagements are driven by the need to deliver certainty to our clients in terms of:

• • • • •

On time, to budget Guaranteed service levels Committed cost reductions Realised cashable benefits Achieved business metric improvements.

HCL AXON is a pioneer in value realisation and was named the first SAP Certified Value Management Partner in 2010 and winner of the SAP Awards of Excellence for Best Value Realisation for Queensland Rail in 2008/09. HCL AXON was also named SI Co-Innovation for Service and Best Value Realisation in 2009 by SAP.

HCL AXON regularly contracts to the delivery of specific business outcomes, whether it is a reduction in a call centre’s average call handling time, guaranteed infrastructure management cost reductions or a particular cost saving or performance improvement.

Leveraging this capability, we are able to meet our clients’ local and multinational requirements. To date, we have implemented solutions in over 85 countries globally. When compared with other global system integrators, we rank number four in terms of scale, and number one against Indian offshore providers.

HCL AXON designs, builds and operates world-class SAP solutions that deliver measurable business benefits to our clients through a complete set of global business and technical services throughout the lifecycle of your transformation or system implementation.

HCL AXON is recognised as one of the most experienced SAP consultancies in the world with over 1100 major programs delivered in the past 15 years.

• • •

Full lifecycle capabilities

T: 02 8081 5840 E: anz@hcl-axon.com W: www.hcl-axon.com

Industry focused with unparalleled experience

What our clients say

Global SAP Services Partner

“We particularly appreciated the time, effort and detailed documentation during the process training, user acceptance testing and post Go-Live training; it ensured our staff are confident and able to work successfully with the new system.”

Benefits led with guaranteed outcomes.

We understand that successful implementation engagements require both on-site client engagement to drive process design and business change while simultaneously leveraging the significant cost and time zone benefits associated with cost effective offshore and near-shore, round-the-clock delivery centres.

Paul Buckingham, Supply Chain Director, Australian Aerospace “[HCL AXON] are recognised as one of the leading SAP logistics partners in Australia and we are very happy with the level of service and expertise they deliver.”

Industry expertise

Andrew Goslett, Logistics Improvement Manager, Orica

HCL AXON employs the best in the industry so we can offer our clients the best solution. On average, each consultant has a minimum of eight years’ industry experience. We also partner with SAP to ensure our clients leverage to the fullest possible extent the experience of both organisations, whether it is filling known product whitespace through the development of the iMRO solution or partnering on value engineering engagements to develop robust business cases.

“SAP chose HCL AXON for this co-development agreement for MRO because of their proven track record in SAP solution implementation and development at aviation and aerospace MRO organisations around the world. SAP is committed to this co-development and intends to work with HCL AXON to increase customers’ return on investment realised through deployment of SAP solutions and iMRO.”

HCL Axon has vertical expertise in utilities, travel and logistics, aerospace, public sector, retail and CPG, oil and gas, life sciences, hitech and manufacturing, mining, and healthcare.

>> www.insidesap.com.au

Klaus Helmann, SVP, Industry Solutions, SAP AG

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[ company profile

CIBER CIBER is a leading provider of SAP solutions and services across Australia and New Zealand. CIBER’s services are offered globally on a project or strategic staffing basis, in both custom and enterprise resource planning (ERP) package environments, and across all technology platforms, operating systems and infrastructures.

Since 1974, CIBER has earned a reputation as a unique firm in a fastpaced marketplace. CIBER collaborates with customers to consistently and cost-effectively plan, execute and deliver high-quality SAP services and results. CIBER’s consultants are seasoned SAP professionals who build long-term, trusted relationships and bring a high level of energy, integrity, experience and value to client work. In addition, CIBER has strong partnerships with best-in-class technology vendors, enabling CIBER to remain objective while working with clients to determine the most appropriate hardware, software and services to meet their business requirements.

Practical innovation delivers tangible business results

Practical innovation is not a new concept for CIBER. We have been using innovative ideas and technology to help our clients improve their situations since 1974. CIBER experts take the practical – the sensible, the functional, the proven – and we leverage the latest technologies to enhance your systems and processes. Combining the practical with the innovative is a unique and valuable proposition that communicates how we do business.

Companies everywhere are feeling the pressures of today’s economic demands, and IT departments are being forced to find ways to do more with less. They are taking a closer look at infrastructure and processes – comparing them to business needs and budgets. Smart companies look for practical innovation to solve their problems. Smart companies turn to CIBER. At CIBER, we start with a practical, deep dive into your applications, processes, platforms, requirements, and business objectives. We listen carefully to your concerns and challenges, taking the time to thoroughly understand your business needs and objectives, and always looking for ways to improve them. We look at your existing situation to see what can be done to optimise and streamline what you already have; then we infuse innovative, new ideas and technologies where needed, recommending just the right solutions to bring better, faster results for your success. Then we deliver on our commitments with quality, accelerating speed to value. That’s practical innovation. That’s CIBER. With CIBER’s emphasis on local accountability, you have a partner close by, who is focused on your business objectives and who cares about your success – because your success means our success. That’s practical.

CIBER leverages global resources and IT solutions and accelerators, which are built on tried and proven experience, not from scratch.

That’s innovative. Delivering speed to market with better, measurable business results. That’s practical innovation. That’s CIBER. T: 02 8920 0887 E: sales@ciber.com W: www.ciber.com.au

Practical Innovation.

You need a partner that's been around the block, knows SAP solutions inside and out, and understands the challenges your business faces. We know you want the job done right, but cost effectively and with minimal risk. We are the experienced SAP partner providing practical solutions, with innovative thinking to prepare you for the future. That’s Practical Innovation.

Nearly 100% of our clients said they would work with us again, and recommend us to others. Meet with us and find out why.

CIBER's practical, flexible approach delivers innovation and value.

It’s Time to do Smart Business Level 2, 201 Miller Street North Sydney NSW 2060 61 2 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

Novell Vision: Making IT Work As One™ Mission: Reduce Cost, Manage Complexity, Mitigate Risk

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. ®

The #1 Linux platform for SAP applications.

For more information, please call 1800 668 355 or email us at mbartolini@novell.com.

Strategy: Become the leader in the intelligent workload management market with WorkloadIQ Mixed IT environments are a reality for almost all organisations, but you can’t let this undermine your ability to compete. Through our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments allowing people and technology to work as one.

With a unique combination of the best-engineered and most interoperable Linux and IT management software, we lower cost, complexity and risk on virtually every platform. Our technical prowess and applied technology give our customers the infinite IT flexibility and agility they need to meet and exceed their organisation objectives. Our internal team, the extend community of open source developers and our ecosystem of high-impact partnerships are truly Making IT Work As One.

Data Centre • Enterprise Linux Servers • Virtualisation and Workload Management • Business Service Management Identity and Security • Identity and Access Management • Compliance Management • Security Management End-user Computing • Collaboration • Enterprise Linux Desktop • Endpoint Management.

T: 1800 668 355 E: mbartolini@novell.com.au W: www.novell.com

Making IT Work As One™

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[ company profile

Oxygen Business Solutions Founded in 2001, Oxygen Business Solutions is the leading specialist SAP consulting and services company across Australia and New Zealand, measured by the number of specialist SAP consultants and SAP certified technical support staff.

From a heritage in process manufacturing and consumer goods, Oxygen now operates in all major business sectors across Australia and New Zealand. Oxygen attracts and retains the best people in the business with around 220 highly skilled and experienced consultants working from offices in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington.

