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apsolut migrates the purchasing of Evonik Industries in three phases to the Cloud Integration Gateway (CIG)
Company
Evonik
Branch
Chemistry
Products
Speciality Additives, Nutrition & Care, Smart Materials and Performance Materials
Number of employees
33,106
Turnover
12.2 bn. Euro
Headquarters
Essen, Germany
Websitewww.evonik.de
Phased Migration with ,Zero Defects’ in the Hypercare Phase!
It is a massive but atypical transformation that Evonik Industries’ purchasing department has undergone. Because while an integration migration from SAP Ariba CI9 to the Cloud Integration Gateway, CIG for short, is usually done as a ‘big bang’ project, this project was carried out in three phases:
- In the first phase, the strategic Ariba modules of Sourcing, Contracts and Supplier Lifecycle and Performance (SLP) modules were migrated to the new integration technology.
- In phase 2, the implementation followed for the Ariba modules Buying and Commerce Automation.
- The final phase comprised the interface migration from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA and the go-live of the entire transformation programme.
The Ariba CIG migration was embedded in a complex S/4HANA implementation programme with numerous custom developments. To minimise the complexity of the transformation and thus the risk, Evonik decided to implement it in phases. In this way, technical and process-related weaknesses could be identified and eliminated early on in the first two phases as part of test tracks.
Furthermore, in phases 1 and 2 additional optimisation potentials were disclosed and added to the project scope. The result: In phase 3 the project went live without any difficulties and in the subsequent hypercare phase not a single defect had to be dealt with!
A decisive key to success was the open and transparent cooperation between apsolut and Evonik employees from Germany and Spain, as Manuel Steffen, Project Officer Source-to-Pay at Evonik Industries, emphasises:
"Of course, we are immensely proud of how we implemented this complex transformation together. The always competent and more than punctual execution moved us to initiate a parallel project for partial process innovation in the ongoing project. Actually a no-go, but with apsolut no problem! With this positive experience, it was easy for us to initiate another project, which is currently being implemented. One thing remains to be said: Without the team around Bodo Hempelmann, this journey would definitely have been more difficult!”
NO postponements of milestones
24
Own developments tested and migrated
Implemented tools
SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway
Schnittstelle zu SAP S/4HANA
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Regina Krüger-Wendel, Chief Procurement Officer, Atruvia
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"We have never regretted our decision to rely on apsolut as our implementation partner. The preparation, support, and transparent project progress at all times convinced us. We are delighted to have apsolut as our partner for all questions relating to our SAP Ariba tool."
Marcel Krischer, Zentis GmbH & Co. KG
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"The mix of virtual design discussions, system demonstrations and break-out sessions, supported by best-in-class tools that allowed us to annotate and track tasks and decisions during screen sharing, enabled us to work closely with apsolut even though distances of up to 12,000 kilometres had to be bridged. We were very pleased that both our projects could be successfully implemented with the help of apsolut."
Alina Aftene, Procurement Solutions Specialist, Delivery Hero
"When selecting a partner for our procurement transformation, a high level of technical know-how was of course also important to us. Here, apsolut was able to convince us with best practices from customers of a comparable size. The decisive factor in the end was the experience in change management! Only in this way were we able to introduce a fully-fledged procurement system that is also accepted by all employees."
Göktürk Simsekol, Digital Transformation Director, Flint Group
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Frank Unfried, Director Digitalization Purchasing & Indirect Spend bei Pfleiderer
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"As our experiences with apsolut were so positive across all national companies, we have already doubled the number of monthly support days twice. Thanks to apsolut, we now have the resources we need to implement rollouts in other national companies. At the moment, they are ongoing in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France."
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Ketylin Morello, Purchasing Strategy and Market Intelligence & Functional Product Owner for Squando, Schaeffler
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"Together with apsolut, we started as a pioneer in Central Procurement and we are very pleased that we were able to reap the first fruits of this pioneering work so early on.”
Stefan Ehrhardt, Head of SAP Governance Purchasing, MAHLE
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Chandrashekhar Saldur, AGM - Global Procurement & Projects, ETG Group
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"Being able to design our purchasing processes flexibly, digitally and above all efficiently offers great added value. We will therefore continue to expand our system in the direction of SAP Ariba."
Armin Kaczmarek, Senior Vice President Corporate Purchasing, Vorwerk
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Paul Trautmann, Manager Procurement Processes & Projects, Röhm GmbH
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Annette Römer, Project Manager, McKesson Europe AG
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Julia Graubner, Senior Procurement Project Manager, K+S
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„Every time we came up against an unexpected challenge during the course of the project, apsolut immediately showed up possible options to resolve the issue. We always knew to what extent we had freedom of movement within the constraints of the cloud solution.”
Linna Krasnikov, SCC System Administrator, Kärcher
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Martin Traxl, Head of Strategy & Digitalization, OMV
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Hubert Buchsteiner, Group Vice President Purchasing, ZKW Group
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“The cooperation with the international apsolut project team from Germany and India was very effective despite the tough schedule. Due to the high degree of standardisation and automation, we were already able to realise potential savings and, in particular reduce process costs.”
Markus Ortlieb, Director Global Procurement, ProMinent GmbH
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Manuel Steffen, Project Officer Source-to-Pay, Evonik Industries
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‘We’re on the right track to being able to take full advantage of the potential that this transformation offers, as apsolut not only gives us the expertise that we need, but also has an incredibly agile and committed approach. apsolut no longer feels like an external partner to me, but more like an internal department, with whom I hope we can continue to work well into the future.’
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Annette Römer, Project Manager at McKesson Europe
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Jane Wanger, Global Procurement Systems & Support bei KSB
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Tanja Sefrin, Project Manager, KUKA
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Thomas Henzler, Chief Information Officer, PILLER Blowers & Compressors
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Michael Spiess, Chief Procurement Officer, Sanitas Krankenversicherung
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„Despite all the digitalisation and automation, we still work in a people business. During this project, we have grown into such a resilient, unified team that we’ve managed to meet all of our deadlines up to this point, even though some of them were quite ambitious. Ultimately, that also motivates everyone involved to do their part in driving the project forward!“
Simon Bohn, Global Solution Architect Procure to Pay, STIHL
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Sarah Eve Wiedemann-Geiß, who oversees purchasing and supplier management at Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall
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