Interview on bTools, accelerators and platforms

Since 2005, bancon have been just one of a handful of global SAP partners who have a certified expertise in delivering System Landscape Transformation projects. The large number of data transformation projects we’ve undertaken have been successful not just because we have access to SAP Landscape Transformation tools, but also because we have developed our own proprietary suite of bTools based on our deep knowledge of SLO, that allow us to get to the heart of the problem and solve it in the leanest, most cost-effective way. 

We sat down with Wilfried Schulte, Director of Data Transformation Services and Anton Brisuda, Director of Technical Services, to find out more about bTools and how they can be applied to improve the efficiency of Data Transformation projects. We also asked Bradley Jarrett, Global Director of Financial Services, to tell us more about how these industry agnostic platforms are being localised for FSI clients.

Thanks for joining us, so in summary what are bTools?

Wilfried begins, “We are very proud of our unique range of proprietary bTools, Accelerators and Platforms which, in essence, help automate the monotonous and often-error prone parts of working on SAP Data Transformation and Financial Services projects. Centred around quality assurance, a number of our bTools take expensive manual tasks, prone to human error and automate them with more rigour and accuracy, not only reducing risk, but also reducing costs. These tools each solve very specific and potentially costly issues that can arise during any data project.”

Anton continues, “Working with bancon means your business will benefit from tools and services trusted by hundreds of companies around the world, including SAP themselves. Our deep knowledge of SAP organisational structure and business objects are baked into our bTools which is why bancon is the partner of choice for those who want to deliver data transformation projects at speed, while maintaining quality and keeping costs low.”

Wilfried adds, “Our suite of bTools are constantly evolving to continue to offer a much more efficient and accurate way of working.”

And how did bTools originate?

“bTools began as a solution to a problem,” says Wilfried. “The bTools suite was created in-house when a member of the bancon team began to imagine a tool that would take over manual repetitive work involved in the majority of projects in a faster, more accurate and more efficient way.”

“Exactly” adds Anton. “Each project we work on has it’s own range of pain points and tedious tasks that often delay service times and can encourage human error. bancon decided to build what we knew about common issues in projects into our bTools that would minimise these factors and deliver better customer satisfaction and project lead times. bTools offer the flexibility to adjust accordingly to complex work. They can adapt to suit a range of very specific issues that could be costly and timely.”

“At bancon, we really pride ourselves as experts at what we do” says Anton. “We’ve got years of experience helping businesses in data transformation projects. This experience combined with our access to SAP Landscape Transformation tools and our very own developed suite means that we are satisfied that we can identify the problem cause in a cost-effective and timely manner. Our bTools continue to expand and to reflect this we have updated the name to bTools, Accelerators and Platforms which better describes the capabilities of the suite and the vast differences in how much the tools can do and the value they add.”

“How the tools can adapt to suit a range of industries, especially those outside of banking, is really interesting” says Wilfried. “Let’s say for example, a company has hundreds of open transactions that need to migrate to a new company. This project would be a rather complicated and a time-consuming task if done by a person. With bPosting Engine, a project like this that would have taken months through human intervention, would take a matter of minutes using the tool.”

Brad, tell us about how bTools, accelerators and platforms are being adapted specifically for the Financial Services industry?

Brad explains ‘‘With a client base consisting predominantly of Financial Institutions, it was imperative that the platforms we built addressed the specific challenges faced by the industry.  As a result, each of the product teams worked closely with my team to derive FSI focused roadmaps which run alongside that of our cross-industry propositions.’’

“This allows us to cater for the SAP and SAP Fioneer solutions that Financial Institutions leverage to run their critical T1 operations and allows us to address the niche issues they face when implementing or migrating to those solutions. Take for example, bMigrationEngine – Banking Edition, comes packed with out-of-the-box templates and content to accelerate migration events through a series of pre-defined mapping logic. Allowing our delivery teams to leverage best practices, reduce repetitive tasks and focus on the true job at hand.”

Brad continues, “Coupled with our deep knowledge of SAP and SAP Fioneer solutions our suite of bTools, accelerators and platforms have been proven to make the difference and have enabled us to cut delivery times and increase quality of output across a number of implementation and S/4HANA migration projects.”

What are the key features and benefits of bTools, Accelerators and Platforms?

“One of bTools’ key features is that each platform can be used independently or collaboratively. We tend to use smaller tools alongside some of the larger ones due to project requirements but all of the tools are compatible with each other” says Wilfried.

“90% of the bTools work for SAP technology. Due to our extensive work with SAP, the under-lying tech is all SAP standard technology. What’s great about bTools is that we can migrate non-SAP systems to SAP systems. It has no problems reading data that hasn’t been stored on SAP systems” adds Anton.

bTools currently consists of 9 available tools and platforms to ease the process of transformation. The suite consists of:

1. bPostingEngine provides an audit-proof solution for financial data during a transformation or migration project.
2. bMigrationEngine accelerates all stages of a migration event, extract-transform-load.
3. bAutomation helps to automate the execution of services for example web services, enterprise services etc.
4. bValidation is a data migration service that works for any data transformation exercise.
5. bServiceAutomation provides an automation of services and transactions in an SAP system.
6. bAuthorisationValidation is a tool that performs a number of key functions including, technical validation of authorisations after migrations conducted, validation regarding all data sets and authorisations that are created by the SAP profile generator (PFCG)
7. bScan is a custom code scanner that produces a series of reports to detect and highlight custom code.
8. bDependancyAnalyzer conducts dependency analysis of business processes and SAP business objects.
9. bCustomizingCompare is a tool that produces a series of reports after comparing customising tables between the source platform and the target system.
10. bDeletionService is a service that provides a solution for the deletion of any SAP business object, organisational structure, or combination of the two.

What can we expect in the future from bTools?

“We’ve recently launched the newest bTool; bAutomation” says Wilfried. “It’s a truly automated system that runs from the data centre. All of the steps can be fully automated using this tool.”

Wilfried continues, “The overall development of bTools will become much quicker in the future. For instance, bPosting Engine is developing impressively. The automated finance tool is learning with each project how bancon customers organise their data and how they select it from their systems. By learning these behaviours, the tool will be able to pre-empt how it can make selection of data easier for users. Developing the tool to be able to do this means that bancon can increase the functionality of their off-the-shelf products and improving the user experience for their customers.”

“We are looking to develop our tools to become more advanced in reading from non-SAP systems to SAP systems” says Anton. “For bancon, this would give us another layer of service on top of the standard technology we already have. It’ll give us greater opportunity to streamline the process of transformation for our clients.”

For more information on our bTools, get in touch with Wilfried or Brad.