A Casestudy on Sap Bw Aspects in Divestiture Project of a Large Automotive Customer

A CASESTUDY ON SAP BW

ASPECTS IN A DIVESTITURE PROJECT OF A LARGE AUTOMOTIVE CUSTOMER

TCS Case Study

Lakshmi Nallamalli

Confidentiality Statement

Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Notice

The information contained in this document is confidential and proprietary to TATA

Consultancy Services. This information may not be disclosed, duplicated or used for any other

purposes. The information contained in this document may not be released in whole or in part

outside TCS for any purpose without the express written permission of TATA Consultancy

Services.

© TATA Consultancy Services 2009

SAP BW Aspects in a Divestiture Project

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About the Author

Lakshmi Nallamalli has been with Tata Consultancy Services for the past one and half years. Her current role involves the delivery of SAP BW (Business Warehousing) Projects with a large global automotive client in the role of SAP Consultant. She currently works out of TCS Bangalore delivery Center. Lakshmi has a Master’s Degree in Industrial Engineering from PSG College of Technology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore and Bachelors Degree in Industrial and Production Engineering from Koneru Lakshmiah College of Engineering, Nagarjuna University, Nambur. Email: [email protected]

About the Domain TCS’ SAP Practice helps clients transform, optimize and enhance value from their investments in SAP by offering end-to-end services spanning advisory services, implementation services and outsourcing services. The practice currently executes over 200 active engagements spanning more than 125 clients, 33 of which are ranked among the top 500 companies globally. The engagements are executed across industries such as Manufacturing, Retail and CPG, Telecom, Transportation, HealthCare, Energy and Utilities, and Media and Entertainment across multiple geographies. The SAP Practice has grown over five times during the last three years and currently has over 3900 associates having cross-product experience and capabilities spanning many industries. The competencies of these associates are kept up-to-date through assessment centers and through continuous training initiatives.


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Contents CONTEXT .................................................................................................................................................... 4

ABOUT TCS................................................................................................................................................. 4

ABOUT THE CUSTOMER ........................................................................................................................ 5

BACKGROUND OF PROJECT................................................................................................................. 5

GUIDELINES................................................................................................................................................ 5 LANDSCAPE................................................................................................................................................ 6

CHALLENGES/CONSTRAINTS .............................................................................................................. 7

ANALYSIS / APPROACHES ..................................................................................................................... 7

RECOMMENDATIONS AND BEST FIT SOLUTION........................................................................... 7

ASSUMPTIONS FOR BW IMPLEMENTATION ................................................................................... 8

BW CONFIGURATION – DIVESTITURE PROJECT........................................................................... 9

TECHNICAL ASSUMPTIONS ......................................................................................................................... 9 DEVELOPMENT STEPS................................................................................................................................. 9 MAJOR TECHNICAL CONCERNS................................................................................................................. 10

RESULTS AND BENEFITS ..................................................................................................................... 10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... 10

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................... 10


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Context Globally all Business Scenarios are increasing their focus on one’s own Core Business and Divest from Non Core businesses, there by improving Company market position in their Core Business. The whole process of Divesting-Disposition requires very intensive effort on all parties – those who sell and those who buy. Both needs to focus on ensuring the smooth flow of their business, proper control on it, its data privacy and finally ensuring a smooth separation of business. A major aspect which needs to be taken care is the IT Integration specific with SAP which is mostly involved in all businesses. SAP R/3 is mostly implemented by all Businesses for their ERP automation. Along with SAP R/3, many companies are moving forward to look into advanced modules for which Business Warehousing plays a vital role. Here is an example of the Divestiture project executed by TCS for a large global Automotive Company for its Divesting plants running in SAP for most of the R/3 Modules and implementing Business Warehousing for Divestiture units.

About TCS Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Limited is an IT services, business solutions and outsourcing organization that delivers real results to global businesses, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled services delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model (GNDM), recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has over 89,000 of the world’s best trained IT consultants in 47 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $4.3 billion for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2007 and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India.


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About the Customer The Customer is one of the Fortune 200 large Tier-1 Automotive suppliers located in Michigan, the United States with revenues in excess of US $ 26 B. They are a leading global supplier of Mobile Electronics, Transportation Systems, Powertrain, Safety, Steering Thermal Systems and many other automotive components. They have a Global manufacturing footprint, having 160+ manufacturing sites and an employee strength of 170,000. The Customer has implemented SAP as their ERP system with majority of the plants brought into the SAP landscape. TCS is the strategic partner to the Customer in SAP and Engineering and in Industrial Services (EIS) domains.

