CASE STUDIES
More and more organizations are migrating to new architectural alternatives offered by cloud, hyperscalers, co-location services, and more. ITR can help your team navigate this complex journey. Read about our many success stories with SAP implementation and solutions.
SAP ECC
Migration to
Azure
SAP ECC Migration to Azure
Challenge
One of ITR's long-term clients still running an exceptionally stable SAP ECC implementation was seeking to migrate their entire landscape to Microsoft Azure.
Solution
ITR provided technical and enterprise architecture services to evaluate the most appropriate target design, including cost forecasting and outage time estimations along with planning for all stages and a detailed testing program designed to validate the migration.
Impact
The ITR team rolled through the mock cutovers, performed validations, and both documented and resolved the issues discovered. The final production cutover was smooth and easy, ran ahead of schedule, and caused no disruptions for the business. After the migration, our team took over all infrastructure support activities from the previous top-tier consulting firm. This Lift-& Shift provided considerable cost savings to the organization by reducing hosting and support fees.
Advisory I Implementation & Migration I AMS I Oil & Gas I Oilfield Services I SAP ERP ECC 6.0 I Microsoft Azure
S/4 Roadmapping
Challenge
A client running a stable implementation of SAP ECC was exploring options for an upgrade to S/4HANA, some of which included non-SAP alternatives.
Solution
ITR partnered directly with the CIO and senior IT leadership and with the SAP regional sales team to review current state and evaluate alternative designs and approaches for a migration to S/4. ITR navigated through various scenarios such as need for SAP, defining right version and architecture of S/4HANA, etc. ITR's advisory services supported the client with robust solutions liaising with the client and SAP America to chart a productive roadmap.
Impact
After several workshops, offline analysis, and facilitation of negotiations between the client and SAP, a Bill of Materials for the target S/4 solution was determined and priced, along with a methodology for the project.
Advisory I Implementation & Migration I Oil & Gas I Oilfield Services I SAP S/4HANA 2020 I RISE with SAP I Microsoft Azure
Cost-Effective, ROI-Focused Application Support
Challenge
An automotive client in the Midwest was seeking to gain stability and cost reduction after 4 years of upheaval during successive waves of SAP S/4HANA rollouts.
Solution
ITR was able to step in and fill a broad variety of functional and technical roles, providing effective support to a recently-downsized internal SAP team. Disciplined and systematic knowledge transfer to a dedicated offshore team of experienced resources were combined with an onshore team member acting as anchor and coordinator.
Impact
Significant reductions in cost and in the backlog of enhancement requests, along with reduced load on internal SAP resources. ITR’s hybrid onshore + offshore model proved to be well-suited to the client's needs, and the ability to scale up quickly in support of unforseen high-priority M&A initiatives proved to be invaluable.
Key Personnel Backfill & PMO
Challenge
A long-time client in the food and beverages industry urgently needed support to stabilize operations in the wake of unexpected departures by several key SAP resources.
Solution
An ITR executive temporarily stepped in at the client’s senior director level to provide day-to-day leadership while the roles were backfilled, plus guidance for a long-planned transformation towards a more formal PMO-oriented structure.
Impact
With ITR’s help, the client successfully mitigated the negative impacts to support quality and project timelines, transformed the team’s structure, backfilled the key roles, and embarked on engagement of AMS services from ITR.
Full-Suite SAP Technical Support Services
Challenge
The client in the multimedia sector needed cost-effective SAP technical support services to support a complex landscape of systems, particularly in the Basis area and to support custom development needs.
Solution
ITR stepped into leading support roles in the Basis, database management, ABAP, and testing areas. Our team took responsibility for development, support, maintenance, and testing of multiple modules, including troubleshooting and analysis of technical problems, installation of support packs, backups, recoveries, system refreshes, database performance tuning, application of SAP Notes, upgrades, and strategic planning, including sizing, scoping, landscape strategy, and HA / DR planning.
Impact
ITR rendered assistance across the spectrum of SAP technical support disciplines, providing reliable administrative services and efficient development cycles.
AMS I Media Services I s/4
Fiori Smart App Deployment
Challenge
The customer suffered from some fundamental shortcomings in the usability of a customer-facing portal backed by a large and dynamic database. In particular, the search processes whereby the customer tracked down certain records in the database was prone to human input errors, lacked interactive reporting mechanisms, and required dedicated client software.