Oxygen understands that each customer project and support engagement is different. We work to provide pragmatic solutions that help drive success and ensure that each organisation maximises their investment in SAP. Oxygen’s growth and market momentum are the result of a company culture which values and rewards customer responsiveness as much as technical excellence. Our culture drives the achievements of which we are most proud – such as our strong customer references, our low staff turnover, and our long track record of successful projects.

An award-winning certified SAP partner

Oxygen is a certified SAP Services Partner and holds formal SAP Customer Competency Centre accreditation, servicing and supporting one of the largest SAP platforms in the region. Oxygen is a trusted implementation partner and consistent winner of SAP’s Customer Awards of Excellence, the most recent including two 2010 awards for ‘Best SAP Upgrade’ for Carter Holt Harvey Building Supplies (CHH),

and ‘Best SAP NetWeaver’ implementation for NCI Limited.

Innovative SAP solutions

Oxygen recognises many organisations are under pressure to innovate swiftly and has developed a way of delivering standard SAP, or (where it makes sense) complementary partner solutions across a number of key business functions or project processes, to help clients realise quick wins.

Oxygen SmartStart solutions are pre-packaged offerings that allow organisations to get a product or service up and running for less cost, in less time, with lower risk. The SmartStart by Oxygen approach reduces cost, decreases implementation time and delivers a defined set of benefits. It also brings together the best non-SAP solutions to help customers extract more value from their core SAP investment.

Oxygen has also developed a range of rapid deployment SAP solutions specifically tuned to meet the challenges faced by organisations operating within specific industries. These solutions combine the rich functionality of SAP’s Business All-in-One software with Oxygen’s unique rapid design, implementation and deployment program. They utilise Oxygen and SAP Best Practices, a library of pre-configured business scenarios that helps utility companies realise business benefits without extensive configuration, combined with Oxygen’s rapid implementation accelerators.

T: 1800 002 354 E: info@oxygenforbusiness.com W: www.oxygenforbusiness.com

Save time, money and resources.

Winshuttle’s products replace manual data entry by easily and securely shuttling data between Microsoft Excel and SAP systems without programming.

To find our more about WinShuttle from Oxygen visit www.oxygenforbusiness.com

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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company profile ]

Revolution IT Revolution IT is Asia Pacific’s leading software testing and application quality management solutions provider. With 200+ consultants onshore, Revolution IT has the largest independent quality assurance team in Australia and is SAP Australia’s authorised testing partner, with experience testing several SAP solutions including ECC, CRM, SRM, PLM, SCM, XI/PI, EP and BW/BI/BO. We have worked with 100+ clients during the past six years and have a wealth of experience, industry best practices, methodologies and tools. We can assist you with the appropriate people, processes and tools to plan, test and successfully deliver your projects on time and on budget. Our key focus is to provide quality throughout the entire application lifecycle.

Mitigate your business risks with SAP testing services

Revolution IT’s SAP testing services range from complete test outsourcing and test management to providing test analysts to augment your internal test team. Our services help you deliver high quality SAP implementations, roll-outs, upgrades and maintenance.

Revolution IT assures functional capability and accuracy of your SAP solutions to business. Our testing team helps you to deliver performance, security and reliability to SAP business users.

• • • •

Unique team with SAP and testing expertise Proprietary ‘V-on-ValueSAP Test Methodology’ Ready to use SAP testing templates State-of-the-art SAP test lab and PoCs

• • • • •

Pioneer in Australia with SAP TAO competency Ready to use SAP test cases repository Frequently discovered defects repository SAP testing knowledge repository SAP best practices test accelerators.

SAP project management and methodology consulting

Revolution IT’s SAP project managers believe that quality SAP projects begin with managing timelines and budgets to ensure business value. We make it our priority to deliver high-quality and efficient solutions to maximise your business results and financial gains from your SAP project investment.

Rich experience in successful SAP project delivery across Australia • Qualified in PMBOK and Prince2 methodologies • In-depth knowledge of ‘Accelerated SAP methodology’ • Adherence to SAP project management best practices • Access to Revolution IT Project Management Knowledge Portal • SAP Solution Manager Center of Excellence.

Contact us to schedule a free quality improvement workshop with Bala Kalimuthu, SAP Practice Principal and #2 most influential person in the SAP market (Inside SAP 2010 ‘Top 10 Most Influential People’).

T: 03 9600 2566 E: sap@revolutionit.com.au W: www.revolutionit.com.au

Mitigate your business risks by choosing Revolution IT Australia’s #1 independent SAP quality assurance practice Revolution IT is Asia Pacific’s leading software testing and application quality management solutions provider with the largest and most highly skilled team of SAP testing and quality assurance specialists.

•

Largest application quality management solutions provider in Australia — 200+ staff and 100+ clients

•

Fastest growing SAP practice in Australia with dedicated focus on SAP testing

•

Testing services delivered to 28 SAP clients in FY 2009/10

•

65+ SAP quality assurance team with expertise in large testing engagements

•

Proprietary SAP testing accelerators including V-on-ValueSAP Test Methodology, SAP testing templates and SAP Test Cases Repository

•

Expertise in cutting edge SAP quality assurance and testing tools with state of the art SAP test lab and SAP TAO competency

©

Contact sap@revolutionit.com.au or call (03) 9600 2566 today to schedule a free quality improvement workshop with Bala Kalimuthu, SAP Practice Principal and #2 most influential person in the SAP market.

sap@revolutionit.com.au www.revolutionit.com.au

>> www.insidesap.com.au

For all your Automated Document Processing

ReadSoft ReadSoft is a global leader in Document Process Automation, specialising in the automation of all paper-driven and customer-facing processes for medium to large enterprises and Shared Service Centres (SSC).

Are Smart?

Areyou youAPAP Smart

Our AP automation solutions have been selected by an impressive range of multinationals seeking to improve control, efficiency and effectiveness and offer an attractive, measurable return on investment (ROI). With more than 5000 customers, including Caltex, Rio Tinto, Intel, Apple, DuPont, Siemens, Porsche, Kellogg’s and Orica, amongst others, ReadSoft is the solution of choice.

ReadSoft delivers and supports leading OCR (Optical Character Recognition or image capture technology) and workflow applications through a seamlessly integrated platform for SAP users.

Invoice data is automatically captured and transposed into the SAP system, immediately eliminating errors associated with manual keying in of data, whilst an image of the corresponding invoice is always available via the standard “Attachment” button in SAP. The benefit of the solution is having a real-time overview of the workflow – where invoices are in the process, who is approving it, and who is responsible for the next action.

The experience gained from working with leading organisations striving for world-class performance in Accounts Payable (AP) and Shared Service Centre (SSC) Automation has given ReadSoft unique insight into the complexities and challenges faced by organisations throughout the world.

ReadSoft has developed a single platform solution that seamlessly runs inside SAP to bring request-driven and approval processes into a control centre, consolidating visibility and control of data input and approval workflows for both casual SAP users and seasoned administrators.

The solution allows users to monitor processes, navigate to relevant transactions, and easily take on new processes with minimal training efforts. This makes it ideal for a shared services environment, where additional business processes can easily be created and deployed.

The platform provides a complete end-to-end solution for invoice processing in SAP and provides a friendly and intuitive control centre from which all document-driven and request-driven processes may be administered. The control centre is accessed through the normal SAP interface or an easy-to-use web browser to give total visibility of requests from origin through to approval. This replaces typical request communication channels like the phone, email and paper to provide a detailed audit trail, thus enabling strict process governance and control.