Background of Project This project is to develop the Customer business and IT strategies to allow seamless transition of a particular division (one which is being divested) within integrated business operation as independent business entity until it develops its own IT Integration. A Transition Services Agreement (TSA) has been established by the Customer to assist the new company’s business operations until a complete business transaction could be completed. The project is supporting this transition for all ERP that is SAP-FI, CO, SD, MM, HR, Employee benefits and Payroll processes. Another major task is the SAP BW. Guidelines TCS being the implementation partner has provided the following guidelines for executing the SAP BW implementation for the Divested Company.

• To provide the SAP BW access to the Divestiture Company maintaining the existing functionality and Interfaces within the current Customer Landscape.

• To separate Customer Data from the Divested Company. • To provide the BW accessibility to the Divested company in areas of its usage in

BW. • To develop the BW configuration in such a way that Customer should not access

the Divested Company Data and vice versa. • To accommodate all these Divestitures by maintaining Data accessibility to its

respective Customers. • To provide BW access by the HR Power Users of the Customer. Divested

Company will not have BW access for the HR related data and will be provided by the HR Power Users of the Customer.


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Landscape Customer shares the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) infrastructure with its Divested Company for the TSA Period.

Customer Quality R/3 Client -1



Divested Quality R/3 Client

HR Specific Quality Server

Customer DEV Golden R/3 Client

Customer Unit Test R/3 Client -1

Divested DEV R/3 Client

HR Specific Development Server

Current SAP BW supports the data storage for FI, CO, MM, SD, IM, PCA, CCA, HR modules. The Customer data is available in the Business content and, in Customized Infocubes and Infoobjects. The HR data for the customer is available in the HR Specific Production Client and the same is extracted into the SAP Production BW. Divested Company data is also accommodated in the same HR Specific Production Client with specific Personnel Areas and Company Codes. The same data is loaded into the SAP Production BW since there is no data accessibility to the Divested Company. All the other functional data of the Divested Client is available in the Divested Production R/3 Client. This is created as a copy of the existing Customer Production R/3 Client. Divested Company data is extracted into the SAP Production BW for Smooth Business flow of the Customer and the Divested Company.

SAP Production BW

Customer Production R/3 Client

Divested Production R/3 Client

HR Specific Production Server Production Environment

SAP Quality BW

Quality Environment

Development Environment

SAP DEVELOPMENT BW


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Challenges/Constraints The following are the challenges or constraints:

• To provide an ideal approach with this Divestiture that is., to have a new instance. However, this was not possible since the lead time to procure the hardware was very high and was an expensive option for the Customer.

• The project Go-live was planning for its execution in lean months of November and December where SME involvement was a major challenge.

• TCS was working along with many other third parties, some of whom are competitors to TCS in this project. As the SAP Integration of the project was critical, TCS had to work closely with all other third parties and ensure that business schedules match with SAP Planning and execution.

Analysis / Approaches The following are the three approaches that were designed for the smooth execution of this project:

1. Creating New BW objects that can accommodate the Divested Company Data available in the SAP Divested R/3 Client.

2. Allowing the New Divested Client data to be available in the existing BW Objects.

3. Creating a New SAP BW Server separately for the Divested Company. Among all the above mentioned approaches, Approach 1 will be the best and will be advantageous to follow with. This makes accurate Data Accessibility for the Customer and its Divested Company. Approach 2 requires the entire restructuring of the Customer Authorizations. The existing system does not have any identify field in BW objects that separates the Data from both the Customer R/3 Client and the Divested R/3 Client. This makes data separation impossible. Approach 3 is a better approach as this makes the Data Separation and Accessibility easy, but this increases the Customer Investments.

Recommendations and Best Fit Solution Considering the prevailing requirements and environment, TCS team recommended solution approach 1 for the BW implementation for its Customer Divestiture Project.


