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HOW CTAC HELPED THE BIOBEST GROUP WITH A RAPID DATA MIGRATION TO S/4HANA.

Data migration from multiple different legacy systems can be a major headache. Biobest Group, adviser and manufacturer of integrated and biological crop protection for horticulture and agriculture, experienced this when switching to SAP S/4HANA. Precisely Automate proved to be the key to a rapid, successful go-live.

Many companies want to do it, but Biobest Group is already doing it: contributing to a greener, more sustainable world. The organisation facilitates the natural pollination of flowers and plants all over the world. To do so, they use bumblebees, other insects, mites, nematodes and biopesticides. All are natural products and friendly to humans and the environment.

Patchwork

Biobest is blossoming, and thanks to its global network it can now reach growers in seventy different countries. “The Biobest Group currently consists of 26 different companies,” explains IT manager Guido Peeters. “These 26 companies are all very different. There are organisations with 400 employees and companies with just three members. Each company tends to have its own speciality or history. When it comes to IT, they each have their own infrastructure and applications.”

Peeters and his team were given the task of turning this patchwork into a single blanket. Business applications need to be standardised and the switch to SAP S/4HANA is an important part of this. The aim was to go live on 1 January 2023 with the Belgian and Dutch branches of the Biobest Group along with several others. However, one major pain point involved getting the master data organised. This had not yet been completed, and it was feared that it would become a dealbreaker for the go-live.

Struggling

“First, we looked at the standard SAP tools that were available for this,” says Peeters, explaining his problems with the data quality from the various old systems. “We tried the classic methods of collecting and cleansing all the data. We soon found out that this was not really possible in any efficient way. It was a never-ending struggle.”

Precisely Automate proved to be the solution. Around five months before the planned go-live, Peeters and his colleagues decided to start working with Ctac and Automate. They soon discovered they had found a catalyst. “Thanks to Automate, we achieved our goal and went live on 1 January as planned.”
Precisely Automate’s main strength lies in its live validation with SAP. Peeters explains why this delivers so many benefits.“Data is retrieved from the old system, cleaned up and loaded into SAP. Previously, errors in data quality only became apparent during the final loading process, meaning you then had to go back to your project team or users. This was very frustrating. Automate allows you to simulate elements in real time. Quality weaknesses are eliminated at an early stage.” This leads to a process that is much faster
and more efficient. “Now, when the data reaches our master data team, everything is in a pretty good state. They can then easily implement it.”

Twin track

The go-live on 1 January is only the first step for the Biobest Group. “Many organisations can go through a difficult one-time integration process and are then set up for the next ten years,” says Peeters. “But we probably do this three or four times a year for all our different companies. We have to handle data extraction from a legacy system and standardised migration to S/4HANA every time.”

Biobest now uses Automate Studio for two different purposes. In addition to the integration of data from legacy systems, it is also used for the live business and continuous transformations the organisation is facing. “In four weeks, we received 556 requests to make changes to the master data,” states the Biobest Group IT manager, laughing. “We need to be able to do this efficiently and in a well-organised fashion. We want our master data team to be able to load data at the press of a button. Automate is ideally suited to this, too, and is our basic tool for this process.”

Indispensable

Peeters recognises that Precisely Automate has become indispensable for his organisation in short order. “We soon understood its potential and that Automate needed to become a cornerstone of both our data migration workflow and our live business. That’s still how we see things today.”
A few years ago, Peeters couldn’t have imagined how much his organisation would benefit from Precisely Automate. “About four or five years back, we had a demonstration of Automate. To be honest, I wasn’t very convinced at the time. I didn’t immediately see its added value.” This changed when Ctac re-introduced him to the product as a solution for his data migration problem in autumn 2022. Automate was brought on board and rapidly put into operation. “Its ease of use, the options it provides and more…it truly has changed the game,” says Peeters with satisfaction.

Peeters is grateful to Ctac for the successful go-live. “The people at Ctac helped us enormously and made a significant contribution. Thanks to them, we have been able to maintain a fast pace.” He is also particularly pleased that Ctac sought out a “solution sale”: what was Biobest’s problem and what was the best solution for it? In this case, the answer was Precisely Automate. The next step: expanding the possibilities. “There is still plenty to be done with Ctac. We’re already looking at Automate Evolve with them. This would mean the entire process flow is managed by Automate. That’s the next step for us.”