Solution
ITR's senior UX architect and development team developed and deployed intuitive and user friendly UI5 Fiori apps created for each of the service processes needed by the client to serve their customers' needs. These included smoother transaction processing incorporating input via barcode scanner, searches for SAP transactions across sales, logistics and finance, and functionality requiring data inputs from users to be more structured. Images could also be displayed in real-time. The SAP Fiori Launchpad became accessible globally with web-based access for users and Fiori-based embedded analytical apps for the transactions performed across business functions.
Impact
Clever data caching functionality built into Fiori by ITR's team enabled resource utilization for key processes to drop by up to 60% on a per-user basis, yielding massive performance improvements over previous deployments.
Reduction in data input error and re-processing by users caused a further reduction of system utilization as users got their results right the first time.
Real-time data visibility for operational reporting and controlling became possible though Fiori analytical apps.
Custom Dynamic Pricing Program
Challenge
The client facing a unique scenario required dynamic pricing based on very particular shipping volumes.
Solution
A senior ITR solution architect and our development team were able to build and test a solution meeting the customer's requirements, with as many standard objects as possible and with minimal training requirements for either end users or support personnel.
Impact
ITR's hands-off automated solution systematized what had been a very tedious manual process, both saving the client time while avoiding human errors.
COMDATA Payment File Creation in the Oil Industry
Challenge
SAP does not offer a standard solution for COMDATA integration. Our client had to do multiple payment runs tied to a massive dataset in order to generate files, and policy restrictions prohibited direct access.
Solution
ITR led a joint effort between functional and technical teams to execute and test the necessary configuration and development to automate extraction and validation of the payment file.
Impact
Vendor payment files can now be generated via a secure, user-friendly virtual workbench which provides validation that data has been mapped into the appropriate COMDATA fields. The amount of manual effort required was dramatically reduced, as have the prevalence of errors, while security has been significantly improved.
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Complex Sales Commission Reporting in the Food Industry
Challenge
The client in the Food and Beverage Industry required an SAP-based solution for reporting and calculation of sales commissions. The client had a very diverse and complex network of sales strategies covering numerous sectors in a developing market. As a result, their sales compensation program was exceptionally complicated.
Solution
After extensive consultation with the business leaders and technical team, ITR's solution architect and developers built a solution which extracted the necessary data from SAP tables, computed the sales commissions, and displayed the summaries with options to drill-down further.
Additional features were added to enhance the user experience, and report efficacy, including selection options for an individual sales representative or multiple, time period(s), sales organization(s), and more.
Impact
The automated and structured solution replaced a manual spreadsheet-driven approach, thereby speeding up the overall process of data gathering, calculation, and communication of sales commissions, which increased morale among the sales people. The systematic nature of the calculations also removed the human element, thereby both reducing errors and lending authority to the final results.
Advisory I Food & Beverage I Automation I Sales Commission Computation I One Click
Improvements in Monitoring and Maintenance in the SAP Security / Authorizations Space
Challenge
A customer with a very dynamic SAP footprint was suffering from bottlenecks in the SAP Security area. Some of the challenges were related to resource capacity since the core security team's limited resources were required in numerous projects at various phases. Another issue was related to down-time activities and turnaround periods for mass activities like user lock and unlock.
Solution
ITR's team partnered with the client's SAP Security and Authorizations resources, along with the SAP Basis team. Process flows for authorization requirements were standardized and provided to the functional teams, thereby driving more structure into the SAP Security aspects of the various project methodologies. The team also implemented an EWA tool and provided technical expertise for tedious SAP authorization management activities.
Impact
Significant process improvements were achieved, both in the production system where end user request turnaround times dropped, and in project spaces where process standardization and optimization enabled multiple projects to stay on track. In addition, tighter restrictions were imposed on SAP_ALL, critical ABAP development transactions, and control over 3rd party bolt-on applications.
Advisory I AMS I Oil & Gas I Oilfield Services I SAP ECC ERP 6.0 I Charm Solution Manager I Fiori I BW4/HANA I IBP
SAP Support for Alternative Licensing Solutions
Challenge
The client was required to cut costs while maintaining a productive, stable yet largely static implementation of SAP ERP ECC 6.0. They elected to adopt a non-traditional licensing agreement for their SAP systems, which precipitated a support structure that was able to accommodate both daily technical & functional support requirements as well as handle occasional issues which might have otherwise been addressed by an official patch from SAP.
