SCA BECOMES MORE EFFECTIVE
WHEN GLOBAL PROCESSES ARE
INTEGRATED IN ONE SYSTEM WITH
SAP PI
QUICK FACTS
The client
• Client: SCA AB
• SCA has 52 000 employees in 60 different
countries
• Industry: paper products
• Business: SCA offers personal hygiene products,
soft paper, packaging, print paper and sawing
timber in over 90 countries.
• Net profit sales 2008 was SEK 110 billion (€11.5
billion).
• SCA is quoted on OMX Nordic Stock Exchange
Stockholm, Large Cap.
Website
• www.sca.com
Greatest challenges
“By consolidating to SAP PI, SCA can
meet the business goals for lower
total costs and increased service
levels.”
Mark Ritter, responsible for the migration at
SCA Hygiene
• Competence was required on several applications
/ systems
• Large and complex infrastructure
• Many points of failure to monitor and track
• Disparate platforms and fragmented business
processes
• Complex change management
• High Costs and desire to improve Service
SCA’s customers started to centralize their purchase
processes whereas SCA Hygiene had different systems to manage supplier and customer demands. To
continue being a competitive supplier SCA Hygiene
needed to integrate three of their most important
platforms to one system, without interrupting the
ongoing activity and new customer sales.
Objectives
• Decrease costs and increase the quality of service
• Reduce the number of systems and interfaces to
make processes more uniform.
• Reduce the number of people involved in
maintaining the integration landscape
• Reduce the number of manual processes
• Ability to satisfy all demands from business and be
a leader in Ecommerce trends from one solution
• Quicker turnaround time for trouble-shooting,
maintenance, enhancements and new development
SAP Case Study
• Central “end-to-end“ monitoring of internal
and external processes
• Increase B2B/EDI connectivity with trading
partners
SAP solution and services
• SAP PI (Process Integration) with integrated
B2B/EDI functionality from SAPs partner
SEEBURGER
Why SAP
• SCA already uses PI as a tool between
different SAP-modules, so competence about
the platform already existed internally.
• With PI SCA could integrate the different
platforms without adding another system. All
competence focused on one system.
• SCA uses SAP as a strategic partner.
• PI counterpart SCA’s global demands internally
and externally on the cost front.
• PI could be used for integration of both SCAs
internal and external platforms.
• A platform change is a long-term investment
and SAP was a stable and secure choice. A
leading product gives the customer comfort
that product development will continue in the
future.
• A comparative study showed that there were
no advantages with alternative products.
Roll out
• SCA chose SAP PI in the summer of 2006 and
the project started in October 2006. Most
partners and countries had been migrated to
the new platform by December 2008.
Benefits
• Reduce the costs and increase the quality of
service.
Partner
• Seeburger
• www.seeburger.com
SCA BECOMES MORE EFFECTIVE WHEN GLOBAL
PROCESSES ARE INTEGRATED IN ONE SYSTEM
WITH SAP PI
SCA’s customers centralized their purchasing processes while SCA had 10 different systems that
managed supplier and customer demands within the group. SCA Hygiene used 5 different platforms
and to continue to be a competitive supplier, SCA Hygiene needed to integrate three of their most
important platforms to one system, without interrupting the ongoing activity and new customer sales.
With the assistance of Seeburger, SCA managed to migrate the old systems into one with SAP PI.
”We have improved our processes and changed the way we work. The feedback we have received
from customer support is that the new model has saved them a considerable amount of time”, says
Mark Ritter, SCA.
The need
The global consumer goods and paper
company SCA grew rapidly during the
1980s and 90s through for example
acquisitions. As new companies were
integrated into the business, the
number of different integration
platforms at SCA increased, which was
manageable when processes were
decentralized. But as customers
became more and more global, the
complexity in handling information
increased dramatically. Customers had
different demands on the purchasing
processes and when their purchases
got more standardized, SCA was stuck
with several systems that handled the
same tasks.
SCA Hygiene had a total of 5 different
tools to manage supplier and customer
demands in the form of invoices,
payments and other business
documentation that flow between
companies. It meant that if a problem
occurred, it was complicated and time
consuming to localize and solve it.
Another disadvantage was that when
new demands came from suppliers or
customers, SCA had to develop
solutions for several platforms for the
process to work. The total cost was
high and the service quality was not
sufficient.
The solution
In 2006, SCA Hygiene chose to
consolidate three of the systems to
one platform with the help of the
systems integration platform SAP PI in
order easily monitor and manage all
processes. SCA already used SAP PI
as a tool to connect different SAP
modules so the internal competence
was already in place. In addition, PI was
the only platform that effectively could
integrate all systems and processes.
The roll-out
Seeburger was contracted as a
strategic advisor for the global EDI
strategy, global and local
implementation strategy and managed
both the migration and new projects in
parallel. The project started in October
2006 and the migration of existing
platforms was completed in December
2008 for most partners and countries,
within time and budget. The migration
included SCA Hygiene in Europe and
parts of North America. During this
period, SCA had also acquired a
division from another company and the
new business was included in PI with
maintained quality of the main migration
plan. This was done without any
notable problems within three months.
The result
The implementation of SAP PI resulted
in big cost savings as SCA can get rid
of several systems that generate costs
for licenses, hardware etc. Since
competence was required within
several systems and applications, SCA
had previously had employees
assigned to each system. From now
on, the number of support staff could
be reduced since a globally distributed
competence group could now handle
the same work. Because focus was
now on only one system, the team was
able to increase their knowledge of PI
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and the total service quality levels
increased. It was also possible to give
support to different local PI-projects
because all employees in the group had
knowledge of the same platform.
Since processes often are local and
the different sales offices need
transparency in the business
processes, SCA implemented the
Professional Message Tracking
module, so that customer support
could easily trace and monitor
problems within different processes.
The system is very user friendly so
customer support has better
possibilities to quickly evaluate and
solve issues themselves, instead of
having to contact IT support.
”We have improved our processes and
changed the way we work. The
feedback we have received from
customer support is that the new
model has saved them a considerable
amount of time”, says Mark Ritter,
SCA.
B2B/EDI had previously been a strain
on the business, but it has now been
turned in to an opportunity when SCA
negotiated for new customers. SCA
can meet customer demands quicker
and offer advanced integration with
both suppliers and customers, to the
benefit of all parties. The future
The consolidation project has been
completed, but SCA continues to
investigate how IT processes can
support main business goals. For
example, SCA plans to consolidate the
two remaining systems with SAP PI.
There is still a need to continue the
harmonization processes in other
geographies and divisions within SCA.
PI and B2B/EDI will continue to be vital
for continued good communication with
existing customers and suppliers, as
well as when SCA aim to win new
business.
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