A simplified SAP S/4HANA implementation via Best Practices at Omnicol

Omnicol S/4HANA Amista

Customer

Omnicol

Location

Weelde, Belgium

Industry

Wholesale

Technology used

SAP Fiori, SAP S/4HANA Cloud PE

About our client

Omnicol is one of the market leaders in Benelux in the field of professional tile adhesives and finishing products. Their core business consists of providing solutions for the professional bonding of building materials (B2B). The company has been a family business since its foundation in 1956. The head office is located in Weelde (Belgium), where production and R&D are also located. The products find their way to the customer from the sales offices in Belgium, Netherlands and Germany.

Solution brief

Implementation of a new ERP focused on a production environment

Omnicol needed to replace the existing legacy Microsoft Navision system due to the end of support from their vendor. Meanwhile, they also wanted to optimize their current way of working. That is why Omnicol chose Amista’s proposal to implement SAP S/4HANA 2020 (on-premise) using the standard Best Practices provided by SAP. The project went live in January 2022.

The implemented SAP modules are: Accounting and Controlling (FICO), Procurement & Warehousing (MM), Production Planning (PP), Quality Management (QM), Sales & Distribution (SD) and Plant Maintenance (EAM).

Challenges and objectives

  • Search for a modern and innovative ERP system
  • Search for a more efficient way of working in the fields of product creation, production, purchasing, sales, reporting, …
  • Search for a sustainable and reliable partner
  • Integration with related systems such as Istock, Hansmeier and EDI.
  • Data Migration: Migrate current data to the new ERP system
  • Non-Functional Requirements:
    • Security
    • Performance
    • Minimum requirements accounting package
  • Hosting: the production process is highly dependent on a steady performing ERP system
  • Maintenance and Support

AS-IS

  • System: Different for each affiliate company (BE, NL, DE)
  • ERP: Dynamics Navision 2009 R2
  • Production: 2 external systems for goods creation and packaging.
  • Sales: large customers through EDI
  • Data: fragmented data with duplicates in multiple systems

TO-BE

  • System: One for all affiliates
  • ERP: full E2E S/4HANA on-prem 2020 version for purchasing, logistics, sales, production planning and finance
  • Production: interfacing with both systems
  • Sales: interfacing with EDI
  • Data: one central database for all affiliates

Solution

Our proposed solution is based on a best-practice methodology across all SAP ERP domains. The solution comes with a variety of functions to fully cover Omnicol’s needs and provide the opportunity to build a high-quality ERP platform.

For the implementation, Amista relies on the SAP Activate methodology. SAP Activate is the implementation method that is universally applied in all SAP-related software implementations. It prescribes which implementation activities must be carried out and describes the results.

Instead of consultatively building a complete solution based on customer requirements, it is based on the reuse of so-called ‘best practices’. With the experience with more than 100,000 implementations, SAP has defined a methodology based on a best practice for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This allows us to quickly set up our solutions so that our customers can deploy a functional ERP system faster and more efficiently. Of course, we carefully listened to the users, their requirements and expectations. At Amista, we always keep the end-user experience in mind of focus on the ideal workflow scenarios/processes to ensure the most productive and user-friendly way of working.

The products and tasks are listed in sequential order based on the start of the activity. However, parallelization is recommended to speed up the implementation.

The following 6 phases of the methodology provide a structured approach to implementation:

  • Introduction/Discovery
  • Project preparation
  • Explorations fit gap analysis
  • Realization
  • Deployment
  • Run

In S/4HANA there are several functions available specifically for production monitoring. The user can build its own specific dashboard by merging the most relevant production-related functions and using tiles across the different functions of the application from production to accounting.

An example of a production planning board from an example SAP system.

Planningsbord SAP

Result

We have adopted SAP’s best practices and finetuned them to Omnicol’s wishes and business flow. With the help of the technical team, we were able to close the gaps to ensure a ‘perfect fit’.

For example, for the delivery of the end products, we developed a Fiori picking application to run on tablets. This custom-made application makes it possible to “pick” and finalize the delivery from the storage location using a hand scanner with an accompanying tablet. This app allows to manage the delivery down to the pallet level, whereby different lots of the end product can be grouped on 1 pallet. The web-based app provides an overview of all assigned deliveries. Meanwhile, the picker is able to manually change the picked quantity to cope with stock differences.

Picking application Omnicol

Another example is related to sales orders. Sales orders can be entered from 5 different sales organizations. This does not include the intercompany sales, which are performed automatically during billing. In other words, there is no need for a separate purchase and sales order. At Amista we have also set up an EDI interface through PO/PI for the larger customers of Omnicol. Sales orders are automatically created and blocked for review by the sales office. Afterwards, the system will, upon release of the sales order, send an electronic confirmation back to the EDI broker confirming the assigned products, quantities, prices and delivery dates.

During the final stages, we performed acceptance-tests with all key users, and we finalized configuration and development. To ensure a smooth go-live, we focused on end-user enablement. A new innovative and modern way of working, combined with an entirely new system implemented in a relatively short amount of time is quite a challenge and an accomplishment of which the Omnicol team can be very proud!

Inspired by this case?

Amista SAP Consultant at work

Michael Hossain

SAP Consultant and Consulting Manager