Thriving in the new normal
The ever-changing business landscape is influenced not only by advancing technology and consumer expectations, but also a number of elements out of our control. If we’ve learnt anything from recent years, governmental changes, pandemics and economic downturns, often force many businesses into radical transformation. As a result, we are seeing an increasing number of mergers, acquisitions and divestitures from companies all looking to strengthen their market position and thrive in the new normal.
Common challenges
Mergers, acquisitions, carve outs or restructurings require a change in IT landscape to support the new organisational setup or new type of business. Major challenges can arise when selling individual business units or buying entities from other companies. While IT systems have to be adapted accordingly, the most challenging part is usually in the proper handling of business data. On the one hand, the new owner of an entity must get access to all data belonging to the specific acquired business. On the other hand, the data that does not belong to the new owner must be deleted.
Obsolete data, or data which is no longer needed, can hinder business operations from legal requirements and data protection compliancy to IT system performance and landscape optimisation. Ultimately, all of these can have major financial implications therefore, companies are well advised to get rid of this outdated data. However, as a result, a wide range of systems such as SAP ERP, CRM and SCM can be directly affected.
When a company undergoes these types of projects they typically experience:
- Data complexity: Data in an ERP system can have complex structures and relationships. Nevertheless, data must remain consistent after each transformation
- Data volume: The ability to convert and delete data quickly becomes a critical success factor when it comes to hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes. The downtime window should be kept as short as possible
- Data validation and reconciliation: Validating and reconcilding data before and after any conversion or deletion can be extremely resource-intensive and time consuming
These factors can have a significant impact on project costs as well as timlines and quality.
Our technical services
Business mergers, acquisitions and divestitures involving SAP require deep knowledge and expertise, specifically in System Landscape Optimization (SLO) which is the overarching name used to describe the technical realization of a data transformation project.
As every business case is different, there are multiple methodologies that can be used, depending on the intended project outcome. There is a specific approach which is why at bancon, we’ve built an SLO toolbox containing a portfolio of technical services which can be uniquely combined to get the best results for our client’s needs.
SAP Landscape Transformation
SAP Landscape Transformation software is designed to migrate and align any type of data within your existing SAP platform. As SAP Silver Partners we have access to the wide-ranging tools that can help you transform your business and unify your technology infrastructure.
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bTools
Our deep-rooted experience with SAP means we are familiar with the challenge's businesses can face when undergoing a data transformation project. That's why we've developed our own set of unique tools which complement the standard SAP suite. Centered around quality assurance, a number of our unique 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.
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