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Assumptions for BW Implementation 1. A New instance (Client) is created for the Divested Company as a copy of the

existing R/3 Production Client. 2. Divested Company will also share the SAP Production BW. 3. Customer can access only its own Data and not the Divested Company Data and vice

versa. 4. Existing BW functionality of Customer should be made available to its Divested

Company. 5. Only On-Going data will be provided to the Divested Company from the day of Go-

Live. 6. Based on the Usage patterns of the Divested units in the BW, all those data of BW

Infocubes needs to be recreated. 7. All the Developed Reports of the Customer Infocubes that are identified for Divested

Company is required to be recreated. BW Statistics Infocubes of the Customer are used for identifying the Usage patterns of the Divested Company. All the Divested unit users in BW and their existing Infocubes usage is been identified. All identified Infocubes are categorized as Work packages by TCS. Work Packages list is sent to the Divested Company for their Approval to convert them to Change Request (CR). CR Creation of all Work Packages with the Customer Approval ends with the Planning Phase of the Divestiture. This also involves the Design Review of the Core Competency Team of the Customer along with the Effort Estimation for the CR’s. Execution Phase of the Divestiture involves the Development of the BW Objects for the Divested Company.


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BW Configuration – Divestiture Project

Technical Assumptions 1. DIVESTITURE - Use Specific Info-area for the Divestiture BW Objects. 2. ZDIVESTITURE - Use Specific Application Component. 3. ZBW_DIV - Use Specific Development Class. 4. Naming Convention Used:

Info objects: N* Info cubes: N* (* being Existing Customer Objects name)

5. 0LOGSYS is considered to be Infoobjects that distinguishes various Customer Divestitures that are been streamlined. This is maintained as a Constant in the Transfer Rules of the respective BW Objects during development.

6. Company Code, Plant is also considered to be Authorization relevant along with 0LOGSYS for all the BW Infocubes of Divested Company.

Development Steps 1. Create Custom Infoobjects for accommodating the Divested Company Master Data

with 0LOGSYS as a Compounding attribute. 2. Create Identified BW Infocubes for the Divested Company as a copy of the existing

Customer Infocubes along with the 0LOGSYS that distinguishes the Divested Client data. This makes the Customer provide the BW integration for the upcoming Divestitures.

3. Reconcile the Data Sources in Divested R/3 Client that are used for the creation of the Divested Infocubes. As the Divested R/3 Client is copied from the Customer R/3 Client, it is easy with the BW job in R/3 side.

4. Create all Direct Update configurations for the Master Data Infoobjects. 5. Create all Info sources and Update Rules for the Divestiture Infocubes. 6. Make Authorization relevant Specific Master Data Infoobjects that makes the data

accessibility controllable for various Divestitures. 7. Create Authorization Objects for Infoobjects – 0LOGSYS, NCOMPCODE, NPLANT

that are authorization relevant. 8. Create all Reports on Divestiture Infocubes similar to that of existing reports with the

Source system as a mandatory Filter object that is filled by Roles of the User. 9. Create Roles for all the Divestiture Infocubes that are created and also for the specific

Authorized Infoobjects that is, 0LOGSYS, NCOMPCODE, NPLANT. 10. Create Test ID for all the Infocubes and test with respect to the Data Accessibility

based on roles.


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Major Technical concerns The following are the major technical concerns:

• Reconfiguring BW Objects of the Custom Data sources and its Data Load Automation process in the Extraction Programs.

• Handling Investment Management Info Cubes development, Type Pool. • Handling the Data Load Program for Custom MRP Infocubes which is made

generic for the Divested Company with Role authorization check.

Results and Benefits All these BW aspects in the Divestiture Project made a clear workable environment for the Customer as well as for the Divested Company, to have a smooth flow of IT Integration along with the other Business Divested Processes. TCS Approach for this BW Divestiture Project is set as a template for all the Divestitures of the Customer streamlined in near future. This Project has given a Value addition to TCS as well as to the Customer in running the Business.

Acknowledgements Author would like to thank all in the project for supporting her in Planning and Execution phase – especially: 1. Sridhar Akalankam, Development Manger, TCS, [email protected]

2. Natarajan Ravichandran, Technical Manager, TCS,

3. Ignatius Thomas, Account Manager, TCS, [email protected]

4. Suresh Tangella, Relationship Manager, TCS [email protected]

5. Suresh Upparapalli , Project Manager, TCS

6. Sarath Chandra, Purushotham Amilineni , Achunal Shreya, BW Team , TCS

7. All the other team members in the Divestitures Project.

References [1] (2007), “Seven reasons divestitures are harder than you think”, Chief Executive.

Documents

A Casestudy on Sap Bw Aspects in Divestiture Project of a Large Automotive Customer