Please find below an excerpt of our success stories
Integrating business partners
TOPIC
Business Intelligence, Consulting, Implementation
THE STORY
Bouygues Construction is a global player in construction, with operations in more than 80 countries. It designs, builds and operates projects in the sectors of building, infrastructure and industry. Following Bouygues’ group wide IT strategy, the several existing payroll accounting systems for more than 2’000 employees in Switzerland had to be integrated into one centralized system: SAP HCM. Part of this project were operational enhancements like introducing an integrated onboarding process, implementation of a digital employee dossier and extended use of externally provided services.
THE SOLUTION
As representative of Bouygues interest, PROCOMM was responsible for requirements engineering being done in a documented way and to identify and realize feasible solutions with different external providers. PROCOMM covered the project management tasks like planning, progress control and reporting to management. Also, user documentation and training was provided to support Bouygues in the acceptance process of solutions and workflows.
THE RESULT
PROCOMM’s technical and project management expertise paved the way for the in-time provisioning of all business-partner-interfaces. Interfaces have been well-defined and tested involving Bouygues key-stakeholders so that Golive could take place without relevant problems. The project goals have been thoroughly reached.
60’000 business rules in 50 milliseconds
TOPICS
Software development, Project management
THE STORY
The customer is a European industrial group. The customer products are measured and manufactured for each specific order: Each order is unique in its dimensions and settings. A product for a single order is made up of thousands of mathematical rules that determine whether a configuration is valid and if so, how it needs to be priced, how it needs to be costed and how it needs to be manufactured. Historically, the customer has grown from many European SME’s and has a long tradition of many competing product configurator systems, built and maintained by different teams in different countries. Since cross-border intercompany trades are common, many products had to be maintained in parallel in different countries and systems, yielding quality issues due to implementation discrepancies.
PROCOMM consulted the customer on this challenge and implemented a solution to consolidate the different configurator solutions to a single source of truth integrated into sales, production and finance processes.
THE SOLUTION
Within an Analysis Phase, PROCOMM analysed the situation at the different sites in Europe. In the following Design Phase, PROCOMM collaborated closely with teams from sales, production and finance in different sites to come up with a configurator solution that aligns to the group-strategy and is ready for international use. Existing standard-software solutions (Microsoft, SAP, others) were considered and even piloted but could not cope with the requirements. A custom-development strategy was chosen based on the business and IT requirements – especially due to high performance needs in sales and production departments.
A pilot project was conducted to eliminate both technical and organisational risks. PROCOMM then led the development of the new configurator solution and helped the customer to setup an internal team of engineers to create and maintain the 60’000 business rules for 83 configurable product lines. The new configurator solution is now capable to interactively calculate orders in less than 50 milliseconds.
THE RESULT
The customer now employs a team of product experts to maintain 60’000 business rules in a standardized manner for 83 product lines across the sites. Changes to products from sales, production and finance perspective can now be done quickly in a harmonized way regardless of country or site.
Approaching ERP in a highly distributed organization
TOPICS
ERP, Enterprise Architecture, Poject management
THE STORY
Moravia is a leading globalization solution provider, enabling companies in the technology and life sciences industries and global brands to enter international markets with high quality multilingual products. Moravia maintains global headquarters in the Czech Republic and North American headquarters in California, with local offices and production centers in Japan, China, Latin America, Ireland, USA and throughout Europe. After a phase of strong growth Moravia had outgrown its core business applications and had to look for an enterprise-grade ERP system to ensure business continuity. The challenges were comprehensive and diverse:
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Needs: How to find a solution that meets the diverse and often contradictory needs of stakeholders from Executive Board, Service Delivery Management, Finance & Controlling, IT and HR?
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Scale: How to find a solution that can handle not just today’s but also tomorrow’s high volume of micro-transactions across customers and vendors?
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Legacy: How to find a solution that fits into the existing application ecosystem of the company that had grown widely over the past years?
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People: How to deal with fears within the organization due to past failed attempts of introducing a new ERP solution – how to get people on board again?