The following are examples of processes handled through the integrated solution: • • • • • • • • •

Receiving and paying invoices Purchase requisitions/creating purchase orders Receiving purchase orders/creating sales orders Receiving delivery notes/creating goods receipts Receiving remittance advices/creating payment advices Receiving order confirmations/creating order confirmation Master data creation and maintenance Finance posting corrections Other request and paper-driven processes managed by SSC.

For further details on ReadSoft Oceania please contact us.

T: 02 9929 0676 E: info-au@readsoft.com W: www.readsoft.com.au

Aberdeen research shows that smart organizations achieve up to 83% lower processing costs and 80% faster processing times with AP automation.

3 simple steps to smarter business These 3 simple steps will help you define define your current invoice processing practices and identify logical areas for improvement to drive efficiency, efficiency, productivity and cost savings throughout your AP department.

Step 1: How do you compare?

Benchmark your AP performance.

Download a copy of the Aberdeen Benchmark Report and use our online estimator for a snap-shot of your current AP performance.

Step 2: Assess and review.

Get value from an online consultation.

Contact us for a FREE online consultation to assess your AP processes and explore the potential savings and efficiency efficiency gains that AP automation may bring to your organization.

Step 3: Develop your action plan.

Enroll in a free Discovery Workshop.

We are able to assist you by engaging your team in a FREE Discovery Workshop to review your processing practices and jointly develop an action plan for AP automation and increased productivity.

These smart businesses, amongst others, have chosen our AP Automation solutions: Caltex, Orica, ETSA Utilities, RTA, Schneider Electric, Village Grain, Viterra.

Village Roadshow, Roadshow,ABB AWB, Viterra.

Contact us or visit www.readsoft.com.au/smart/ www2.readsoft.com/au/smart/index.htm to work through these steps

Contact us for a free consultation +61 2 9929 0676 info-au@readsoft.com www.readsoft.com.au

Kaba Australia As a global provider of Workforce Management Solutions, Kaba is one of the leading manufacturers of Enterprise Data Collection products. Kaba systems collect and process all safety and time relevant company data for measuring, visualising and optimising targets and risks of the company. With operations in over 60 countries throughout the world, Kaba services the Asia Pacific region with offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Japan and branches throughout Australia and New Zealand.

Kaba offers solutions for Time and Attendance, Access Control, Biometrics, Shop Floor Data Collection, Multifunction and ERP. The solutions consist of terminals, communication software, partner applications and services. For all products, Kaba uses standards and Internet-based technologies such as Java, Linux, Windows, XML, and HTML dialogs, as well as network technology.

Ideally matched hardware and software components ensure functional reliability for many years. Top priority is given to maintaining the compatibility with existing terminal series, even when developing new terminal series or using recent technologies. Older terminals can be operated with new terminals in mixed installations, so investment is protected by an up-to-date, efficient, and compatible product range.

Innovations • Time and Attendance Terminal B-web 9300: Innovative design with

intuitive control concept ‘guide by light’, flexible adaptability to existing and new requirements, and simple installation.

•

ERP-Solution from one source Kaba is the leading manufacturer for sub-systems for time and attendance, access control and shop floor data collection with SAP®. Kaba offers ERP solutions from one source for • Consulting • Project planning • Installation • Training • Maintenance and Hotline service

Why select Kaba?

• Strategic growth with SAP: Kaba is a Software Partner of SAP.

•

•

• • Kaba Australia Pty. Ltd Unit 4 42 - 44 Redfern Street 2164 Wetherill Park Australia Phone +61 2 8787 4777 Fax +61 2 9609 6610 www.kaba.com.au

B-COMM ERP 4.0 for use with SAP ERP: Communication software specially developed for collecting company data which guarantees an easy integration and a secure and error-free data exchange between the SAP modules and the Kaba components for recording.

Certification is not only about having an interface that ‘talks to’ SAP, but having substantive business processes behind to provide a reliable and resilient complementary software solution. Kaba has the experience to design, implement, and support long-term solutions with SAP. Our current certified interface is HR-PDC, with the XI interface already certified.

Industry-specific expertise: Kaba adds value through the cumulative experience of over 60,000 successful implementations of time recording, activity-based time systems, and shop floor data collection solutions.

A standard solution: Kaba offers a solution which utilises standard module functionality around the B-Comm ERP software. This ensures a fast implementation with minimal user training and reduces potential errors during this period, as well as reliable long-term support.

Risk reduction: Kaba has already implemented solutions with over 1200 SAP customers.

System growth: Kaba has a certified solution to cover other SAP modules – for example, PP for shop floor data collection, PS for project time recording, and PM for plant maintenance, including mobile data collection using wireless PDA devices.

T: 02 8787 4777 E: wfm@kaba.com.au W: www.kaba.com.au

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[ company profile

Esker Esker offers several integrated end-to-end solutions to automate every phase and every type of business information exchange with a strong focus on order to cash and procure to pay solutions and services.

On-premise software solutions and on-demand services include:

• • • • • • •

Sales order processing Accounts payable automation e-Invoicing

100+ SAP customers, and 100+ Esker on Demand customers, including BHP Billiton, OZ Minerals, Newcrest Mining, Orica, Visy, James Hardie, Bunnings, Tourism New Zealand, Sony, Sharp, Samsung and many local subsidiaries of global multinationals run their business on Esker.

Esker customers achieve significant operational efficiencies, cost savings and ROI while gaining visibility and control within order to cash and procure to pay business processes ranging from sales order management and accounts receivable to purchasing and accounts payable.

Founded in 1985, Esker operates globally with more than 80,000 customers and millions of licensed users worldwide.

Since 1997, Esker ANZ has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland.

e-Procurement Enterprise faxing services Enterprise mail services Customer Invoice Por tal.

In Australia and New Zealand, over 1800 companies rely on Esker.

T: (au) +61 2 8596 5100 ; (nz) + 64 9 306 8872 E : info @ esker.com.au; info @ esker.co.nz W: www.esker.com.au; www.esker.co.nz

Accounts PAyAble § Complete solution – digital workflow, OCR extraction, PO matching, GR matching, e-archiving § 100% visibility of all invoices § Reduce invoice processing costs by 50%!

sAles oRDeR PRocessInG § Automate every sales order into SAP (fax, email and complete your EDI vision) § Fulfill orders faster and collect payments sooner § Lower order processing costs by up to 70%.

FAX on DeMAnD § Zero infrastructure (no fax server, no fax board, no fax lines) § Real-time fax status in the SAP interface § No CAPEX and No administration costs!

Visit us: www.esker.com.au

www.esker.co.nz

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

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Lodestone Management Consultants Lodestone is a global management consultancy, committed to designing and delivering solutions that enable international companies to thrive in today’s complex business environment.

We help our clients to define the measurable business benefits that we will achieve together, using our teams of client-focused consultants, who combine a passion for excellence with strong process and SAP skills and deep experience of transformational change in their industry.

Originally established in Switzerland in 2005, Lodestone now has offices in 14 countries and 600 consultants globally, and counts some of the largest financial services and pharmaceutical companies in the world among its customers.

Lodestone Australia

Lodestone entered the Australian market in 2007, and together with par tners across the Asia Pacific region, now delivers regional SAP roll-outs for global companies, with recent customer projects including Johnson & Johnson Medical, Olympus and Kimberly-Clark.

Lodestone has offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, and works with both medium to large corporations and Federal Government agencies to design, develop and implement solutions delivering measurable business benefits.

