Sappi Optimises IT Operations on Three Continents with CA Project and Portfolio Management SaaS

CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

CLIENT PROFILEIndustry: Paper manufacturingCompany: SappiEmployees: 12,800

BUSINESSSappi is among themarket leaders in the paper manufacturing industry. The company’s headquarters is in South Africa. It also has subsidiaries and representative offi ces in more than 20 countries with approximately 12,800 employees.

CHALLENGEThe IT department is located across multiple sites on three continents. In order to optimise processes and reduce costs, it required a unifi ed project and portfolio management solution.

SOLUTIONSappi now uses CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS to manage itsprojects, applications and infrastructure. Approximately 500 projects are currently managed via the solution.

BENEFITCA PPM SaaS provides Sappi with a consistent and transparent view of ongoing projects acrossall its locations. The cloud-based solution reduces administration and creates cost transparency.

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Sappi, headquartered in South Africa, is a global manufacturer of paper and an industry leader. The pulp and paper company’s products are sold in more than 100 countries around the globe. Sappi produces around 5.7 million tons of paper and about 3.7 million tons of cellulose products annually.

Sappi’s pulp products are the raw materials used by processing companies from numerous industries worldwide. For example, it provides viscose fi bres for the textile and pharmaceutical industries, as well as numerous consumer products. The company’s portfolio includes coated paper products, such as those used by printers and publishers to produce books, brochures, magazines or other printed products. In addition, it provides paper used in the fashion and textile industries as well as in automobiles and for household items.

The company has production facilities in South Africa, Europe and the US. Sales offi ces in all continents service customers worldwide across more than 100 countries. Sappi employs approximately 12,800 staff in 20 countries.

IT is the backbone of global business processes for Sappi. IT-based solutions support production as well as purchasing and global sales. The company uses Microsoft Offi ce applications, but also traditional accounting solutions, as well as applications for the production environment in the paper mills.

The systems, infrastructure and applications operations are carried out at different locations. For example, the central server for the SAP environment is located in Vienna, while the Exchange server is centrally managed by a subsidiary in Gratkorn, both in Austria. The Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are operated locally at the production sites across the globe.

Adelheid Wendelmaier, SAP Manager Europe at Sappi, comments, “We try to achieve the highest possible degree of automation and integration for all of our solutions. In addition, we also strive to embrace current trends, such as social media, as soon as possible in order to support the entire organisation with the latest technology.”

The global IT department initiates and manages a variety of projects. These had grown over the years and many had been modifi ed to meet local requirements. In addition, individual solutions were always being integrated into the Sappi infrastructure as a result of acquisitions, so that the respective departments could continue to work with a familiar portfolio. In the past individual solutions for project and portfolio management were used. The result was that many overarching processes, such as reporting, required considerable manual effort and time as the information had to be gathered from different systems to be combined in a single report.

In addition the company needed to cope with an increase in the number of international projects. “We wanted to structure future processes better, prevent duplication of effort, attain greater transparency and get a unifi ed view on the progress of our projects,” says Jürgen Kamedler, IT Service Level Coordinator. “To achieve this, we decided to introduce a single project and portfolio management platform across all locations.”

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BusinessMeeting worldwide demand for paper products

ChallengeStandardisation to improve global processes

“ We wanted to achieve greater consistency and more transparency.”Jürgen KamedlerIT Service Level Coordinator, Sappi

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SolutionCA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS eases administration and creates transparency

500 projects are currently managed usingCA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS

Before deciding on a suitable solution, various discussions and coordination planning were carried out with all the stakeholders to ensure that both local, as well as global, needs could be met. This was in addition to a requirements analysis. The resulting criteria formed the basis of a market analysis via which various products were investigated for their suitability.

At the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 a market analysis was carried out by the most senior executives at Sappi, in which a number of project and portfolio management solutions were studied in great detail for global features and capabilities. After an intensive evaluation phase, the team selected CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS because the solution offered the functionality and fl exibility that Sappi required.

In addition to the diverse functionality that CA Project & Portfolio Management offered, the next most important factor was its cloud delivery model. There were several reasons for opting for this, according to Kamedler. “The solution was immediately available to us from the cloud and was able to work with our existing systems. Furthermore, we did not have to improve our own technical know how or our dedicated support team and we could be certain we were working with the most modern technology.”

The standard version of CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS provides numerous modules and options that had been time-consuming for Sappi to set up and manage in previous versions. An important requirement was that CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS was to be introduced group-wide at all locations simultaneously so that the global IT team could begin on a “green fi eld” site without any team having more previous knowledge or experience than another.

“Of course cost played an important role in choosing a SaaS solution,” comments Wendelmaier. “We are not impacted by high licence costs with CA Technologies’ cloud solution, but pay for what we use. Even with upgrades or additions, we benefi t from an itemised, detailed and transparent cost model.”

The Austrian IT team acted as the main project leader, in conjunction with CA Technologies Austria and software specialists from CA Services in Germany. They led the integration of the solution and its implementation. “At this stage we were able to learn much more from the specialists as they told us in detail how we could build and map specifi c processes in the project and portfolio management system to cover our global requirements,” adds Kamedler.

After about six months the system was implemented across the different sites and each site was updated locally with the data needed for reporting and other projects, such as application and infrastructure management. A series of training courses helped ensure rapid adoption of CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS by Sappi’s employees.

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Benefi tLower costs and standardised processes optimise IT operations

The solution is currently used in the global IT department, which is responsible for managing IT projects. One example project being managed via the CA Technologies solution is the migration of Sappi’s SAP system to SAP HANA. For the implementation a separation into different projects wasneeded so that all sections of the migration could be transparently monitored and implemented. With CA PPM SaaS, the running and commissioning times as well as the costs for the individual project sections were documented and monitored.

CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS standardises project management, increasing the transparency of processes for Sappi while optimising operating costs. Software upgrades are automatically performed in the cloud and do not require manual intervention by the Sappi team. “We only have to verify the upgrades,” adds Wendelmaier.

Thanks to CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS, data is now available at a central location, which facilitates the handling of stakeholder information, ensures consistency and prevents duplication of effort.

By using CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS, Sappi has been able to:

• Introduce optimised reporting, enabling an improved overview of projects and resources

• Increase effi ciency due to standardised processes

• Implement projects more quickly and successfully.

“CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS gives us greater transparency and agility, allowing us to streamline processes and respond more quickly to requests from business departments,” says Kamedler.

“ CA Project & Portfolio Management SaaS has automated and simplified our processes.”Adelheid WendelmaierSAP Manager Europe, Sappi

CA Technologies helps customers succeed in a future where every business – from apparel to energy – is being rewritten by software. With CA software at the center of their IT strategy, organizations can leverage the technology that changes the way we live – from the data center to the mobile device. Our software and solutions help our customers thrive in the new application economy by delivering the means to deploy monitor and secure their applications and infrastructure. To learn more about our customer success programs, visit ca.com/customer-success. For more information about CA Technologies go to ca.com.

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