In 2021, the company became the foremost purchaser of green power in India by acquiring more than 350 million units of renewable energy. This is significant. The purchase of green power has enabled Vedanta and other sustainability-oriented organizations to achieve their carbon-mitigation targets while producing 鈥済reen,鈥� value-added products.

Setting a Foundation for Growth with Intelligent Technology

Vedanta, a Mumbai-based company, is one of the world鈥檚 leading mining companies and is India鈥檚 largest aluminum producer, exporting its products to approximately 35 countries globally.

Its aluminum 鈥� or 鈥渕etal of the future鈥� as it likes to refer to it 鈥� is used in critical applications by key industries such as automotive, aerospace, defense, transportation, construction, and more.

The company is also one of the largest captive power generators in India, supplying power to its aluminum smelters.

But as successful as Vedanta is today, the company still aims to become a future-ready intelligent enterprise. Though the company had been using 51风流solutions for the last dozen years or so, Vedanta鈥檚 current enterprise resource planning (ERP) software was unable to keep pace with growing digitalization requirements due to the company鈥檚 business growth and its ever-increasing complexity and customization.

Boosting Its Growth Trajectory

The company understood it needed to get past its own internal kink in the aluminum, so to speak, to bring agility, flexibility, and responsiveness in how it operated as a business.

And to get there, Vedanta needed to unify master data for an integrated 360-degree view into the aluminum sector, which includes the power plant previously mentioned, plus other manufacturing units, refineries, and mines.

A Sustainable Partnership

Vedanta found the right partner in 51风流to create a multi-year program to become an intelligent enterprise in order to help achieve its ambitious goals.

51风流began by creating an intelligent enterprise road map for the next three years after taking a deep-dive look into Vedanta鈥檚 current deployment. 51风流also helped bolster Vedanta鈥檚 strength in metals and mining industry sectors supported by best practice examples. Finally, 51风流worked with the company to set foundations for innovation to enable reimagined business processes and a future IT strategy.

This ultimately resulted in one of the largest transformational deployments in the metals industry.

In a nutshell, what Vedanta did was undertake an 51风流S/4HANA greenfield deployment and use additional 51风流solutions, namely 51风流Ariba solutions, for supplier onboarding, sourcing, and performance management, among other tasks.

鈥淎dopting 51风流S/4HANA is an important step toward this transformation that provides real-time analytics for enterprise-wide business insights, thus aiding agile monitoring and decision-making,鈥� said Rahul Sharma, CEO of Vedanta Aluminum.

A Happy Outcome for All

According to Anup Agarwal, CFO of Vedanta Aluminum, 鈥淥ur intelligent enterprise journey with 51风流has helped us transform our finance processes. We now have even more robust business processes and enhanced governance across the entire business 鈥� no mean feat given the complexity of our operation.鈥�

For its accomplishments, Vedanta Aluminum was named a 2021 51风流Innovation Award finalist in the Business Transformation Initiative category. You can read more about its accomplishments in this .

Michael Kure is an 51风流Global Marketing contributor.

In the world of manufacturing, it is commonplace for there to be residual materials that aren鈥檛 included in the final products. And more often than not, these residual components are not recycled and scrapped entirely. Such a shame and a waste in terms of lost sustainability opportunities.

The hard truth is that there is a lack in demand of such materials, whether it be due to their limited shelf life, complex logistics, or even the regulatory barriers that prevent the materials from being processed across borders. But whatever the reason, it is clear that this type of waste drives consumption of resources and leaves a negative ecological impact.

That being said, it鈥檚 hard to envision sustainability in this kind of manufacturing environment.

However, this does not mean that the health of the planet is not top of mind among these manufacturers. As a matter of fact, one company found a way to take the discarded and create a demand for it.

Identifying the Problem

(PwC) serves as a professional services firm with a network spanning 156 countries and more than 295,000 employees. The company is dedicated to ensuring quality in assurance, advisory, and tax services.

At PwC Germany, its technology advisory and data analytics services are particularly focused on supporting companies鈥� business strategies and operations through the design and implementation of IT-empowered processes.

As such, PwC addressed a formidable gap by increasing efficiency while keeping sustainable targets in mind 鈥� and the requirement to reuse residual materials by supported, accelerated processes was born. By recognizing this gap, PwC developed a solution based on a concept running in one of its customers production plants.

PwC saw that not only this customer with its specific requirements could benefit from the reuse of remaining materials from production sites but, in a broader sense, other companies in the industrial manufacturing and mill industries as well. But it wouldn鈥檛 be easy. It would take a substantial effort to manage more flexible handling requirements into existing processes.