With a background in management consulting and program management, we offer advice to international corporations on devising innovative business operating models, on optimising processes and on implementing new technologies leveraging SAP.

Our people

Our people are experienced and innovative with a proven track record of success. At Lodestone we have a passion for excellence; all our consultants strive to deliver beyond the expectations of our clients. By acting as their trusted adviser, we aim to establish long-term relationships with our clients.

Dedicated to continuously earn this trust from our clients, we deliver the highest possible quality in what we do.

Delivering unique solutions: the Lodestone Expense Management Solution Lodestone recently developed its Expense Management Solution (EMS), a SAP cer tified add-on that streamlines

>> www.insidesap.com.au

a company’s expense claim process by cutting cost and overhead spent on manual processing and General Ledger reconciliation. Corporate charge card processing can be a costly and time-consuming exercise, often frustrating both the accounts personnel and the cardholders alike. The Lodestone EMS operates within the SAP environment and is designed to alleviate the pain of monthly expense account processing.

The EMS is highly configurable and can be implemented and aligned to existing accounting and expense business processes as well as customised SAP ERP systems. It gives customers the ability to define their own levels of automation around merchant file impor t, vendor reimbursement, expense posting, dispute management and notification, aler t and escalation procedures.

Cer tified in March 2010 by the SAP Integration and Cer tification Center, the EMS is deployed to the customer base via Solution Manager, including all future patches and enhancements.

Key features

• • • • • • • • • • •

Highly configurable Expense Management Solution Suppor ts all card types and statement processing Intuitive web-based expense allocation tool Impor t merchant file and allocate expenses Automated General Ledger and expense posting Automated vendor reimbursement HR organisation structure integration enabled Workflow notification, aler t and escalation functionality Fringe Benefit Tax allocation and BAS integration Built-in repor ting and analytics engine Integrated with SAP Solution Manager.

To find out how Lodestone can help your organisation, contact us today.

T: 02 8571 8300 E: info @ lodestonemc.com W: www.lodestonemc.com

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[ company profile

Revelation Software Concepts Revelation Software Concepts (RSC) specialises in change control technology for use with SAP solutions, developing market-leading software to reduce the risks and lower the costs of delivering changes into SAP systems. Since RSC was founded in 1997, some of the world’s largest companies have come to rely upon its mature change control solutions. RSC’s deep expertise and responsive support have made it the leading change control specialist for SAP solution-based infrastructures around the globe. RSC is 100% SAP-focused and is an SAP software solution partner. Its flagship change control solution, Rev-Trac, is certified as powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform.

Rev-Trac suppor ts change control for both ABAP and non-ABAP technologies, reflecting RSC’s commitment to technologically innovative change control solutions that serve current market needs.

Overview of Rev-Trac Rev-Trac is a powerful, highly configurable, change control application for change request and transport management in SAP solutions, including dual-stack Java change management. Rev-Trac is especially suited to managing extensive landscapes and can automatically transport changes across landscapes with no need for detailed TMS configuration.

The key benefits of Rev-Trac include:

• • • • • • • •

Ability to design, implement and enforce your own change control processes Achieve consistency and cost savings via extensive process and task automation Prevent transport sequencing, overtake and overwrite accidents Maintain control within complex landscapes with advanced conflict management Ensure quality management of concurrent, simultaneous changes across multiple applications Automate multi-technology (ABAP, Java and other non-ABAP) change deployments, with or without CTS+ Interface with third-party tools such as service desk and testing applications via web services Administer, configure and extend easily

Implementing Rev-Trac provides unprecedented control over each and every change introduced into SAP systems. Its extensive automation and in-built safety features simplify SAP project delivery and safeguard production system stability turning everyday SAP project teams into heroes.

T: 03 9955 9700 E: info@xrsc.com W: www.xrsc.com

Because SAP change control gets harder every day…

SAP change control technology of choice for many of the world’s largest companies featuring: • Full process enforcement • Advanced conflict management and accident prevention • Auto-migration including non-ABAP packages • Extensive dependency management • Highly-flexible configuration

Experiencing SAP Change Control issues?

Download our whitepaper: Rev-Trac and Your SAP Infrastructure How Change Control Fits Into an SAP Solution-based Environment

www.xrsc.com/whitepapers SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 78

company profile ]

Zer01 Group Providing integrated SAP solutions for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), Zer01 has forged a reputation for excellence and innovation. Zer01 has the largest and most experienced SAP GRC team in Australasia, with 30 people in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore and New Zealand and, in alliance with SAP, has delivered 38 separate client engagements in the last four years.

Zer01 prides itself on having pioneered many of the industry’s ‘best practice’ methodologies and finding new and better ways to influence the industry in its attitude and approach to SAP GRC. Our client base spans all tiers of government and the private sector and we are proud to be involved in some of Australia’s largest projects.

Where GRC software assists with the management of strategic directives, real and potential exposures and the provision of tactical methods in order to mitigate risk, Zer01 aims to create a unified strategy that standardises processes and integrates technology at every level within an organisation. Our mission is twofold – to minimise our clients’ exposure to GRC-related risk and in so doing, maximise opportunities for growth. Zer01 offers services at an advisory, implementation or support level in each of the SAP GRC focus areas.

Sustainability, Health, Safety and Environment

In the future, best-run companies will be what SAP calls ‘clear enterprises’. That is, they will embrace corporate accountability and transparency, manage risks more efficiently while also minimising the cost of compliance. Zer01 offers consulting and implementation

w

>> www.insidesap.com.au

services in a number of SAP solutions including Sustainability Performance Management, Environmental Compliance, SAP Carbon Impact, Environment Health and Safety and Risk Management.

Zer01’s focused Sustainability packaged service offering analyses where your business is today on the sustainability map and what options you may want to consider as part of your strategy.

Security, Identity and Access Control

Defined as the management of all access to SAP, Zer01 security services include strategy, design, implementation and support for SAP Security, Identity Management, GRC Process Controls and the four GRC Access Control solutions: • • • •

Risk Analysis and Remediation (Compliance Calibrator) Superuser Privilege Management (Firefighter) Compliant User Provisioning (Access Enforcer), and Enterprise Role Management (Role Expert).

Security reviews

This assesses the scope, quality and completeness of the business’s SAP Security Framework, primarily achieved through reviewing the quality of the Business Controls Framework and assessing procedures associated with user administration, compliance, change control and monitoring.

T: 0419 240 103 E: information@zer01group.com W: www.zer01group.com

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StoneBridge Systems StoneBridge Systems is an Australian IT solutions company focused on Enterprise Content Management for SAP, employing some of the most experienced ECM specialists in the industry.

Open Text ECM Suite for SAP

By adding content to your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) context, you can improve business processes, reduce IT costs and address compliance.

As a global provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, Open Text is the market leader in SAP document and data archiving and management, as well as in providing ECM extensions for SAP applications. The Open Text ECM Suite for SAP Solutions provides targeted solutions that enable you to create, access, manage, and securely archive all SAP content-both data and documents to address stringent requirements for risk reduction, operational efficiency and IT consolidation.

More than 2,000,000 users – over 3000 installations – worldwide have achieved exceptional value of ownership by improving their critical business processes with the Open Text ECM Suite for SAP Solutions.

Open Text for SAP Solutions Vendor Invoice Management Employee File Management Vendor Information Management Customer Information Management Shared Document Access Digital Asset Management

Extended ECM Accounts Payable Data Archiving Archiving Document Access Portal Integration

SAP Consulting Services

• SAP Document Integration Strategy: Our consultants are skilled in all SAP content management integration areas including ArchiveLink and SAP DMS. We can advise customers on best practice for integration of any documents into SAP business processes. We can provide product-independent document integration strategies to help you understand how integration can occur, along with the benefits of using each method of integration.

