In 2021, the Guerbet Group has decided to switch from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, in order to take advantage of the new functional and technological features of the latest generation of SAP ERP. A conversion successfully completed in less than a year.
Guerbet is a French healthcare company specializing in medical imaging for diagnostic and operational purposes.
An international industrial company, Guerbet operates in over 80 countries and employs more than 2,600 people, with 2022 sales of 753 million euros. In 2013, Guerbet decided to implement a common SAP ECC ERP for all its subsidiaries. A large-scale project.
“In 2020, our SAP ECC ERP had been deployed at almost all our sites in EMEA and APAC, with almost a thousand users”, explains Marcello Bellato, Guerbet’s Chief Information Officer.
Early conversion to better exploit opportunities
In 2021, Guerbet has decided to convert to SAP S/4HANA intelligent ERP, even though SAP ECC has only been deployed at half of the Group’s sites.
“We could have carried out this conversion at the end of the SAP ECC rollout,” continues Marcello Bellato, “but then we would have missed the opportunity to quickly take advantage of the advances offered by SAP S/4HANA, which we need to support our transformation: new functionalities, integration of analytical and reporting tools, advanced automation, etc. The conversion to SAP S/4HANA and the new functionalities will also enable us to accelerate deployment on the remaining countries, by reducing customizations.”
Guerbet decided to work with TeamWork on this project. “We were already familiar with this integrator, whose work had given us satisfaction. What’s more, we appreciate their flexibility and the close working relationship they’ve built up with our teams. These were very important factors, which we hoped to capitalize on in this conversion project.”
11 months to convert an ERP with extended scope
The project starts on June 9, 2021, with a go live of the SAP S/4HANA solution scheduled for Easter weekend 2022, i.e. 11 months later. This schedule is all the tighter because the scope of the SAP ECC solution is particularly broad. Our ERP is not limited to finance,” confirms Marcello Bellato. It covers our entire supply chain: purchasing, sales, production, distribution, logistics, warehouse management, customer service, etc.”
“Nearly 200 people were involved in this project at Guerbet. These business experts were able to work in coordination – and on good terms – with our IT teams and those of TeamWork.”
Marcello Bellato, Guerbet’s Chief Information Officer.
One of the keys to the success of this project was the strong involvement of the business teams.
Another key to success was the care taken during the test phase, during which some 3,600 scenarios were run.
The combined efforts of the business, IT and TeamWork teams enabled us to launch SAP S/4HANA on schedule, without any noticeable impact on users or disruption to operations.
TeamWork also organized presentation sessions throughout the project. These enabled key users to discover in advance the functionalities and evolutions brought by the SAP S/4HANA ERP. This was a key factor in winning their support, preparing them for the future ERP, and building a roadmap of desired developments for the years to come.
Roll-out and leverage the benefits of SAP S/4HANA
Now that the conversion has been completed, Guerbet can resume its deployment program, with its sights set on the United States, the LATAM zone and Asian countries for which the ERP rollout had not yet been completed.
At the same time, Guerbet will be upgrading its SAP S/4HANA ERP, according to a roadmap defined during the conversion (and presentation sessions with the business lines). The company has already implemented a web-based order-taking system, integrated with the ERP and deployed on the SAP Business Technology Platform. Other projects are in the pipeline:
- The use of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), to automate the processing of supplier invoices
- Deployment of SAP Cash Application, to simplify the Order-to-Cash process
- Improved inventory management, with the introduction of a Product Allocation process
- The use of SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics, in particular to calculate average payment times
“We also plan to continue leveraging SAP Fiori technology, for example by using it in a mobile application to simplify the maintenance of equipment on our production lines,” concludes Marcello Bellato.
