“As a business we have always believed that building new capabilities is integral to our success,” says Sandeep Parasramka, CFO – Consumer Goods (Africa) at Tolaram. “As we eye a period of expansion and growth in our key markets, we wanted to ensure we had the technology and systems in place that would enable us to scale while also bringing our business processes to global best practice standards.”

Tolaram is a private enterprise founded in 1948 in Singapore. Today, it operates several businesses and manufacturing facilities in South-East Asia and Africa, focusing on three key business verticals: Consumer Goods, Fintech, and Infrastructure & Industrials. Among Tolaram’s businesses are Dufil, a joint venture with Indofood and Kellogg Company; TG Arla, a joint venture with Danish dairy company Arla Foods; Kellogg Tolaram and Multipro, both joint ventures with Kellogg Company, and Colgate Palmolive Tolaram, a joint venture with Colgate Palmolive. Tolaram also has a strategic partnership with Kimberly-Clark in Nigeria.

These businesses have helped Tolaram build a pan-African footprint and become a leading consumer goods player in Africa.  In fact, Tolaram is the largest manufacturer and distributor of Instant Noodles in Africa, and the largest packaged food company in Nigeria.

“Our business was dependent on an on-premise enterprise resource planning solution for the past 15 years, but it could no longer meet our future business needs,” says Parasramka. “We sought a solution that could enhance our analytics capabilities, generate insights across our various operations, and scale as our business grows. We chose 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA as the leading cloud ERP solution on the market, and opted for an Azure deployment to meet our cloud ambitions. We believe this is the first 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA go-live on Azure in Ghana.”

Ghana pilot a test for broader transformation effort

Tolaram operates 25 manufacturing facilities across Africa, producing consumer goods in line with established joint ventures with the likes of Kellogg’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Indofood from Indonesia and Danish dairy firm Arla in addition to other wholly owned businesses across Africa.

“We plan to move our businesses across all verticals to the new 51·çÁ÷system in a phased approach,” explains Parasramka. “However, we chose to first pilot the migration in Ghana before moving to the larger business units in Nigeria and elsewhere.”

Phase One of the implementation focused on the Dufil and Multipro market units in Ghana, with a project kick-off in December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. “The lockdown restrictions created challenges, but we were ably supported by expert 51·çÁ÷implementation partners Infocus Technologies as well as pool of in-house resources that we have built over a period of time and continue to focus on,” says Parasramka.

Almost all 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA modules were deployed as part of the implementation, including financial planning and analysis, procurement and sourcing, HR and payroll, manufacturing, and enterprise asset management. “For us it’s a total transformation of our business processes,” says Parasramka. “By standardising our business processes across our markets and business units, we can generate more accurate and relevant insights into the performance of the entire business, make smarter decisions, and reduce reliance on Excel spreadsheets and other standalone applications for more accurate data capturing and analysis.”

Challenges and key learnings point the way

Parasramka cites challenges with getting people on the ground during the implementation, since a significant part of the project took place during the strict lockdowns imposed to control the spread of COVID-19.

“One key learning during this phase is that training and change management would be essential to the success of the broader digital transformation effort. Based on learnings from our initial project, we have increased training time by two to two-and-a-half times to ensure users are sufficiently comfortable with the new systems.”

Tolaram recognises the transformational impact of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA and change management remains a core focus for the implementation team and will be a determining factor in how easily the business adopts new tools and processes. “Despite the business having used the same ERP for 15 years, users could pick up the new system pretty quickly, which is hugely encouraging for the next phases of our transformation project.”

Two more rollouts are planned for Phase One in 2023, including Dufil Nigeria and Multipro Nigeria following soon after. “We also have implementations planned for other Nigeria-based business units in 2024, and will then focus on our business units in other regions, specifically Egypt and South Africa, with a planned go-live in 2025.”

Commenting on the implementation, Titilayo Adewumi, Regional Sales Director for West Africa at SAP, says: “The best run companies have the technology and processes to produce real-time insights into every aspect of the business to guide decision-making and process efficiency. With a successful first phase now well underway and a comprehensive implementation plan for the next few years, Tolaram is perfectly positioned to build intelligent enterprise capabilities that will enhance its competitiveness, enable its growth and support its success for years to come.”

The post Tolaram Scales to New Heights with Business Transformation Supported by SAP appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

BCX is an Enterprise cloud end-to-end digital partner for corporate and governments across the African continent and also a 51·çÁ÷Gold Partner, 51·çÁ÷Approved hosting partner, 51·çÁ÷Value Added Reseller, 51·çÁ÷Approved Hosting Partner, 51·çÁ÷HANA Services Operations Partner, 51·çÁ÷Partner Centre of Expertise (PCoE0 and Premium supplier for 51·çÁ÷HANA Enterprise Cloud. BCX is busy with a 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA implementation with EY as the implementation partner.

Ravi explained that the business case was presented because BCX, through its acquisition of various BCX subsidiaries, ended up with multiple disparate ERP platforms across the BCX Group.   Through a oneERP alignment strategy, they formulated a business-led program to standardize, optimize, simplify and transfer their business, providing a foundation that enables BCX’s growth strategy and identifies initiatives in a sustainable and forward-looking manner. The ultimate goal for the oneERP program is to enable business transformation through seamless, streamlined processes while also allowing for scalability.

Shamit took us through the BCX journey and implementation, with the oneERP solution journey officially kicking off in April 2020. The project is currently in preparation phase and this should be ready for implementation at end of June 2020.

A myriad of workshops were conducted across the business and stakeholder platforms to understand the requirements and the scope of oneERP, with key considerations such as solution scope, data, IT Strategy and business strategy being examined.

Lessons learnt were also shared by the team and included:

• Early strategic alignment
• Constant stakeholder alignment
• Early design principles definition
• Committed and engaged leadership
• Business and IT led
• Detailed business case

BCX and EY are looking forward to the mutual benefits of rolling out an informed strategy and agree that 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA is the approach to take for this business case.

​ “At this time of the COVID-19 pandemic when many organisations are turning the coin over twice, it is truly remarkable to see South African organisations wade through the rapids and white water of large scale Project Change Management, in deploying 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA technology, immersing themselves uncompromisingly, life-guarded in this instance, by the implementation partner and in so doing, reshape the roadmap on the path to success, and create a technology state of readiness when the business cycle picks up.  Heartful thanks BCX and EY for sharing the experience to date, and most of all, for sharing the knowledge. Truly appreciated.” –  Koosh Panday, Chairman of the S/4HANA Special Interest Group.

The post Introduction to the BCX S/4HANA Transformation Journey appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.