• SAP Business Cases: Building business cases for any enterprise content management project can be a daunting and tricky task.

We have a comprehensive database to help you build a business case for your content management solution, ensuring that when you take your business case for approval, you have all the relevant information to back it up.

ECM solutions from leading vendors

StoneBridge Systems has partnered with ‘best of breed’ vendors to ensure we can bring you the best solutions for your business requirements. Whether you are looking for a new records solution, document management solution, internet or intranet site or are struggling with the storage requirements for your documents, we have a solution.

T: 1300 854 116 E: info@stonebridgesystems.com.au W: www.stonebridgesystems.com.au

StoneBridge Systems is an Australian Enterprise Content Management solution provider focused on helping companies implement and integrate Open Text into their SAP systems.

As an SAP and Open Text partner, we are specialists in a variety of Open Text solutions sold by SAP including Vendor Invoice Management, Employee File Management, SAP Extended ECM, Data and Document Archiving, and also a variety of other non-SAP based solutions – helping organisations use their content to save money and increase revenues.

At StoneBridge Systems, it’s all about you – the customer.

The foundation of our success is the experience of every StoneBridge Systems consultant, all veterans of the content management industry.

To find out more call us on 1300 854 116, email info@stonebridgesystems.com.au or visit our website www.stonebridgesystems.com.au Sydney: Level 13 / 221 Miller Street, North Sydney 2060 Melbourne: Suite 903, 365 Little Collins Street, Melbourne 3000

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 81

[ company profile

Articulate Articulate is an Australian business transformation consultancy founded in 2003. Our services include Change Management, Training and Communications. We have a depth of experience across both the ERP and CRM software markets and have successfully delivered our business transformation services to leading Australian organisations.

and eLearning techniques and enhances them to harness the benefits of social media and mobile devices.

An Articulate solution is customised to meet your unique business requirements and is designed from your peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective. Our â&#x20AC;&#x153;just enough, just in time, just for meâ&#x20AC;? approach has proven to reduce the time to competency for users of new or upgraded technologies.

Our Experience

Articulate has provided services to Australian government agencies and to local and multinational organisations. Our experienced consultants pride themselves on their industry, SAP and Productivity Pak knowledge. They are specialists in designing role and process learning, and in best practice application of authoring tools to develop context sensitive help, eCourseware, interactive simulations and work instructions.

Our Value

Articulate can make an SAP implementation about the people in your organisation, not just the technology. With a thoroughly tested and highly regarded approach to business transformation, Articulate will encourage your people to thrive with SAP and unlock the ROI from your SAP implementation.

Our Methodology

Articulate has invested heavily in maturing traditional blended learning methodologies to our innovative collaborative learning approach. Collaborative learning takes traditional instructor-led

T: 02 9008 9999 E: thrivewithsap@articulate.com.au W: www.articulate.com.au

SAP consulting services provider since 1998 Dedicated to service mid size enterprises Specialised in Manufacturing, Distribution & Service verticals Deep Expertise ( 80%+ SAP Certified & 6 + years) SAP Services Partner SAP Support Partner SAP Channel Partner

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 82

company profile ]

TIK Consulting TIK Consulting was founded in Melbourne in 2005 by three directors (Piotr Trybala, Dave Irvine and Spencer Kewin) with over 30 yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; experience in delivering all facets of the SAP HR/Payroll modules. During this time, they realised that when implementing an SAP HR/Payroll solution, there are many processes which are often repeated and generally reinvented for each implementation.

Also, once implemented, businesses were often left to fend for themselves in managing the support of their SAP HR/Payroll installation. With this in mind, TIK Consulting was formed and the Nexus Suite was born.

The Nexus Suite provides configurable solutions for SAP HCM implementations and business as usual requirements that would otherwise only be accomplished through programming. The individual modules of the Nexus Suite cater for specific SAP business purposes such as data conversion, the import and export of information, payroll and statistical reporting and reconciliation, master data replication and duplication, payroll verification and SAP support pack analysis. The highly integrated and flexible nature of the Nexus Suite ensures that the specific needs of an organisation can be met by using individual modules or in any desired combination.

Customer success

Since the Nexus Suite was released onto the market, it has made a profound difference to the implementation of the SAP HCM system for numerous organisations, as well as revolutionising the day-to-day operations of existing customers. For example, at Victoria Police the Data Conversion and Payroll Verification Modules were used

during its recent implementation to slash the required resources and mitigate project risk.

At National Foods, the Nexus Suite, Data Conversion, HCM Gateway and Payroll Verification modules were used during its 2008 implementation; since then, National Foods has added the HCM Data Replication and HCM Reporting modules, realising huge time and cost savings in their day-to-day HCM operations.

Another organisation to realise the cost and time savings that the Nexus Suite provides is the Bureau of Meteorology, which needed a quick and simple way of copying its HCM production data to a QA environment to enable realistic testing of configuration and support pack changes. The Bureau had unsuccessfully tried other products before achieving the desired result through the use of the HCM Data Replication module.

Orica Ltd is achieving huge time and effort savings in integrating data from a variety of non-SAP systems in 44 countries into a single SAP HCM system in Melbourne. Using the Nexus Suite HCM Gateway, a single resource was able to configure the automatic integration in days rather than the number of months this would usually take.

These are only a few of the success stories from organisations using the Nexus Suite. TIK Consulting is a company committed to ensuring that any organisation using the Nexus Suite will achieve substantial cost and time savings, and provides unsurpassed ongoing support and guidance to its customers.

E: sales@tikconsulting.com.au W: www.tikconsulting.com.au

Streamline your SAP Implementation & Support At TIK Consulting, we pride ourselves on providing high quality SAP products, which are specifically designed to save time and money for customers who are implementing, upgrading, or already running an SAP system.

The Nexus Suite slashes build timelines, eliminates costly maintenance overheads and provides a central management console for all data conversion, information import/export, payroll verification, reporting and reconciliation activities - all within SAP, without programming or the need for further manipulation outside of SAP. Find out more at www.tikconsulting.com.au or email us at sales@tikconsulting.com.au >> www.insidesap.com.au

<<[ ] 83

[ company profile

Speller International – SAP Recruitment and Resourcing Specialists Speller International-SAP resource specialist is one of Australia’s largest and most respected SAP-specific recruitment companies, dedicated to sourcing and securing high quality SAP resources throughout the whole of Australia.

We recognise that in the knowledge-based economy, human capital has become one of the most valuable corporate assets and a primary source of competitive advantage. We continuously work within our niche market, understanding the industry and technology. This allows us to implement a proven recruitment methodology to provide value-added services ensuring quality of delivery.

We know that many of our clients invest a significant amount of money into their SAP infrastructure and software. Therefore it is important that their SAP personnel have the right skills to ensure a return on investment and to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Established in 2000, Speller International has been successfully operating within the niche SAP market in Australia and New Zealand.

With headquarters based in Melbourne, Speller International is wellplaced to service clients and candidates throughout the APAC region.

Our consultants have developed a large network throughout this time and are known within the industry as amongst the most professional and knowledgeable in the market.

Speller International has the proven ability to:

• Build and maintain close relationships in order to streamline the recruitment process and promote risk minimisation.

• Facilitate the best staff selection through a proven and tailored

methodology.

