DuPont Europe Moves to Global SAP Environment

Client: DuPont

Challenge: Eliminate European legacy applications and consolidate business processing into one clustered global SAP environment.

Solution: CSC transformed business processes across DuPont’s European locations, migrated from existing legacy systems and unified the new master data into the strategic SAP environment.

Results: The migration allowed European business units to work more efficiently and cost-effectively with their global counterparts.

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When DuPont moved its European business units to a global SAP environment, it also needed to bring over data and business processes buried in legacy applications. DuPont turned to CSC to manage the SAP migration and ensure a smooth transition for thousands of European employees.

While much of DuPont’s business had already moved to SAP, important work was still being handled by legacy applications, which represented 15 years of application development. “There was no question that the migration had to be done. Some business units had to work in two different environments,” says Rose Burkhardt, DuPont IT program manager. “The European leadership team and top management supported this project from the beginning.”

Legacy and SAP expertise

DuPont had been working toward a strategic SAP environment (called DSAP) for several years, but DSAP implementations had been driven primarily by business unit priorities, not by an overarching unified plan. As some business units migrated, DSAP continued to be linked to legacy applications. In 2003, DuPont introduced the Legacy Application Management Programme (LAMP), an effort to rid the company of many European legacy applications because of their complexity, technical obsolescence and costs.

The affected applications were critical to the business – including legal and corporate reporting and other intercompany business processes across 47 legal entities in 18 countries. Some business units who had moved into the strategic DSAP environment still had to use legacy applications for certain business processes – an inefficient and cumbersome process.

CSC’s relationship with DuPont began long before this migration program, dating back to 1997 when the two signed a global IT outsourcing agreement. In 2004, DuPont selected CSC for the migration because of its combined knowledge of the DuPont legacy environment and SAP. CSC had provided the primary applications support for all DuPont European legacy applications, and many DuPont resources had transferred to CSC over the years. CSC combined this expertise with 20 years of SAP implementation experience and over 2,900 SAP consultants worldwide. In addition, CSC had provided key SAP and business process expertise during the DSAP development.

“It was a combination of knowing the legacy environment and the DuPont strategic environment. CSC knew both,” says Burkhardt.

Nearshore, offshore resources unite

In late 2004, CSC assembled a global team to help DuPont’s business units transform their business processes to adapt to the SAP environment, migrate from the existing legacy systems and unify the new master data. CSC’s project office was in Geneva, pulling in near-shore resources from Spain and off-shore resources from India, which helped keep costs down.

“The effective use of CSC World Sourcing and remote working enabled skilled resources from around the globe to be brought into the project either for short- or long-term periods, allowing the client to meet their budget objectives and CSC to prove their global applications capability,” says Betty Thomson, CSC’s account delivery manager.

Throughout the project, CSC and DuPont ensured continuous communication with affected business units, as well as training on the new SAP system for users.

“The challenge of organizational change management was as difficult as the challenge of the technical solution,” says Gary Beckett, CSC account director. “Success was only achieved because of the focus on communication and training of the end users.”

Challenge of Sarbanes-Oxley

The project was delivered on time and within budget in February 2005, despite the unexpected challenge of the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which went into effect in 2004, introducing strict new corporate disclosure standards. With the legacy applications in place, it would be virtually impossible for DuPont to be compliant, which added an extra layer of urgency to CSC’s work.

Now, with the new global DSAP environment, business units have extra layers of protection, with safeguards in place to ensure that data is processed and entered correctly into the SAP applications. European business units, freed from their legacy applications, can now operate more flexibly as part of the global corporation.

“European business units can work in a strategic direction and not have to synchronize with the old legacy systems and codes,” says Burkhardt, adding that European data is no longer coded differently from the global data. “The biggest benefit is that business units already in the strategic environment can leave the legacy environment completely, which saves time and costs.”