SAP - Case Studies and Events

SAP Australian User Group Summit dates announced in our calendar.

Event details listed in the calendar.

Event details now in our calendar.

Event details now in our calendar.

[Jane B]

01 Dec 2008
by: Kate Morgan reports.

This year’s awards saw the integration of individual categories, including Best Solutions Architect, Best Project Manager, Best Consultant and Best Project Sponsor. Tim Ebbeck, SAP ANZ CEO, opened the ceremony and acknowledged the awards as SAP’s way of recognising the outstanding projects, innovations and relationships between partners and SAP Australia, as well as the rich history of the awards. SAP Australia director of marketing, Ray Kloss, presented the awards. The lucky winners were invited to a Sydney Harbour cruise directly after the ceremony, mingling with the likes of Ebbeck, SAP Australia senior management figures, and 10 fortunate audience members who also received an invitation and the chance to rub shoulders with the winners. On this year’s panel was: Tim Ebbeck, CEO, SAP ANZ Bruce McKinnon, director, consulting and education, SAP ANZ, and a member of the ANZ Executive Leadership team James Rennick, manager, SAP corporate business services, Powercor Peter Hind, Launch Pad Marketing Foad Fadaghi, technology editor, BRW Magazine.

And the winners are… Best All in One Winner: GSM Retail Pty Ltd Implementation Partner: Fujitsu Australia
GSM is a retail partner of Vodafone in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Japan. Alexis Phitidis, group financial controller for GSM Retail, accepted the award. GSM Retail partnered with Fujitsu to roll out SAP All in One to 20 retail sites in just nine weeks. “The GSM Retail implementation was the fastest deployment of SAP in Australia and New Zealand. Existing core and airport stores converted overnight with no loss of trade,” Phitidis said. The project roll-out has enabled GSM to double revenue within a 12-month period.

Best Business Intelligence Winner: Rio Tinto
Rio Tinto’s business intelligence product has had a 20 per cent rise in users per month through to 2008. The increase in revenue for Rio Tinto from just one of its nine BI initiatives is more than $10 million over five years.

Best SOA using NetWeaver Technology Winner: Veolia Environmental Services Partner: HCL Tech
The best SOA using Netweaver Technology was won by Veolia Environmental Services, which deployed process integration to reduce existing multiple disparate approaches and improve process orchestration. The solution has provided real-time integration of processes via synched data delivery between enterprise and other systems running on both SAP and non-SAP platforms.

Best ERP Winner: National Foods
National Foods has achieved $20 million in savings through a huge implementation involving fi ve major Go-Lives in 2007 and nine partners. The implementation introduced new processes for forecasting and planning, customer ordering, invoicing, billing and collections, and warehouse and distribution.

Best SAP Upgrade There were joint winners in this category. Winner: Department of Education Partner: Oxygen Business Solutions
This upgrade involved moving the Department of Education systems from R/3 4.6C to ECC 6.0 and BW 3.1 to BI 7.0. It was one of the fi rst federal government departments to run up the upgrade, within budget with no impact on business. It involved an additional technical upgrade of 10 FINS modules. This upgrade also won a government Departmental Secretaries Award.

Winner: Australian Department of Defence Partner: CSC Australia
Said to be Australia’s largest upgrade, with 5000 users, 200 sites, and 20,000 online training courses completed, it moved the Department of Defence systems from R/3 4.0b to ECC 6.0.

Best Innovation Winner: SCA Hygiene – Project Longview Partner: Oxygen Business Solutions
Project Longview involved SAP network planning and real-time advanced planning optimisation, and came in at 15 per cent under budget. The new solution has resulted in a 50 per cent saving of man days, and a significant reduction in working capital and the weighted average cost of capital. The annual return to the business is almost equivalent to the one-time project cost.

Best Value Realisation There were joint winners in this category. Winner: BHP HR Project
The BHP project achieved a 75 per cent better HR efficiency in the first six months following Go-Live. As a result of the implementation, time to hire was reduced by 76 per cent, and time to terminate was reduced by 73 per cent. There were additional savings of eight full-time equivalents and over $1 million per annum.

Winner: Techtronics Partner: Lodestone
The Techtronics project involved warehouse management and radio frequency mobile data entry. The annual return to the business was approximately 156 per cent of the project cost. The warehouse management component involved a 56 per cent decrease in open pallet space, and has increased the warehouse size to meet future demand.

Best CRM Winner: AGL Partner: Accenture
A combination of operational improvements and site consolidation will achieve more than $22 million of cumulative, net cost benefi ts by the end of the fi nancial year. A headcount and cost/margin benefits release is on track, with a further $35 million of annualised benefits to be released in 2010.

Best Project Team Winner: AGL Project Team
The Project Phoenix team credited the project sponsor, project manager and solution architect for its success.

Best Project Manager Winner: Julian Belotti of Clarity Consulting
Belotti was nominated by Powercor and was a stand-out winner, having overseen the growth of his project team from three to 25 in less than 12 months, three major work streams, and having a signifi cant change management and process focus. Belotti said, “I was honoured to be the fi rst to receive this award. It speaks well of how Clarity interacts with our clients and our expertise in strategic initiatives. It’s an example of our thought leadership, which goes beyond helping clients implement a system to providing the support so they can tackle large-scale complex projects. This project also provides a lot of intellectual reward as it contributes to the organisation’s growth and strategic direction.” Belotti said the project was implemented successfully with a project team comprising a small number of full-time resources, and while managing many other components in addition to the SAP implementation, such as commercial, legal, finance and logistics. “Consequently, there were a number of parallel sub-projects that required direction and coordination, whilst change management was an ongoing imperative,” Belotti said.

Best Solution Architect Winner: Jason Currey of Supply Chain Consulting
Currey was nominated for this award by Capral for his involvement in the ‘Fusion’ upgrade roll-out, which included a technical upgrade from 4.6 C to ECC 6.0, the implementation of an ESS/MSS portal, and rolling out the upgraded system to new business units. Currey worked on the technical (Basis) aspect of the upgrade, portal installation and interface upgrade. Supply Chain Consulting consulting manager Nina Genikis said of the project, “The technical upgrade of the existing SAP 4.6C system to ERP6 was a critical step in the overall success of the Fusion project. The upgrade of the production system had to be executed over a single weekend, without undue downtime, to minimise impact on the business. Jason Currey was the principal solution architect working on this issue. Not only did he plan the schedule for the Basis work required for the whole project, but each step of the plan was executed smoothly without any issues.” Currey has also worked on projects for Asics, Sanitarium, and Franklins, where he provides onsite technical support one day a week, and cut his teeth straight after university working in the Basis team for an SAP implementation for George Weston Foods, at the time one of the largest implementations in Australia.

[Steve Bennett]

I think that this use of Crystal Reports is crying out to be made into a case study. Gartner where are you??