• Find a culture, team and personality fit, not just on a technical skill or ‘best quality’ candidate basis.

• Create a fluid resourcing process.

• Understand each client’s individual company culture, recruitment processes and the market in which each operates.

• Provide our clients with the confidence to trust us with their SAP personnel requirements.

Why Speller International?

• Our success is characterised by our market knowledge, our determination and our teamwork.

• We are SAP specialists, not IT generalists, so we truly understand our clients’ requirements.

• We offer a full range of SAP recruitment services.

• Because we work exclusively in SAP, we have an extensive candidate network, as well as an impressive database.

• We utilise a proven, custom-built SAP-specific recruitment methodology.

• We build lasting partnerships with our clients. Many of our clients have been with us from the beginning.

• We can fill your vacancy promptly – minimising disruption to your business and maximising your return.

T: 03 9348 0092 E: admin@spellerinternational.com.au W: www.spellerinternational.com.au

Resourcing an SAP project?

As one of Australia’s largest and most respected SAP specific resourcing and recruitment companies, Speller International is purely dedicated to sourcing and securing high quality SAP resources throughout Australia. Our depth of industry knowledge, our level of experience, our vast client base, our proven methodologies and the quality of our candidates all add up to an impressive reputation in SAP recruitment.

“Speller International have incredible knowledge of the SAP Market place and know most of the individuals who work in the field.”

– Group IT Manager – Utilities Company

To find out more about our full range of services Australia wide, contact us today on our Melbourne Head Office number: +61 (3) 9348 0092 Speller International Pty Ltd Level 1, 302-304 Lygon Street Carlton VIC 3053 Australia Phone: + 61 (3) 9348 0092 Email: admin@spellerinternational.com.au Web: www.spellerinternational.com.au

THE COMPETETIVE ADVANTAGE IN SAP RESOURCING

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

Everjoy Consulting Everjoy Consulting is the leading SAP recruitment company servicing Australia and New Zealand with an extensive track record in the delivery of recruitment solutions to high-profile customers in all industries.

Everjoy is one of the truly consultative recruitment agencies, providing tailored recruitment solutions to suit the individual needs of our customers and candidates alike.

With over 15 years’ experience in resource management and functional consulting within our recruitment team, we understand the importance of high quality delivery within tight time constraints. Everjoy has aided organisations in the delivery of end-to-end implementations, upgrades and business process re-engineering projects.

Everjoy Consulting currently offers a range of services above and beyond the traditional recruitment solution: Our unique Contractor Retention Program: Unique to the SAP recruitment industry, Everjoy Consulting has an established Contractor Retention Program (CRP), specifically designed to provide you the comfort and security of business continuity while allowing you to utilise the contractor engagement model with comfort. Everjoy Consulting actively works to mitigate the risks associated with the retention of key resources in your project team.

Resource planning and scheduling: Everjoy Consultants work with you to plan your annual headcount against your growth and organisational development strategies. We assist you in highlighting peaks, troughs, cyclical or skill set difficulties with the ultimate goal of reducing the stress and costs associated with recruitment.

Recruitment solutions that make sense.

Whether you’re looking for the best people or the best job, Everjoy Consulting has got you covered. Call us now.

(02) 9394 8500 info@everjoy.com.au www.everjoy.com.au

Best practice consulting: Your Everjoy consultant works with you to provide business process review and optimisation, to ensure that your processes comply with industry best practice, allowing you to attract and retain the best resources available.

Employee performance management: We don’t disappear after a candidate starts with your organisation! As an independent party to the employment relationship between a company and its employee, Everjoy consultants conduct regular reviews with each candidate placed in your company. The value to our customers in this independent and objective performance snapshot is demonstrated by the ability to mitigate risks before they arise and further ensure continuity in your growing team.

Everjoy Consulting prides itself on its key differentiators which include:

•

Our deep specialisation in SAP means you can have the confidence in our ability to successfully match higher quality candidates to your requirements

•

Our boutique approach ensures you can have confidence in our understanding of your business needs, and we can respond immediately to your needs without bureaucratic constraints

•

Our rate consistency ensures you receive the same care and attention for all roles, regardless of the salary level

•

Our highly specialised database means we can minimise turnaround times to work with your deadlines and timeframes

•

By thoroughly interviewing our candidates, you receive candidates which actually have a cultural fit to your organisation, and you can be confident in our ability to successfully match higher quality candidates to your requirements.

Whether you are looking for the best people, or the best job, contact Everjoy Consulting today.

T: 02 9394 8500 E: info@everjoy.com.au W: www.everjoy.com.au

<<[ ] 85

[ directory SAP ANZ Provider Directory SAP/Channel Partner – SAP All-In-One Company

Contact

Web

CIBER Pty Ltd

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

Clarity Consulting Group Australia Pty Ltd

03 9868 3500

www.claritygroup.com.au

Courtland Pty Ltd

08 9212 0888

www.courtland.com.au

Extend Technologies Pty Ltd

02 8908 4200

www.extendtechnologies.com.au

Fujitsu Australia Ltd

02 9113 9200

www.fujitsu.com/au

Hewlett Packard New Zealand

09 918 9555

www8.hp.com/nz/en/home.html

132 426

ibm.com/smarterplanet/au

0800 801 800

www.ibm.com/nz/en/

02 8571 8300

www.lodestonemc.com

1800 002 354

www.oxygenforbusiness.com

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

Soltius New Zealand Limited

04 472 1897

www.soltius.co.nz

Tango Group Limited

09 377 6033

www.tangogroup.co.nz

Company

Contact

Web

Advance Business Consulting

08 8238 6500

www.advance.on.net

CitiXsys Australia Pty Ltd

02 9006 1616

www.citixsys.com

City Software Business Solutions

1300 658 600

www.citysoftware.com.au

Enabling Pty Ltd

02 9925 0383

www.enabling.net

Enprise Solutions Limited

09 829 5500

www.enprise.com

Evolution Future Solutions Pty Ltd

1300 884 635

www.evolution-fs.com.au

Inecom Pty Ltd

03 9847 7300

www.inecom.com.au

Key Business Solutions Pty Ltd

02 9648 3323

www.keybusinesssolutions.com.au

Leverage Technologies Pty Limited

02 9332 3855

www.leveragetech.com.au

MicroChannel Services Pty Ltd

02 9089 9999

www.microchannel.com.au

Ontrack Systems (Aus) Pty Ltd

02 9248 0162

www.ontrackaus.com

Oxygen Express

1300 136 450

www.oxygenexpress.com.au

Realtech Limited

09 308 0900

www.realtech.co.nz

Velocity Global Limited

09 358 4445

www.velocityglobal.co.nz

Company

Contact

Web

Avantis Information Systems Pty Ltd

02 8404 4133

www.avantis.com.au

Bitech Group Pty Ltd

02 8916 0800

www.bitech.com.au

CDC Software Pty Ltd

02 8870 7000

www.cdcsoftware.com.au

IBM Australia Limited IBM New Zealand Ltd Lodestone Management Consultants Pty Ltd

Oxygen Business Solutions

Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

SAP/Channel Partner – SAP Business One

SAP/Channel Partner – SAP BusinessObjects

Disclaimer: The information contained herein is provided as a service. While all care has been taken to ensure accuracy at time of publication, Inside SAP and Flapjack Media Pty Ltd make no representation or guarantee as to the correctness of the information provided in this directory, and bear no liability for any losses or other consequences arising from its use. Readers are advised to undertake their own verification of the information contained herein. The information and/or services provided may change at any time without notice.

