Antalis: Delivering a uniform rollout concept for its IT solutions

Delivering a uniform rollout concept for its IT solutions

To carve out its position as the world’s fourth-largest and Europe’s largest distributor of paper and communication support materials, Antalis has undergone rapid expansion and major organisational changes in a relatively short space of time. Going forward, the company’s priorities were to accelerate its business strategy and strengthen its organisation. As a first step towards these goals, Antalis chose to deploy the enterprise information system ARIES*. A core model was developed using SAP software and the aim was to roll it out progressively to each of the company’s subsidiaries.

In spring 2005, Antalis found that the initial deployment phase, which involved implementing ARIES in France, Switzerland and Belgium, was taking longer than anticipated and was costing more than estimated. “Our deployment approach was relatively crude,” recalls Philippe Ménillet, chief information officer of Antalis. “Even though we had defined core processes and deployed them in a number of countries, our methodology was not sufficiently clear and we were reinventing the wheel with each deployment.” In May 2005, Antalis asked CSC to develop a uniform deployment concept for the next steps of the ARIES rollout project. “The solution had to be rolled out quickly in Belgium in order to learn from that project and lay the foundations for future implementations, notably in Poland by September 2005,” says Philippe Ménillet.

An extremely demanding project

The very first weeks were dedicated to the diagnosis of the project. CSC’s project team designed a reusable deployment kit including the required tools and the methodology.

CSC was placed in charge of a highly complex project. From a technical standpoint, seven different application plug-ins for SAP R/3 would have to be developed to perform various specific tasks such as warehouse administration, transport planning, product configuration and administration of the Antalink e-commerce platform. From an HR standpoint, CSC had to coordinate the work of forty different consultants and liaise with sixty different users of eight different nationalities. Furthermore, ARIES was scheduled for deployment in four countries (Poland, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic) with very different cultural, linguistic and regulatory frameworks. These factors meant that the project had to be meticulously prepared and executed flawlessly—all the more so because it involved mission-critical business activities. There was absolutely no room for error.

Customised approach

Building on the lessons learned from deploying the solution in Belgium, CSC’s project team devised an implementation blueprint covering all aspects of the project. CSC’s project leader, Guillaume Rivet, explains: “The organisation structure put in place gave us control of all the critical activities necessary to the project, such as logistics (key for Antalis), master data management, data migration and user training. Master data management was particularly important if we were to achieve the expected regional synergies.” As principal coordinator for the AIRES project, CSC was responsible for solution deployment and implementation of the local software tools. A uniform rollout concept had to be developed in order to ensure consistency with the company’s core model.

Careful preparation ensured that the project moved forward on the right track. Four deployments were then completed in Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. The uniform rollout concept ensured that all aspects of these four parallel projects were completed on time. “Also after system go-live, we immediately saw a major difference in relation to previous projects. The system was stable almost immediately and there were no last-minute mishaps or system errors. External consultants were able to move on to classic main-tenance activities within four to six weeks of go-live, instead of spending several months on site providing post-implementation support as had previously been the case.”

Flexibility and responsiveness: the key aspects of a successful partnership

“As well as know-how and experience, CSC has shown great flexibility. The team has always taken into account the differences of opinion and work habits, whilst focusing on the objective. We were able to move on smoothly, without discussing over and over again. We worked as real business partners,” says Philippe Ménillet.

Within a few weeks of go-live, the first operational benefits associated with the new solution began to emerge, namely the development of local synergies in logistics and the completion of the first phase of an enterprise-wide programme. Further implementations of ARIES are planned in Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. The acquisition of Map Merchant Group (Europe’s fourth-largest paper distributor) in early July 2007 propelled Antalis to the number one position in its industry in Europe and will surely add a new direction on the ARIES road map.

* ARIES (Antalis Roll-out Integrated European Systems).

Contact: Guillaume Rivet