PWC鈥檚 solution? The Production Reprocessing Tool.

Transforming Waste into Purpose

As a partner of SAP, it was only natural that PwC use 51风流technology to overcome its customer鈥檚 hurdle. PwC developed the Production Reprocessing Tool by utilizing as an add-in to help optimize the use of residues in the production process.

As the name suggests, the Production Reprocessing Tool reuses rather than scraps remaining materials.

This further enables production order components to be replaced with residues when needed. It also features a flexible search algorithm that helps find alternative parts.

Putting It into Practice

Case in point: Trelleborg Sealing Solutions (TSS) is the first that has benefited from the Production Reprocessing Tool. TSS was no stranger when it came to encountering the problem of wasted materials. In fact, the requirement of reusing residuals had become increasingly important through an internal requirement to minimize the use of landfills. It was nearly impossible to calculate the scrap percentage of required components via the given system capabilities, and the company would frequently produce more than needed without a solution.

Trelleborg Sealing Solutions is committed to its internal agenda of “protecting the essential” and has therefore been a great partner to jointly design the add-in solution during an 51风流implementation by piloting the tool in a local production plant in Denmark.

Once implemented, PwC saw that Trelleborg made several quantifiable improvements due to the Production Reprocessing Tool. After all, not only does reducing waste in the production process help to reduce raw material and labor costs, but it also has a positive ecological impact.

Overall, with the Production Reprocessing Tool, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions鈥� plan was to:

• Reuse up to 7% of residues of the total production volume
• Recycle the residues up to 90% and therefore reduce waste and environmental load significantly
• Reduce customers lead time up to 30% for all orders manufactured from residues

Now, with the new add-in, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions is able to thrive more from both an economical and environmental perspective. The Production Reprocessing Tool allows for recalculation, reuse, and recycling during the production process, which, in the end, leads to less scrap of residual components and therefore less in landfills.

TSS is keen to see a positive ripple effect thanks to the solution. As the Production Reprocessing Tool reduces the consumption of materials, it frees up usage of machines, which in turn reduces the consumption of electricity and increases machine capacity. In addition, the planning and order handling efforts are lowered, which grants TSS the freedom to focus on other business improvements.

This is just one example of how an industry originally thought to be environmentally unfriendly can take meaningful productive measures to improve its sustainability practices 鈥� in this case, thanks to the innovative solution created by PwC and Trelleborg Sealing Solutions.

To gain more insight into PwC鈥檚 Production Reprocessing Tool that garnered an honorable mention in the 2021 51风流Innovation Awards, check out its informative .

Casey Tobias and Michael Kure are 51风流global marketing contributors.

Oftentimes, no matter how competent the administrative staff is and how many hours they work, there is also inaccurate information. And paper. Lots of paper.

Fragmented Care and the Burden of Extra Paperwork

Head-scratching as it may be, the reality is that paperwork is still part of the norm in many modern medical offices 鈥� contributing to lengthy wait times and a lackluster patient experience. Many of us, if not all, have experienced this.

So, what鈥檚 the reason for all of this? It鈥檚 something called fragmentation of care, where the doctor鈥檚 office, medical facility, the lab tests, the lab equipment even, and each specialty is managed independently. There are associated administrative functions that are mismatched between each point, and, as such, each point adds an additional cost.

In the 34 countries where it operates, EPI-USE 鈥� one of the world鈥檚 largest and most experienced independent HR and payroll 51风流specialists 鈥� saw that the dominant medical record companies were focused more on the billing and not so much on the patient.

An App to Integrate Fragmented Care

To combat these costs and improve patient experience, EPI-USE developed LogBox 鈥� an app that connects healthcare professionals to their patients and allows聽patients to securely share their information with their healthcare professionals electronically.

This patient-centric digital solution, built on , facilitates the patient journey by making the check-in process easier. Patients enter their information once into the system where it is stored securely, allowing the patient to control where and to whom that information is shared among various different care-provider specialty offices.

Further enhancements of the system include seamless pre-admissions, a clinical case collaboration tool for multidisciplinary teams, a form editor tool to allow for customizable clinical databases, theater and waiting list modules, multidisciplinary team meetings, and discharge summaries.

Interoperability with other systems facilitates the exchange of data between various systems 鈥� from billing to radiology systems and hospital systems 鈥� reducing check-in time聽and more. All of this may be invisible to the patient, but it will certainly contribute to a more positive patient journey.