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 86

directory ] Channel Partner – SAP Business Objects Company

Contact

Web

CIBER Pty Ltd

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

Clarity Consulting Group Australia Pty Ltd

03 3 9868 3500

www.claritygroup.com.au

Courtland Pty Ltd

08 9212 0888

www.courtland.com.au

CSG Application Services Pty Ltd

08 6250 7900

www.csg.com.au

Eagle Technology Group Limited

09 639 0600

www.eagle.co.nz

Eclipse Computing (Australia) Pty Ltd

03 9820 9200

www.eclipsecomputing.com.au

Extend Technologies Pty Ltd

02 8908 4200

www.extendtechnologies.com.au

Fujitsu Australia Ltd

02 9113 9200

www.fujitsu.com/au

Inhouse Limited

04 499 6818

www.inhouseltd.co.nz

02 8571 8300

www.lodestonemc.com

Oxygen Express

1300 136 450

www.oxygenexpress.com.au

PCW Solutions Pty Ltd

0420 487 575

www.pcwsolutions.com.au

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

Soltius New Zealand Limited

04 472 1897

www.soltius.co.nz

Stream Consulting Services Pty Ltd

02 9114 6075

www.streamcs.com

Contact

Web

02 9008 9999

www.articulate.com.au

02 9460 1158

www.progresspacific.com

Contact

Web

1300 886 676

www.consultingnetworks.com.au

Company

Contact

Web

Airways Corporation of New Zealand Ltd

04 471 1888

www.airways.co.nz

BizExpress Pty Ltd

02 9372 5100

www.bizexpress.com.au

Bravura Solutions Ltd

02 9018 7800

www.bravurasolutions.com

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

CorProfit Systems

02 9440 9500

www.corprofit.com

ESRI-Australia Pty Ltd

02 9285 5500

www.esriaustralia.com.au

Jobpac International Systems Pty Ltd

02 9492 4199

www.jobpac.com.au

Mincom Limited

07 3303 3333

www.mincom.com

Neller Pty Ltd

1300 766 400

www.neller.com.au

Oniqua Enterprise Analytics

07 7 3369 5506

www.oniqua.com

Lodestone Management Consultants Pty Ltd

Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

Education Company Articulate Progress Pacific Pty Ltd

Hosting Partner Company Consulting Networks

SAP BusinessObjects – OEM Partner

CIBER Pty Ltd

>> www.insidesap.com.au

<<[ ] 87

[ directory Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

Quality Systems International Pty Ltd

03 9501 9595

www.lims-software.com

Supercorp Technology Pty Ltd

07 3850 1200

www.supercorp.com.au

Tramada Systems Pty Ltd

02 8227 7333

www.tramada.com

Company

Contact

Web

Accenture

03 9838 7000

www.accenture.com

Acclimation Pty Ltd

1300 852 990

www.acclimation.com.au

Agile Business Services Pty Ltd

1300 859 910

www.agileitsolutions.com.au

Agility Consulting

02 9299 2680

www.agility.com.au

Ajilon Australia Pty Ltd

1300 780 077

www.ajilon.com.au

ALG Australia Pty Ltd

03 9001 1566

www.algsoftware.com.au

Altis Consulting Pty Ltd

02 9211 1522

www.altis.com.au

Analytics 8 Pty Ltd

03 8605 4880

www.analytics8.com

Assurity Consulting Limited

04 473 0901

www.assurity.co.nz

BCS Technology Australia Pty Ltd

02 8667 3024

www.bcstechnology.com.au

BearingPoint Pty Ltd

03 8665 9500

www.bearingpoint.com.au

Bitech Group Pty Ltd

02 8916 0800

www.bitech.com.au

BluLeader Pty Ltd

02 9037 4345

www.bluleader.com.au

BPSE Consulting Pty Ltd

02 9959 2260

www.bpse.com.au

CIBER Pty Ltd

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

Clarity Consulting Group Australia Pty Ltd

03 3 9868 3500

www.claritygroup.com.au

1300 886 676

www.consultingnetworks.com.au

Consulting Principles Pty Ltd

02 9954 1993

www.c-p.com.au/

COSOL

07 3129 3341

www.cosol.com.au

Courtland Pty Ltd

08 9212 0888

www.courtland.com.au

CSC Australia Pty Ltd

02 9034 3000

www.csc.com/au

Deloitte Consulting

09 303 0700

www.deloitte.com/view/en_NZ/nz/index.htm

eB2Bcom Pty Ltd

03 9851 8600

www.eb2bcom.com

EPI-USE Australia Pty Ltd

02 8904 9344

www.epiuse.com.au

eVolition

03 9706 5393

www.evolition.com.au

Extend Technologies Pty Ltd

02 8908 4200

www.extendtechnologies.com.au

Gen-i Ltd

08 0039 4959

www.gen-i.co.nz

Graeme V Jones & Associates Pty Ltd

03 9600 1888

www.gvjones.com.au

Harms Consulting Pty Ltd

02 9221 2000

www.harmsconsulting.com

Services

Consulting Networks

HCL AXON Solutions Pty Ltd

02 8081 5840

www.hcl-axon.com

Hewlett Packard Australia Ltd

02 9950 7444

www8.hp.com/au/en/home.html

Hewlett Packard New Zealand

09 918 9555

www8.hp.com/nz/en/home.html

Hexaware Technologies Limited

02 9089 8959

www.hexaware.com

IBM New Zealand Ltd

0800 801 800

www.ibm.com/nz/en/

Iesupport Pty Ltd

02 8920 9560

www.iesupport.com.au

Infosys Technologies Limited

03 9860 2000

www.infosys.com

1300 466 643

www.innogence.com

Innogence Limited

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 88

directory ] IZAZI Solutions Pty Ltd

02 9959 2233

www.izazi.com

Leonardo Consulting

07 3831 5511

www.leonardo.com.au

LiTMUS Group Pty Ltd

1300 366 929

www.litmusgroup.com

02 8571 8300

www.lodestonemc.com

Logro Consulting Pty Ltd

03 9607 1398

www.logroconsulting.com

MillenniumIT Pty Ltd

1300 795 648

www.millenniumit.com.au

Oakton

03 9617 0200

www.oakton.com.au

Ozone IT Limited

09 632 1214

ozoneit.co.nz/

Patni Computer Systems Limited

02 8920 1122

www.patni.com

Pendragon Consultants Pty Ltd

07 3303 0212

www.pendragon.com.au

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

Plaut IT (Australia) Pty Ltd

02 9492 5600

www.plaut.com.au

Presence of IT Pty Ltd

1300 665 503

www.presenceofit.com.au

Progress Pacific Pty Ltd

02 9460 1158

www.progresspacific.com

Prospecta Software Australia Pty Ltd

02 9025 3955

www.prospectasoftware.com

Quadrem Australia PTY

1300 519 566

www.quadrem.com.au

Realtech Limited

09 308 0900

www.realtech.co.nz

03 9600 2566

www.revolutionit.com.au

RightCrowd Software Pty Ltd

07 5593 2581

www.rightcrowd.com

ROC ANZ Pty Ltd

02 8019 7247

www.azenkai.com/

RWD Technologies

02 9929 3913

www.rwd.com

Satyam Computer Services Limited

02 9434 2700

www.mahindrasatyam.com

Lodestone Management Consultants Pty Ltd

Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

Revolution IT Pty Ltd

Dedicated BI Specialists Focus on SAP Business Objects only Priced and packaged for Small Budgets