PROCOMM consulted the executive board at Moravia in choosing the right project governance model and the right set of technologies to approach these challenges within the international distributed organisation. Also, PROCOMM supported Moravia’s project team in implementing a working, tangible prototype to validate assumptions and measuring confidence within the organization.
THE SOLUTION
Our approach was two-fold: One stream specifically for the business stakeholders focused on functional needs in the short-, mid- and long-term to support the business in their mission. A second stream focused on the technical big-picture to ensure that new functionality will be built on top of a sustainable technology platform that will be able to handle continued growth. Unlike a past attempts of a big-design-up-front evaluation the team had chosen a prototype approach to get tangible results and to get confidence within the organization. To achieve this, an interdisciplinary team of 20 people was set up to accept this challenge. In a first phase, 149 business use cases were identified together with key stakeholders from end-to-end production process and technical areas. In a second phase, a working prototype was designed and built in an agile-manner. In a third phase, the prototype was tested and verified by the key stakeholders to determine the confidence level within the organization for the designed solution.
THE RESULT
Traditional ERP software-vendors try to sell a one-size-fits-all software package and try to fit everything into it. However, the project team understood that one centralized ERP system would not be able to satisfy the diverse needs within the organization. ERP systems are slow and expensive to change and so the design concluded that only standardized corporate processes should be covered by the ERP. On the other hand, strategic processes that are Moravia-specific should be covered by to autonomous custom-applications to ensure that business is not getting constrained in its need for flexibility and global distribution. The team came up with a working, tangible prototype consisting of four interconnected systems. The prototype covered a wide range of major business processes from order, purchase, pricing to invoice. Within 6 months the prototype project completed with a result of 77% of all use cases being covered – reflecting a good level of confidence. At the time of writing Moravia is conducting the planning phase related to ERP.
Introducing Enterprise-Architecture at global scale
TOPICS
Enterprise Architecuture, Software development, Project management
THE STORY
The customer is a leading service provider with offices in USA, Czech Republic, Japan, China, Latin America, Ireland and throughout Europe. After a phase of strong growth the customer employed a decentralized organisation around the globe and similarly was the IT landscape: a broad set of decentralized apps in every business unit around the globe. PROCOMM consulted the customer on setting up the overarching Enterprise Architecture function that oversees all systems. PROCOMM supported the staffing of this function and provided coaching.
THE SOLUTION
The solution was exercised along the following path:
• History: Know how we got there.
• Current: Know what we have at hand.
• Future: Improve.
The first point was resolved with dedicated workshops with all major engineers. The second point was resolved with a project to gather a complete overview of all systems and ownership. The third point was resolved by introducing an Architecture Board that took responsibility for concrete initiatives, such as Integration Architecture.
THE RESULT
600+ applications have been identified, categorized and valuated. Furthermore, ownership and responsibilities have been clarified within the organization. The sustained overview proved to be highly useful for both management and development teams to apply cost-savings and to apply focused technology investments.
Data management of organisational structures for a health care organization
TOPICS
Software development, Project management
THE STORY
SWICA is one of the leading health and accident insurers in Switzerland with around 1.4 million insured persons and 27’300 corporate clients. SWICA offers its clients long-term financial security and optimum medical care in the event of illness, accident and maternity. With its CIO, Martin Wettstein, SWICA has started transforming its landscape of business applications to a more composable, service-oriented approach. Functionality and data should be unlocked from silos and made available throughout the organisation for different business cases. PROCOMM has implemented a centralised data management system for SWICA’s legal entities and organisational structures, serving reliable data that is required in various different business processes.
THE SOLUTION
The system covers data management for business entities in the domain of legal entities and organisational structures. The system is fully compliant to IT audit in terms of security and audit trail. From organisational perspective, business requirements and IT requirements have been gathered and consolidated by an internal team which also covered project management. Design, development and data-migration has been performed by PROCOMM. From technology perspective, the internal development frameworks, toolchains and integration-architecture at SWICA have been utilized to leverage their existing technology investments.
THE RESULT
Since its launch the system has been successfully leveraged in over ten automated business processes related to customers and suppliers.
