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apsolut supports GEA with Release Management and Technical Ariba System Monitoring
Company
GEA Group
Branch
Specialist machine and plant engineering
Products
Machinery, plants and process technology for the food, beverage and pharmaceuticals industries
Number of employees
over 18,000
Turnover
4.7 billion euros in 2021
Headquarters
Düsseldorf, Germany
Websitewww.gea.com
Transfer of Knowledge and Support during a Complex Transformation
It took fully two weeks to hand over the GEA project from the implementation team to colleagues in Solution Management Services (SMS) within apsolut GmbH. That period of time hints at the complexity of the procurement transformation at GEA. The overall corporate group comprises more than 250 subsidiary companies. With the digital transformation, all operational and strategic SAP Ariba modules will also be rolled out with SAP S/4HANA Central Procurement.
GEA quickly realised that the complexity and sheer number of parallel tasks within this mammoth project would necessitate additional external support. Although GEA considered other competitors at first, it ultimately decided to continue its partnership with apsolut.
‘During the implementation of Ariba and Central Procurement, we had a great many positive experiences and benefited from the expert knowledge of colleagues at apsolut,’ recalls Tina Schmidt, Senior Business Application Consultant SCM and IT Project Manager at GEA ‘In addition, we were also convinced that the transfer of knowledge would be much more straightforward with a partner established in our IT landscape.’
The SMS team at apsolut has since been integrated into the ticket system at GEA. As part of Release Management, new functions will be documented and potential improvements resulting from these releases will be identified. The team also provides regular monitoring to identify and eliminate malfunctions in ongoing operations at an early stage.
In this project – with its numerous modules and back-end ERP systems – monitoring has been a crucial success factor, something that could not very easily been managed with internal resources alone. Since the number of end users will continue to increase as a result of the roll-out with the digital transformation, the complexity will also continue to increase. Over the next two years, Ariba Guided Buying with Central Procurement is expected to be rolled out to a further more than 30 companies.
GEA and apsolut will make a few minor adjustments to their support agreement over the coming fiscal year. apsolut will then provide more technical support. For Bei Mortensen, IT Business Service Owner – SCM & Manufacturing at GEA, this represents the next logical step in the partnership with apsolut:
‘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.’
Technical Ariba System Monitoring: We offer regular monitoring and comprehensive reporting on the performance of your systems to enable rapid identification and bug fixing of errors in ongoing system operation.
Release Management: We take the totality of the content of new releases, filter out the new functions and potential improvements and show you the individual recommendations for action.
Implemented tools
Release Management
Technical Ariba System Monitoring
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