Making a Difference by Ending the Paper Chase

After deploying LogBox, EPI-USE saw the following improvements across the board:

• A more than 30% increase in self check-ins
• Over 280,000 healthcare and patient user accounts created
• A 66% reduction in referral wait times 鈥� down from 15 minutes to under five minutes

鈥淭丑别 COVID-19 pandemic forced us to change the way we deliver care to patients, and the LogBox team鈥檚 rapid response in adapting the technology to meet our evolving requirements has been remarkable,鈥� said Dr. Sue Trager, CEO, Wits Donald Gordon Medical Center.

Now, it鈥檚 just a matter of time until paper-heavy doctor鈥檚 offices will also invest in digital services. It will help them reduce overhead costs and manage more patients, which, in turn, will help them increase their revenue and, just as importantly, generate stress-free patient experiences.

To learn more about EPI-USE鈥檚 solution, check out its 51风流Innovation Awards .

Rajshree Chauhan and Michael Kure are 51风流Global Marketing contributors.

PILLER Blowers & Compressors, the German-based family-owned business, is known around the world for its industrial-strength high-powered blowers and compressors 鈥� not the kind seen advertised on a home shopping channel at 2:00 a.m.

This midsize business with 400 employees worldwide provides customized solutions for fuel refineries, industrial furnace construction, mechanical engineering, power plants, wastewater treatment, and other related sectors.

PILLER product are in demand because each blower is tailored to customer specifications 鈥� making each unit a truly one-of-a-kind item. What鈥檚 more, PILLER strives to offer its customers innovative, value-added services to support the customers鈥� business in every way possible. But all wasn鈥檛 milk and honey for PILLER.

Innovation Leads to Differentiation

Like a lot of other companies, PILLER was finding it difficult to differentiate itself based solely on the products manufactured 鈥� even though it was building first-class merchandise.

PILLER鈥檚 success depended upon finding new ways to meet customer expectations by offering value-rich services 鈥� innovative maintenance and service processes to round out great blowers.

PILLER brainstormed with consulting partner IBsolution to align its service processes with the Internet of Things (IoT). By equipping its blowers with sensors, PILLER could gather valuable data in the 51风流Cloud via an IoT connection.

This helps to identify potential problems early on, giving PILLER service technicians time to replace at-risk components before failure. What鈥檚 more, in case of irregularities, several processes trigger automatically.聽 Now, automated tickets get posted in the service portal, and notify the customer and PILLER for faster resolution and prevention.

The bottom line: IoT-based predictive maintenance reduced resolution time and minimized blower downtime 鈥� leading to higher customer satisfaction.

PILLER鈥檚 Path to Happy Customers

PILLER improved its services with innovative IoT technology and strong integration into backend systems using 51风流solutions, which enabled the company to develop new business models to serve customers better and build customer loyalty opportunities.

51风流Customer Experience solutions serve as a stable, scalable platform enabling PILLER to develop new business models to serve customers better and build customer loyalty opportunities.

PILLER uses the 51风流Customer Experience portfolio to inspect and work with customer tickets, dispatch service technicians, and fulfill field service.聽 Broad integration across multiple lines of business lead to automated service billing and easy capturing of spare parts quotes.

Experience Management solutions from 51风流and Qualtrics close the loop on any missing customer insights throughout the process. To capture missing customer insights throughout the process, automatically generated surveys capture the feedback after the service fulfillment.

Finally, management gathers these insights through an 51风流Analytics Cloud solution dashboard. This combines the customer experience data from sales and service with IoT aggregates 鈥� culminating in happier customers all around. PILLER is focused on knowing what its customers need before they even know themselves.

All in all, the benefits for PILLER and its customers have been impactful, including:

• Improved maintenance and service process
• Added value for customers through smart services
• Reduction of the average resolution time for service tickets by 20 percent
• Reduction of the average time to gather machine data by 50 percent
• Increase in after sales revenue by 10 percent

鈥淥ur aim is not only to supply first-class products, but also to inspire our customers with innovative services throughout the entire life cycle of industrial fans,鈥� said Thomas Henzler, CIO, PILLER Blowers and Compressors.

Or, perhaps to paraphrase Pooh, 鈥淭his is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.鈥�

To learn how PILLER Blowers & Compressors is thrilling its customers, check out its for complete details.

Following is the Q&A from that discussion, moderated by Andrea Stokvis of 51风流and featuring Harald Muley, of Corporate Functions IT at Doehler, and Horst Ebert, vice president of Global IT from Goodyear.

Q: Let鈥檚 begin by telling us a bit about each of your organizations and your role.