Transforming decentralized SME’s to an European enterprise
TOPICS
ERP, Software development, Project management, Digital transformation
THE STORY
The client is a long-established family company and is numbered among Europe’s leading manufacturers of solar shading. The products delivered are measured and manufactured individually for each specific order. Historically, the client has grown from different European SME’s over decades. From an organisational perspective the SME’s have been highly autonomous in their operations. From a technical perspective each SME employed their own business software for sales and production – highly isolated solutions without any integration. Handling orders spanning different SME’s in different countries has therefore been a big hurdle. Transparency on flows of goods and financial flows has been a big challenge. Furthermore, the business software used in Switzerland had been declared end-of life adding significant pressure on the group management. PROCOMM consulted the client on this challenge and successfully implemented a group-level solution which is now rolled-out in 4 countries.
THE SOLUTION
The solution consists of a large-scale project spanning the following business domains on group-level:
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Finance & Controlling
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HR
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Sales
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Production & Logistics
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Service
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IT
Organisationally, the following new internal teams have been ramped up:
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Internal ERP team
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Internal Software-Development team
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Internal Business Rules team
Technically, the following key building blocks have been designed and introduced:
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ERP for the quote to cash process across all SME’s (Dynamics AX 2012 R2)
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Product Configurator containing 60’000 business rules for sales and prodution
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Contact Center software for call center agents
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Mobile App for field service technicians
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Appointment Planner for service managers
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Print-Engine for materialization of production instructions
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Analytics & Business Intelligence for Finance and HR
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Legacy Workflow System integration
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KABA attendance recorder integration
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Mobile-based attendance recording integration
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Invoice approval process automation
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Local payroll integrations
THE RESULT
The solution has been successfully rolled-out in Switzerland, France, Italy and Austria. Some of the major achievements are listed below:
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Platform: A common platform at group-level has been established.
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Synergies: Manual work accross SME’s has been reduced in sales and production.
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Intercompany-Trade: Orders are routed and invoiced automatically across SME’s.
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Reporting: Financial reporting on level of group, legal entity and project.
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Lifecycle: Phase-out of mission-critical business softwaree that has been end-of-life.
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Operational costs: Application portfolio and related costs have been reduced.
Digitisation along the Supply Chain
TOPICS
Digital Transformation, Software development, Project management
THE STORY
CLD Distribution is a leading distributor based in Belgium and brings various product range to market but focus mainly on video games, audio consumer electronics, computer peripherals and board games. CLD has been growing at a high pace. The application landscape was initially made for start-ups and optimized to maximum agility at low costs. For the next steps in the company’s value creation process, a stronger and more scalable solution was required. PROCOMM consulted CLD on a digital strategy for ongoing growth and supported them hands-on in the transition phase.
THE SOLUTION
In the market of video games, audio consumer electronics and similar there are big players involved such as Microsoft and Sony as vendors and Carrefour and Mediamarkt as resellers. What do both vendors and resellers have in common? They strongly insist on their highly standardised Terms & Conditions. This makes it hard to impossible for them to engage from a commercial and logistics standpoint. This is where CLD comes in. Due to its agility CLD managed to get in between, build the bridge and satisfy needs from both vendors and resellers.
The previous application landscape (simplified):
How to sustain this strategic asset as the company grows rapidly and faces new significant challenges?
The digital strategy for CLD consisted of three primary pillars: Strategy, Organisation, Technology.
On the strategic level, an optimised balance between different strategic priorities was considered and decided upon.
On an organisational level, new team structures, processes and methodologies were identified.
On a technology level, a scalable architecture was identified to facilitate strategic and organisational goals.
The actual plan was optimised from as financial perspective to ensure that the planned changes would not conflict with liquidity needs of the continued growth of the company.
THE RESULT
The digital transformation has been achieved within 12 months time. An internal development team in Belgium has been successfully staffed and put into operations. Coaching involvement has been reduced gradually and phased out, therefore CLD remains fully independent from PROCOMM.
The new application landscape (simplified):
9 mission-critical business applications have been successfully re-developed onto the new scalable architecture. In average every second month a new app has been successfully introduced into the organisation that was operating under full load during this period of growth. CLD is ready for the next phase of growth.
