Thales Electron Devices: Seamless SAP upgrade with No Disruption to the Business
Client: Thales Electron Devices
Challenge: Upgrade from the soon-to-be obsolete version of its business intelligence application, SAP BW. The transition had to be undertaken without the slightest disruption to data
Solution: Work with CSC to establish a technical and procedural approach to move from SAP BW 2.0 to 3.1.c
Results: The upgrade was a "non-event," occurring without incident, on deadline and on budget, with no disruption to business
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In the highly competitive telecommunications sector, small interruptions in supplying electronic devices to clients can lead to larger disruptions for customers. So when an executive of the world's leading manufacturer of electronic tubes categorizes the global reengineering of his company's IT system a "non-event" – that means it was a major success.
This is how Philippe Decobert, president of the ERP competence centre at Thales Electron Devices, defines a software upgrade that excelled from the seamless cooperation between the company’s teams and CSC to the upgrade from SAP BW 2.0.b to 3.1.c.
Thales Electron Devices, a subsidiary of Thales Group with approximately 2,400 employees, is the world’s leading manufacturer of electronic tubes, notably used in telecommunications systems, such as radio, television, radar, satellite and medical imaging.
Consolidating for compatibility
This highly competitive sector requires the utmost responsiveness, and the latest decision-making tools are essential. In 2000, when Thales considered a global reengineering of the IT system, the implementation of Cognos Impromptu, the latest managed reporting search tool, was the top priority. To introduce that, Thales reviewed its processes with CSC’s assistance and decided to replace its variety of homemade applications and software packages operating on different platforms with the SAP range.
They chose SAP BW. This "business intelligence" application was new at the time and its inherent compatibility with ERP R/3 spared the company the bother of developing a specific communication layer. In fact, the Thales Electron Devices and CSC teams were the world’s first to install and master the new functionalities of Version 2.0.b.
The new tool was well accepted by users, management executives and department heads. They could now benefit from reliable, quick and global access to information, such as sales and financial data. "Today, decision-making processes are part of the intellectual approach of the company’s executives. Though the product is sometimes judged complex at first glance, it is mainly because it is complete," says Decobert.
An essential upgrade
The consideration to upgrade began in 2003. The reasons included the sufficient amount of time SAP had to hone its product and correct the few defects attributable to its newness, particularly in terms of performance. "The progress made with the middleware, which ensures communication between the transactional and decision-making databases, combined with the application upgrade, opened new functional perspectives for us, and added the possibility of implementing new areas of analysis," explains Decobert.
Another reason was that contractual commitments made with SAP, regarding SAP BW upgrades, did not allow the company to retain a soon-to-be-obsolete version of the software. Finally, customers asked for new functionalities, such as Web reporting, which considerably relieves the end user’s workstation and appropriately handles the routine requests without requiring additional parameterization from the user.
The success of the initial installation of SAP BW was determined by the company’s renewed faith in CSC for this project, which took place between September 2003 and March 2004. Decobert recalls, "CSC consultants already had the technical expertise and BW know-how, and we have appreciated their professionalism and adaptability. With them, we succeeded in creating a team spirit with no client-provider distinctions."
A need for reliability
As soon as an initial study was launched, a major requirement emerged: the transition had to be undertaken without the slightest disruption to the data, which would have been catastrophic, or to the users, whose confidence in IT tools is just as easy to lose as it is difficult to restore.
Based on this perspective, Thales Electron Devices and CSC worked together to establish a technical and procedural approach to set the project’s outline and define respective responsibilities. Thanks to the competence transfer which took place during a previous project, each participant had the same knowledge and spoke the same language, which facilitated the debates between functional requirements and technical imperatives.
To avoid interference with year-end milestones, the project was suspended until January when important tests set by the functional and technical experts from Thales Electron Devices and CSC launched. A hundred days of work were scheduled to ensure that all data and functionalities would be recovered, that the middleware would perform its role of linking the ERP and decision-making-tool databases and that the ERP would not be impacted by certain requests.
The extensive testing preceded the definitive launch, which took place without incident in the beginning of April 2004. Immediately users experienced a clear improvement in the performance of the new search tool. Some searches, which previously took up to several minutes with the old application, were now being executed in seconds.