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR GROWING COMPANIES

>> www.insidesap.com.au

<<[ ] 89

[ directory SMT Consulting Pty Ltd

03 9859 3710

www.smt.com.au

Soltius Australia Pty Ltd

02 8923 0000

www.soltius.com.au

Southern Cross Computing Pty Ltd

02 6290 2800

www.scc.com.au

Stellar Consulting Group Limited

0800 228 872

www.stellarconsulting.co.nz

StepChange Pty Ltd

08 6142 5216

www.stepchange.com.au

1300 854 116

www.stonebridgesystems.com.au

TAMS Solutions Pty Ltd

03 8676 0626

www.tamsconsulting.com.au

Tata Consultancy Services Limited

02 8456 2800

www.tcs.com

Tripoint Corporation Pty Ltd

02 9453 1300

www.tripoint.com.au

Unify Solutions Pty Ltd

1300 889 519

www.unifysolutions.net

02 9394 8100

www.wipro.com

03 9229 3805

www.zenithsolutions.com.au

0419 240 103

www.zer01group.com

Contact

Web

+1 508 430 7100

www.boaweb.com

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

ClickSoftware Australia Pty Limited

03 9946 6400

www.clicksoftware.com

Data Systems International

03 9835 0600

www.dsionline.com

02 8596 5100

www.esker.com.au

02 8968 9303

www.excel4apps.com

GeoGAS

07 4952 1224

www.geogas.com.au/

Gesix Solutions Pty Ltd

07 3103 1601

www.gesix.com

IDS Scheer

02 8197 9050

www.ids-scheer.com

02 9432 7813

www.iqxbusiness.com

02 8787 4777

www.kaba.com.au

02 9922 3800

www.lrs.com

02 8571 8300

www.lodestonemc.com

Manhattan Associates Pty Ltd

02 9454 5400

www.manh.com.au

MESSAGEmanager Solutions Pty Ltd

02 8448 8800

www.mmanager.com

Minarco-MineConsult

02 8248 1500

www.minarco-mineconsult.com

Mincom Limited

07 3303 3333

www.mincom.com

1800 668 355

www.novell.com

02 9026 3409

www.opentext.com

1800 002 354

www.oxygenforbusiness.com

StoneBridge Systems Pty Ltd

Wipro Limited Zenith Solutions (Aust.) Pty Ltd Zer01 Group

Software Solutions Company

BackOffice Associates, LLC CIBER Pty Ltd

Esker

Excel4apps Pty Ltd

IQX Business Solutions Kaba Australia Levi, Ray & Shoup Lodestone Management Consultants Pty Ltd

Novell Pty Ltd Open Text Oxygen Business Solutions

>> the independent magazine for SAP professionals

<<[ ] 90

directory ] Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

02 9929 0676

www.readsoft.com.au

03 9955 9700

www.xrsc.com

0414 218 898

www.tikconsulting.com.au

Contact

Web

02 8920 0887

www.ciber.com.au

Citrix Systems Asia Pacific Pty Ltd

02 8870 0800

www.citrix.com

Fujitsu Australia Ltd

02 9113 9200

www.fujitsu.com/au

Hewlett Packard Australia Ltd

02 9950 7444

www8.hp.com/au/en/home.html

132 426

ibm.com/smarterplanet/au

Microsoft Pty Ltd

132 058

www.microsoft.com/en/au

Network Appliance Pty Ltd

02 9779 5600

www.netapp.com

Oracle Corporation Australia Pty Ltd

1800 735 467

www.oracle.com/global/au/index.html

Realtech Limited

09 308 0900

www.realtech.co.nz

Unisys Australia Limited

1300 088 833

www.unisys.com.au

ReadSoft Revelation Software Concepts Pty Ltd TIK Consulting

Technology Company CIBER Pty Ltd

IBM Australia Limited

We don’t mine for gold.

We don’t manufacture cars.

We don’t even build roads.

But our clients do.

And we supply the right people to help them do it.

We are Australia’s SAP Recruiter of Choice Find out how we can help you, whatever your business 1300 897 820 www.systemsandpeople.com.au

recruitment

>> www.insidesap.com.au

consulting

contractor management

melbourne • sydney

<<[ ] 91

[ directory Integration Services Company Articulate IBM Australia Limited Lodestone Management Consultants Pty Ltd Perisoft Global Services Pty Ltd

Contact

Web

02 9008 9999

www.articulate.com.au

132 426

ibm.com/smarterplanet/au

02 8571 8300

www.lodestonemc.com

1300 737 479

www.perisoft.com.au

Independent Software Vendor with Certified Integration Services Company

Contact

Web

+1 508 430 7100

www.boaweb.com

ComActivity Pty Ltd

1300 377 909

www.comactivity.com.au

Enprise Solutions Limited

09 829 5500

www.enprise.com

02 8968 9303

www.excel4apps.com

07 3103 1601

www.gesix.com

1300 466 643

www.innogence.com

02 9432 7813

www.iqxbusiness.com

Kiwiplan NZ Limited

09 272 7622

www.kiwiplan.com

MESSAGEmanager Solutions Pty Ltd

02 8448 8800

www.mmanager.com

Mincom Limited

07 3303 3333

www.mincom.com

Operations and Maintenance Consulting Services Pty Ltd

03 9315 0330

www.reliabilityassurance.com

Plaut IT (Australia) Pty Ltd

02 9492 5600

www.plaut.com.au

Pocket Programs

02 8002 0077

www.en.pocketprograms.com

Prospecta Software Australia Pty Ltd

02 9025 3955

www.prospectasoftware.com

Quofore Corporation

02 9386 1777

www.quofore.com

03 9955 9700

www.xrsc.com

Runge Limited

02 8248 1500

www.runge.com

Schneider Electric (Australia) Pty Ltd

02 9496 7300

www.citect.com

Sisu Limited

04 802 4081

www.sisusoftware.com

Sky Technologies Pty Ltd

03 9558 6088

www.skytechnologies.com

SpinifexIT Pty Ltd

03 9561 5850

www.spinifexit.com

TridentGLOBAL Pty Ltd

08 8273 0333

www.tridentglobal.com.au

Contact

Web

02 9394 8500

www.everjoy.com.au

03 9348 0092

www.spellerinternational.com.au

1300 897 820

www.systemsandpeople.com.au

BackOffice Associates, LLC

Excel4apps Pty Ltd Gesix Solutions Pty Ltd Innogence Limited

IQX Business Solutions

Revelation Software Concepts Pty Ltd

SAP Recruitment Company Everjoy Consulting Speller International

Systems and People

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Passion for Excellence.

Commitment to Delivery.

Lodestone specialises in: Strategy and Business Process helping clients create customer value, improve operational excellence and manage risk.

Solution Definition turning established business strategies and objectives into pragmatic solutions which can easily be implemented. Including the Implementation of our newly SAP Certified Expense Management Solution.

Lodestone is a global management consultancy, committed to designing and delivering solutions that enable international, national and local companies to thrive in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s complex business environment. We help our clients define measurable business benefits that we will achieve together, using our teams of client-focused consultants, who combine a passion for excellence with strong process and SAP skills and deep experience of transformational change in their industry.

Solution Implementation designing and delivering solutions by leveraging our extensive knowledge and expertise in the delivery of complex programs.

IT Transformation shaping IT to optimise the ability to deliver measurable value to the business during and after Business Transformation.

To find out more about Lodestone call 02 8571 8300, email info@lodestonemc.com or visit us at www.lodestonemc.com