Challenges with legacy systems

In today\’s digital landscape, bringing together people, processes, technology, and data smoothly is of utmost importance. Today, the potential for automation in various aspects of operations and strategy is very exciting. If implemented correctly, the benefits of embarking on a transformation journey will maximize efficiency and ROI while eliminating human errors.

Here are a few challenges faced:

Changing Regulations

Dealing with stringent regulations around finance, tax, and reporting requirements has grown highly challenging. This has led to intense scrutiny and heavy fines in case of violations. Governmental finance departments, such as those in revenue or tax, are looking to access real-time data from companies to ensure compliance and accurate collection of tax.

Lack of centralized finance processes

With departments and teams working in silos, there is a distinct lack of consistency in end-to-end business processes. This makes data transfer, reporting, and access to data a multi-step, time-consuming process.

Employee resistance

The adoption of new technology such as automation is often met with resistance from the human workforce. The common misconception is that technology will replace the human workforce. This fear proves to be an enormous deterrent for streamlining business operations and scaling up.

The need for digital transformation

Automation allows optimal usage of resources. This saves time, money, and effort allowing personnel to focus on critical tasks. However, today automation has assumed importance beyond simply saving time.

Leveraging data-driven insights is essential to maintaining relevance and building business resilience with access to data. Data analytics is indispensable today to evolve and maximize ROI.

Further, automation makes it simple to maintain compliance and credibility while scaling up. Actionable insights from data help draft smart strategies taking into account market fluctuations, evolving customer demands, and future organizational goals.

How to start the transformation journey?

It is important to start with the premise that automation and digital transformation will only augment the work done by people and not replace them. The best way to do this is to start by automating non-value-add functions or repetitive tasks. The immediate effect will be the availability of time to focus on mission-critical tasks.

Organizations need to understand the significance of data and begin preparing to leverage them. The insights gained will contribute massively to business strategy and act as an execution enabler. Further, finance R&D needs to be encouraged for analysis, streamlining business processes, and identifying scope for improvement.

Additionally, digital transformation requires attracting and retaining talent, change management, continuous learning, and upskilling. It is imperative to understand that automation will not improve ROI overnight. Regardless of automation, inefficient processes lead to shoddy accounts.

The Client

Privi Speciality Chemicals Limited (PRIVI) is India\’s leading manufacturer, supplier, and exporter of aroma and fragrance chemicals. Formerly known as Fairchem Speciality Limited, PRIVI is now a globally trusted partner and supplier of aroma chemicals. Under Mr Mahesh Babani, the company has grown to Rs. 1,324 crore corporation in FY2020, registering a CAGR of 18% over the last ten years.

PROJECT PHOENIX

PRIVI embarked upon a digital transformation journey with its first project, Project Phoenix, a Greenfield implementation of SAP\’s S/4 HANA solution. The solution was implemented across all existing legal entities of the PRIVI group, including the USA and Europe. All the main departments were digitized along with the required interfaces and integrations to third-party applications.

The following departments/functions were covered within the scope of this project:

• Finance & Costing
• Sales & Logistics
• Procurement & Inventory
• Warehouse Management
• Production Management
• Quality Management
• Engineering & Plant Maintenance 
• Projects, R&D, Pilot Plant

The primary project objectives and business drivers behind PRIVI\’s decision to replace its existing systems were:

• Provide data to the leadership team to design, track, and control the business
• Enable innovations and growth through an agile framework
• Seamless integration across business operations
• Facilitate data-driven decisions through actionable insights

The AAKIT Expertise

AAKIT provided their expertise throughout the project to hand-hold data management and user management. This ranged across Master Data Management, Cutover Data Management, and End User Training responsibilities.

Master Data Management

A fundamental yet often ignored aspect of any ERP project is the assembly, decluttering, reconciliation, validation, and preparation of the legacy data for SAP systems. AAKIT deployed a dedicated team, allowing for higher focus, engagement, and continuous monitoring. This ensured timely data availability for Integration Testing, User Training, Testing, and finally going live.

AAKIT customer value champion team\’s nuanced knowledge of SAP Key Data Structures, understanding of the templates for data collection, and data migration tools\’ ability in SAP proved to be the game-changer in handling this significant task.

Cutover Data Management

Further to master data, the open orders and open creditors/debtors and G/L balances in any legacy system require full closures, short-closures and decisions to take them forward.

This needs specialized attention from the technical and business perspectives, with decisions on carrying forward only required open items into the new system.

The AAKIT team\’s extensive experience with SAP requirements from open items, data templates, and formats made transferring legacy balances in the wee hours of the night between the cut-off period and online transaction entries easy and smooth, with no business disruptions.

End-User Training Management

Often an underestimated area, the End User Training for the 250 users at PRIVI was managed end-to-end by the AAKIT team. Participating in the training sessions provided to key users ensured that the complete knowledge of implemented functionality in the Business Process Master List was acquired to take the task forward.

Planning the training session with respect to locations and groups ensured all processes had been covered. Additionally, these ensured that users were well equipped to take the system forward post live.

AAKIT

Top businesses across multiple industries trust AAKIT as a long-term partner capable of effectively implementing high-ROI SAP solutions that create immense value. We bring integrated solutions to centralize disparate systems leading to implementation with no business disruptions.

Reach out to us in case of any queries.