How SAP Implementation is transforming companies

Digital technology is shaping businesses and reducing conventional ways of structuring and conducting them. In a nutshell, digital transformations are happening in leaps and bounds and as far as manufacturing industry is concerned, it has run on set business models until recently. With digitisation, has come efficiency in conducting businesses.

Manufacturing companies have been way ahead in adopting technology to increase business productivity. Cosmo Filmshas adopted cloud technologies like - SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud for mission critical applications and SAP Success Factor (HCM) for empowering and improving employee experience.

Our Journey: We started our first SAP Implementation in 2008. Till 2008, we were using Oracle based solution and SAP was new for us. We were fully dependent on our implementation partner’s knowledge. In 3-4 months post going live, we realized that the business processes were not mapped as expected and the system is not going to work for us. We did some quick fixes and managed to run the system for around two years. But with continuously expanding business boundaries and foreign acquisitions we decided to re-implement SAP.

Key Take-a ways from Phase I implementation

Selection of implementation partners who understands your business domain is critical.

Get users on board- Ensuring business users support the implementation and adoption process is just as important as the technical aspects of deploying a new system.

We should have an expert in management team who understands the business & systemsvery well and can lead from front and mobilise the required support.

Develop your internal team of resources who understands the business and can work closely with business users and provide 24X7 support.

Big-Bang Approach

As stated, SAP re-implementationwas initiated with a bing bang in 2010 and went live in 2011. This time we covered our subsidiaries also into the scope i.e. USA, JAPAN, Korea & Netherland along with India operations. The biggest challenge this time was managing multiple region based processes, multilingual objects and multiple currencies. This time, the complexities of packaging industries were handled well and we were able to successfully implement IS-Mill solution. Later on we added the Business Information Warehouse & Business Objects for Management dashboards & reports.

Since then, we have been able to keep pace with the continuously evolving technologies and work processes. For instance, enabling API’s to communicate with third party systems:Apart from SAP, we had other third party solutions in place. API’s were developed for these solutions to communicate with SAP and work closely with SAP. APIs were developed tointerface with our banks for vendor payments, customer receipts etc. Interfaces were developed for CRM solution with which we were able to provide our customers with invoicesand account statements et al. With the help of these APIs, we have been able to provide our

Customers a 360 degree view of their business with us. We have also enabled truck tracking functionality for our customers making use of these different systems.This is how it works. Shipment details of customersflows from SAP to GPS tracking system and from tracking system they flow to CRM, from where customerstrack their shipments and get to know about the exact status of consignments.

Validations: We developed several business critical validations& enhanced the SAP functionalities as per our requirement. This included parameters like credit limits, production bookings etc. These validations made the systems robust and helped inspire confidence from the management.

In 2018, we decided to move on to cloud with database up gradation from Oracle to HANA to align with our IT Vision Cloud First. We started the project in March 2018 & went live on Cloud i.e. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud in May 2018. This project was seamlesslyimplemented by our partner and we got a better ROI than expected.

In 2019, we decided to move on to S4HANA to take the advantage of new functionalities along with production planning automation, cash management &plant maintenance with IoT& ML. During this implementation, we decided to do the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) to take the maximum advantage of the technology. We do have the plan to implement the GRC for Compliance & Open text for Data Archiving & Document Management System to ensure we are a paperless organization.

Revolutionizing employee experience with SAP HCM:-

New technologies are transforming the way organizations work and with the advent of digital in organisations, HR is also changing at a fast pace. Digitisation of HR is making the operational HR processes automated and data-driven. To digitise the HR system, Cosmo Films alsoshifted from multiple legacy systems to cloud based SAP Success Factors (HCM) for empowering and improving employee experience.

With the help of HSM, we were able to capture data at every stage of the employee life cycle; be it talent acquisition, on boarding experience, flexi-compensation, inter-departmental transfers, learning & development, succession planning, centralised attendance management system, performance management system, we were able to digitise these tasks. The system is also available on mobile platform where employees can get things done anytime, anywhere.

Companies have achieved business excellence and showcased consistent innovation by using technology as the key competitive differentiator. As companies gears upto the process of business transformation in the evolving and expanding markets, futuristic technologies like SAP enterprises Cloud are helping them achieve operational excellence and standout in market.

Jagdip Kumar
CIO, Cosmo Films