The Challenge
The client recently acquired the manufacturing division of a multibillion-dollar chemical company and must integrate all existing systems within 6 months. If they fail to do so, they risk paying $500,000 per month to the chemical company to use their systems until integration is complete. The client and their newly acquired manufacturing division both use SAP, but the manufacturing division operates on an older version. They also use an additional 250 applications to run their business. The client does not have the infrastructure to support the manufacturing applications as, prior to the acquisition, they had only ever provided services.
The Solution
Based on the strong relationship between the client and our team, Eliassen Group was enlisted to plan and execute the integration project. We engaged the third-party vendor that was supporting the manufacturing company’s systems to assist and contracted additional resources to join the client’s internal teams. Once adequate support was in place, we took a version of the manufacturing division’s SAP system and stood it up within the client’s SAP system, building out the appropriate integrations so the information would flow correctly. We then inventoried the 250 applications and worked to reduce them to 70 applications. This was accomplished by replicating the functions in existing applications or finding more affordable alternatives.
The Result
The client successfully met the 6-month deadline and avoided paying a single $500,000 monthly fee to the chemical company. We reduced the number of applications from 250 to 70, and successfully updated the SAP environment to integrate with the client’s environment. There were also 7 oil refineries that ran on their own control systems on local servers. Those control systems were ported over and left unchanged.
