Home  Clients & Delivery Success Stories |
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Situation
Akzo Nobel is a major player in the chemicals industry with activities in over 60 countries and 70,000 employees worldwide. They have 25 business units clustered into four autonomous key areas: Pharma, Coatings, Chemicals and Fibers. In 1996, consolidated sales aggregated NLG 22.4 billion. |
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The Akzo Nobel Chemicals Group in North America is divided into four subgroups: Polymer Chemicals, Functional Chemicals, Surface Chemistry and Catalyst. |
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RA global company requires a global vision to run it's business. In order to create a corporate entity and a more fluent information exchange across the organization, Akzo Nobel needed a uniform information system to link North American headquarters with worldwide business units, increasing efficiency of shared business processes and software applications (SAP R/3), among all divisions to maximize the effectiveness of its resources. Sharing software solutions could result in millions of dollars in implementation savings. |
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In the United States , Akzo Nobel began building the global infrastructure with the Polymer Chemicals Business Unit and a Cross Functional Multi-Business Unit team that would establish corporate standards for all US based business units within the Chemicals Group (Framework Project). |
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Polymers Chemicals envisioned a Business Process Improvement project along with SAP R/3 Implementation that would initially affect 250 users and ultimately, upon completion of the extended roll-out to the shop floor, nearly 400 users across 5 locations. |
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Polymer Chemicals wanted to leverage the results of the Business Process Improvement Project and the Framework Project to: |
- Maximize margins while maintaining market share
- Reduce month-end close to a virtual close (from 8 workdays to same day close)
- Respond to customer order inquiries 95% on initial contact
- Eliminate repeat customer complaints
- Meet promised delivery dates 100% of the time
- Increase on-line inventory accuracy to 99%
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All SAP R/3 implementation efforts at Akzo Nobel cover a multitude of locations, phases, functionalities and business complexities. As a result, buy-in to the solution is difficult to achieve. To overcome this challenge Sogeti deployed the concept of the Conference Room Pilot. The CRP focused on creating synergy within each of Akzo Nobel's chemical business units while operating as a vehicle to share common solutions, lessons learned and approaches across Chemical Business Units. Ultimately creating a common foundation to implement SAP R/3 v.2.2 and v.3.0, the CRP is key to validating the completed work of the joint teams of Akzo Nobel and Sogeti. |
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Akzo Nobel's Chemical Business Units, Polymer Chemicals, Surface Chemistry and Functional Chemicals have completed their first phase implementations of SAP Modules FI, CO, MM, PP, SD. Catalysts is expected to go live with the same in the near future. |
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The software, SAP R/3 must cover all functional areas of their business: sales and distribution, material management and accounting, controlling activities - order entry, pricing, scheduling, shipping, and invoicing. |
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Solution
Sogeti launched a business-driven, Business Process Improvement Project with a Concurrent Transformation methodology approach. Select processes were evaluated and reengineered in this combination of Business and Systems Transformation. |
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| SAP is the preferred corporate global partner for Akzo Nobel in Europe . Sogeti respected Akzo's long-standing relationship and the efficiency of implementing SAP across all key business units in Europe and North America. |
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In addition to the Polymer Chemicals Implementation Sogeti currently has responsibility to bring three other global business units up and running on their SAP R/3 systems - Functional Chemical and Surface Chemistry. |
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All four projects share the same technical infrastructure, using the Framework Project. This project focused on common processes around the Chemical Group business units and covered areas common to all Akzo business units - financial and general ledger structures, legal reporting etc. |
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The Framework Design Project became a key deliverable into the Implementation efforts of each business unit. As a result, consistency in corporate reporting can be achieved. Beyond the fundamental Framework, business units are allowed the flexibility to configure their systems to optimize specific business processes.
Reasons for implementing SAP in each project were different:
Functional Chemical took an approach that would make it possible to achieve benefits throughout its financial and logistics information processes. The intent was to eliminate bottlenecks in the information process and to achieve business improvements. Ultimately information availability and accessibility would increase throughout all levels of the organization. Finally, Functional Chemical expects to achieve substantial reductions in the cost of using information technology.
Surface Chemistry's objective was to replace the legacy system BPCS in such a way as to minimize the impact on the business, while at the same time seeking to capitalize on any process improvements and benefits that were easily realized as a result of the SAP system. Surface Chemistry's aim is to implement SAP down to the lowest level in the organization, in particular, to the shop-floor where operators will report production directly into SAP real-time. The business unit believes the main benefits to be realized from SAP lie in being able to better plan schedule production using SAP's PP-PI functionality. This should improve utilization and reduce working capital. Long term head count reductions are also anticipated. Better management reporting will enhance strategic decision making and more accurate data will allow effective day-to-day running of the business.
Catalysts' reason for implementing SAP was that BU Catalysts wanted to support the following business objectives: |
- Reduce the need for management reports by 75% by providing on-line access to management information
- Standardize all vendor, materials and customer data, including procurement, receiving and accounting procedures, within the BU Catalysts NA and eliminate data redundancy
- Improve inventory accuracy to 99% on a daily basis for the on-hand inventory at plant, in transit and at distribution centers
- Reduce BU Catalysts NA month-end close from five to two days
- Capture 100% of financial entries in operational processes at point of entry
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All SAP R/3 implementation efforts at Akzo Nobel cover a multitude of locations, phases, functionalities and business complexities. As a result, buy-in to the solution is difficult to achieve. To overcome this challenge Sogeti deployed the concept of the Conference Room Pilot. The CRP focused on creating synergy within each of Akzo Nobel's chemical business units while operating as a vehicle to share common solutions, lessons learned and approaches across Chemical Business Units. Ultimately creating a common foundation to implement SAP R/3 v.2.2 and v.3.0, the CRP is key to validating the completed work of the joint teams of Akzo Nobel and Sogeti.
Akzo Nobel's Chemical Business Units, Polymer Chemicals, Surface Chemistry and Functional Chemicals have completed their first phase implementations of SAP Modules FI, CO, MM, PP, SD. Catalysts is expected to go live with the same in the near future. |
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Benefits
A Concurrent Transformation methodology approach acted as one of the critical enablers to the future of Akzo Nobel's Polymer Chemicals division, ensuring that implementation met the business needs and was accepted by users.
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