Solution
ITR conducted a disciplined, systematic Knowledge Transfer to a dedicated offshore team of experienced resources. Where necessary, ITR duplicated solutions which might've been applied through traditional OSS notes.
Impact
The client was able to maintain their off-licensing status with a cost-effective support option for a prolonged period until an S/4HANA implementation. No negative impacts to SAP uptime, functionality, or support response times have been recorded since the migration to ITR support.
Advisory I AMS I Oil & Gas I Oilfield Services I SAP ECC ERP 6.0 I RIMINI
SAP Database Migration + AWS Lift & Shift
Challenge
A large client in the banking sector decided on a dual-migration strategy: a Lift & Shift of an SAP ERP ECC landscape to Amazon Web Services with simultaneous database migration from Oracle to HANA.
Solution
ITR completed both migrations in parallel, and both were successful. A single project manager oversaw both operations and coordinated activities between the technical and functional teams.
Impact
Our client successfully improved performance while cutting costs and gaining the additional redundancy, security, and disaster recovery benefits of running SAP with a hyperscaler.
Implementation and Migration I Financial Services I Amazon Web Services I SAP HANA Database
AMS for a Large City in the US
Challenge
One of the largest cities in the United States was seeking a cost-effective solution for SAP production support services and SAP system maintenance.
Solution
ITR supplied 24x7 Basis and Security support plus numerous technical and functional resources (including Fiori, Mobile Gateway, and HCM).
Impact
ITR was able to make resources available on T&M basis using a rate card, such that all resources were scalable on short order to meet demand for outages, projects, and other requirements, but were able to reduce staff to save costs during quiet periods.
AMS I Public Sector I SAP ECC ERP 6.0 I Fiori
TESTIMONIALS
Cost-Effective Support for Financial Services
Challenge
A major player in the global financial services industry needed to cut costs in its SAP support budgets while maintaining excellent customer service for its user and uptime for its client-facing solutions.
Solution
ITR rapidly deployed a robust team and coordinated a Knowledge Transfer program to take over SAP Functional and Technical support covering SAP Security, BASIS support (including a migration to AWS and an upgrade to the latest Enhancement Pack), and ABAP custom forms development, while also providing SAP functional support in the SD, MM, PP and QM areas.
Impact
The client enjoyed significant cost savings across all areas of SAP support, from the infrastructure team to end-user-facing transactional support personnel.
AMS I Financial Services I SAP ERP ECC 6.0 SAP I ABAP/4 I AWS
Migration to a New Application Managed Services Partner
Challenge
A leading confectionery company was struggling with their existing partner for technical AMS services, in particular with the fully offshore structure.
Solution
ITR replaced the incumbent's offshore structure with our tried-and-tested hybrid model with a senior onsite resource anchoring an offshore team.
Impact
After a carefully choreographed Knowledge Transfer phase, ITR's hybrid model successfully raised the customer's levels of support while maintaining a cost-effective structure.
AMS I Food & Beverage I SAP ERP ECC 6.0
Stop-Gap Leadership Support and Offshore Services
Challenge
A leading high-tech consumer products manufacturer's senior manager resigned during transition to a new support structure.
Solution
ITR was able to provide leadership for the project despite the lack of a primary client contact, and our onsite team ramped up quickly via a well-coordinated Knowledge Transfer program, which in turn enabled the offshore team to ramp-up quickly as well.
Impact
During a very difficult time of tumultuous organizational change and technical transition, ITR helped the client to stabilize their environment and standardize their support practices.
AMS I OCM I Manufacturing I SAP ECC ERP 6.0
Public Sector SAP Support Services
Challenge
Like many public sector entities, the client needed high-quality SAP technical and functional support at low cost.
Solution
ITR team immediately began adding value both on the technical support side (for instance, installing new HCI certificates on their SuccessFactors systems) while also providing Basis support for SAP ECC and functional assistance across HRM and other departments.
Impact
Scalable support services were rendered when and where needed by the customer, ensuring that their core team members could attend to other matters.
AMS I Public Sector I Oilfield Services I SAP ECC ERP 6.0 Success Factors