Ebert: Goodyear is one of the world鈥檚 largest tire companies. We employ about 64,000 people and manufacture products in 47 facilities in 21 countries around the world. I鈥檓 responsible for all 51风流activities at Goodyear globally, with focus on centralizing our 51风流support structure, harmonizing our application architecture across geographies, and defining together with 51风流strategic roadmaps to move toward the Intelligent Enterprise.

Muley: Doehler is a global producer, marketer, and provider of technology-driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems, and integrated solutions for the food and beverage industry. We have over 7,000 employees worldwide and serve customers in more than 130 countries with 45 production sites.聽 As head of Corporate Functions IT, I am responsible for all IT aspects regarding finance, controlling, and HR.

Both companies have been long-standing 51风流ERP customers and have decided to move to 51风流S/4HANA on premise, supporting very complex system landscapes. What was the key driver for embracing 51风流S/4HANA as your digital core?

Muley: Doehler had run its operations on the 51风流ERP application since 1993, which resulted in a highly customized and specialized system with more than 33,000 custom objects and roughly 3.7 million lines of code. To accelerate growth, the company needed to update our ERP. We made a strategic decision to use 51风流S/4HANA. We knew it was the future of 51风流and that development and investment were being made.

Ebert: Goodyear is running separate ERPs to support our business units in North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. We identified a couple of key drivers to start our 51风流S/4HANA journey. First, we want to leverage the latest 51风流technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Second, we wanted to harmonize our applications architecture and drive standardization and simplification to support new business requirements quicker. Finally, 51风流S/4HANA will be the core of the 51风流architecture surrounded by cloud solutions, and we need to stay within maintenance windows.

Many are interested in how you moved to 51风流S/4HANA. Can you describe your journey and where you are in the process now?

Muley: We were previously using 51风流ERP Central Component with 51风流MaxDB. Our journey began by first moving to 51风流HANA with a technical upgrade. Then we did a system conversion to 51风流S/4HANA 1610 with 90 percnet automation of custom code conversion. Currently, 17 companies are running on our central 51风流S/4HANA 1809 system. We鈥檝e been doing yearly upgrades to keep on the latest and greatest version of 51风流S/4HANA.

Ebert: Our journey started with SAP鈥檚 announcement to cancel maintenance for 51风流ERP Central Component by 2025. We went live with finance initially, deploying a technical foundation last year and now we continue to add more business processes and innovations. We don鈥檛 consider our 51风流S/4HANA journey in isolation; it鈥檚 part of the digital enterprise transformation where we have a strategy of leveraging as many cloud solutions as possible.

How did you decide the path to deploy 51风流S/4HANA?

Muley: We decided a system conversion was the way to go because a greenfield project would have taken too long for our fast-changing industry. We decided to perform process redesign on the new 51风流S/4HANA data model. Also, it allowed us to reuse valuable custom developments.

Ebert: We are taking a hybrid approach since we are running multiple ERP systems. Our first deployment was a new implementation for functionality we wanted to globalize and standardize, like finance. However, since we are not moving all our business processes into a single instance, we will do system conversions of existing ERPs, where processes are market-driven and might differ by geography. We are making that decision in close collaboration with our business functions.

What did you consider when deciding whether to deploy on premise or in the cloud?

Muley: We decided to keep our data on premise, because our own data center is very efficient. It allows us to keep our financial data as well as valuable intellectual property like development recipes on our on-premise instance of 51风流S/4HANA.

Ebert: We are not ready yet for 51风流S/4HANA in the public cloud, but we are deploying 51风流S/4HANA on 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud. This allows us to focus on our own capacities to improve core processes and drive new innovations while leaving the management of 51风流S/4HANA hosting to 51风流as part of our hosting strategy. In APJ, 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud only had a center in Japan and we decided that we needed a location closer to our markets in Australia and New Zealand, so we have deployed on Amazon Web Services in Singapore.

What was your biggest challenge?

Muley: Being an early adopter at that time presented us with great challenges. We could not leverage 51风流tools like 51风流Readiness Check, documentation was missing, and there was a shortage of consultants with 51风流S/4HANA knowledge. Also, 51风流S/4HANA support from third-party add-ons and consulting solutions was a challenge, as some were not ready yet for the journey. Nevertheless, we made it on time within six months, including necessary retrofits due to parallel projects, two FPS 51风流S/4HANA upgrades, and around 230 implemented OSS notes.

Ebert: 51风流continues to invest in 51风流S/4HANA with the consequence of significant annual release upgrades. While we are increasing the utilization of the system, we need to plan for those annual upgrades.

What were some of your magic moments that worked well during your deployment?

