Managed SAP services unlocks value across CSM Ingredients’ brands
When CSM Ingredients split from their parent company, they started with a highly complex SAP environment. As part of their overall strategy of digital transformation, they wanted to simplify the management of their solution while benefitting from the full range of RISE with SAP capabilities. Because their small, in-house IT team did not have the capacity to manage SAP RISE, they brought in NTT to manage the solution for them. Our expertise in SAP capabilities and understanding of CSM Ingredients’ business operations were a recipe for success.
Client profile
CSM Ingredients is an international leader in the baking industry, producing one of the industry’s broadest ranges of products. Their best-in-class ingredients and solutions reach artisanal and industrial bakeries as well as retail and foodservice markets. With more than 1,400 employees serving customers in over 100 countries, CSM Ingredients maintains a global footprint of 7 manufacturing facilities, 6 product development centers and 2 innovation centers of excellence.
How can we help you
Vision
Consolidating a complex global IT landscape
CSM Ingredients was launched in April 2021 following the completion of a private equity agreement. The company manufactures ingredients, primarily for the confectionary and baking industry. They are a key supplier of ingredients used in the production of the final products companies sell to their consumers, and they only sell to other businesses.
When they split from their parent company, they inherited a complex IT landscape, using various SAP components. While the larger company had the necessary staff complement to manage this system, this was no longer the case for CSM Ingredients.
Outsourcing the management of their SAP environment to an external provider would enable their internal IT team to focus on their overall strategy for digital growth and business process transformation.
“We started with a very complex IT system landscape. It was difficult for us – and management – to understand and to compare the different brand values and KPIs. From there, we embarked on our journey to streamline the processes and simplify technologies.”
Transformation
Streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency through specialized skills
SAP is a powerful tool; leveraging it to unlock the benefits of actionable insights, process automation and managing sustainability takes specialized skills, such as knowing how to work with SAP’s SLAs. SAP is critical to CSM Ingredients’ manufacturing environment, logistics and consistent communication with customers – in other words, to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).
The manufacturer uses SAP S/4HANA across their global operations. Having a partner who manages interactions with SAP relieves much of the burden of following up on tickets as well as optimizing the return of investment on SAP. This means the organization can widen its focus on strategy and leveraging the system to meet its overall goals instead of mainly actioning tickets.
Internally, this has caused an appetite to tackle additional projects, which has to be balanced with the mandate to stay in budget. Since investing in IT by using a partner to manage services was new, they had to be educated on how this investment would benefit them in the long run.
“You really have to educate the business users to adopt new ways of working to drive efficiency. The business benefit is to have more people spending time in analyzing information, while creating information becomes more automated,” explains Eduardo Silva, the CIO of CSM Ingredients.
We also architected and implemented an archiving solution to create redundancy and improve safety.
“Having NTT as a partner is critical for SAP governance at the moment. The NTT team has helped us work on further developments and drive tickets. They complement our knowledge with their understanding of the company and knowledge of internal SAP procedures.”
Results
Enabling the modernization of CSM Ingredients’ business processes
The collaboration between CSM Ingredients and NTT has enabled them to accelerate the modernization of their business processes. With a more flexible environment they’re able to support the business as it expands and evolves.
Managing SAP as part of a digitization journey
CSM Ingredients can take advantage of the business insights and automation capabilities of SAP and our expertise in managing SAP products and processes. This simplifies the company’s IT landscape and helps maximize their ROI with SAP.
Combining business knowledge and SAP knowledge
Having a partner that understands both CSM Ingredients’ business operations and SAP internal operations allows business problems to be resolved more quickly.
Complementing the SAP solution
The archiving solution that NTT designed and implemented ties in seamlessly with the SAP solution, protecting critical data and information stored in SAP. This information can be easily recovered in case of data loss or system failure. With the business relying on SAP for every part of their operations, this capability is critical in ensuring the continued success of the organization.
NTT and SAP
NTT and SAP have worked together for over 30 years to support organizations' business needs worldwide. This deep relationship enables both companies to leverage our best capabilities and expertise to deliver solutions that help companies transform into intelligent enterprises.
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