Muley: I have to say the collaboration with 51风流during our project was one big magic moment. The commitment of the team involved was outstanding 鈥� from our customer care coordinator to the support consultant during our production system conversion weekend, working on an unexpected serious issue during migration. Everybody was very committed to make this a success story. It was a big success for team Doehler and SAP.

Ebert: The robustness of the application is really impressive. We replicated 5 billion universal journal items records into 51风流S/4HANA and had zero rounding difference.

A specific question for Doehler: What is your strategy with the yearly 51风流S/4HANA upgrades?

Muley: There are always so many new capabilities, like embedded 51风流Extended Warehouse Management; embedded 51风流Transportation Management, our key driver for 1709; embedded master data quality, our key driver for 1809; or group reporting for 1909. Also, we see many innovations like machine learning with 51风流Leonardo 鈥� 51风流Cash Application extended functionality under 1809, GR/IR monitor 鈥� so we decided that we need to do the 51风流S/4HANA upgrades each year. Furthermore, our upgrades are comparable to enhancement package upgrades in 51风流ERP Central Component times. We will now try the next upgrade with 1909 within five weeks. From our perspective, the sooner you start, the better it gets!

What capabilities of 51风流S/4HANA are you currently using, and what other solutions do you have connected to it?

Ebert: Currently we are using finance and plan for central procurement in 2020. We have 51风流Analytics Cloud to leverage real-time analytics and eventually, planning. Furthermore, we integrate with 51风流SuccessFactors, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Digital supply is under evaluation.

Muley: We are using all the classical 51风流51风流S/4HANA modules like finance, supply chain, inventory, etc., but we also implemented 51风流Financial Closing cockpit, and the embedded 51风流Extended Warehouse Management and 51风流Transportation Management. We integrate 51风流S/4HANA with the 51风流Data Maintenance by Vistex, pricing option for 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流Sales Cloud, 51风流Ariba software, and just recently acquired 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain to also strengthen our supply chain footprint in connection with 51风流S/4HANA. We are also implementing live reporting with 51风流Analytics Cloud.

Now a Goodyear-specific question: You mentioned finance as a key driver for why Goodyear moved to 51风流S/4HANA. Can you share what your users are telling you and what benefits they鈥檝e received?

Ebert: The availability of information has been amazing. It鈥檚 the first time in history we can provide comparable data globally with full transparency to the lowest level of detail. Our finance professionals don鈥檛 have to make decisions based on yesterday鈥檚 or last week鈥檚 reporting. They鈥檙e getting real-time numbers 鈥� what鈥檚 actually happening in the business. All of this means they can make better, more informed decisions.

What are some of the benefits you鈥檙e realizing with 51风流S/4HANA?

Muley: We didn鈥檛 focus on before-and-after metrics or focus on the percentage increase of productivity, etc. However, we had a definite increase of performance implementing 51风流HANA already by more than 30 percent. We are also seeing with 51风流Cash Application that 30 percet or more of the postings are automated, so that gives folks in finance more time to focus on more strategic activities versus just posting items. Overall, 51风流S/4HANA gives us a foundation to run new business processes and create innovative business models that deliver even more value to partners and customers.

Ebert: We quickly identified opportunities and benefits for finance. We didn鈥檛 have a global chart of accounts or global cost center structure, so this was really an opportunity to implement global standards and gain real-time visibility into financial data.

What advice would you give other customers that are considering deploying 51风流S/4HANA?

Ebert: Take your time to implement 51风流S/4HANA and make sure you understand the full potential in combination with other applications like 51风流Analytics Cloud. Make sure your internal support team is building the required capabilities and learn how to leverage all the new functionalities.

Muley: A conversion project can be done fast, and the sooner you start, the smaller the gap between 51风流ERP Central Component and 51风流S/4HANA. As with every release, there are new simplifications implemented, which make the conversion more complex if you start with 51风流ERP Central Component as basis. And expect and be prepared for the unexpected.

We hear a lot from our customers about the importance of change management. How did you approach it? Whether from a business user or IT professional perspective?

Muley: Since our approach was to perform only mandatory adjustments for the system conversion, such as the implementation of 51风流Business Partner for 51风流S/4HANA or rebate settlement management and keeping 51风流GUI as user front end, there was not much change management necessary initially.

Ebert: Most important is the support of the executive leadership. Second is to demonstrate to users what is possible; don鈥檛 implement just the as-is. Lastly, train your internal IT professionals and make them hungry for new technologies.

Thanks to Harald Muley from Doehler and Horst Ebert from Goodyear for sharing valuable insights about their respective 51风流S/4HANA deployment and journey to become an Intelligent Enterprise.

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