HEINEKEN International: Winning Efficiencies Through a Cross

Picture Credit | HEINEKEN, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Used with permission.
SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
HEINEKEN International:
Winning Efficiencies Through a
Cross-Continent Data Migration
SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
Company
HEINEKEN International
Company
Industry
Consumer products – beverage companies
Vision
Why SAP
Products and Services
Beer, including Amstel, Birra Moretti, Cruzcampo,
Dos Equis, Foster’s, and Kingfisher product lines
Implementation
Web Site
www.heinekeninternational.com
Solution
SAP® Solutions
Services of the System Landscape Optimization group
from SAP, SAP® MaxAttention™ support
Benefits
Future plans
Partners
SAP Services organization, Wipro, T-Systems
International GmbH, and Hewlett-Packard
When HEINEKEN International acquired the beer division of FEMSA in Mexico and
Brazil, the company’s IT department faced a huge challenge. A terabyte of data had
to be safely migrated from FEMSA’s SAP® ERP application in Mexico to HEINEKEN’s
SAP ERP application system landscape in Germany – all over a single weekend. To help
ensure success, HEINEKEN turned to the System Landscape Optimization group at SAP.
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
A giant among breweries
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
for the Americas division of HEINEKEN. “Currently,
HEINEKEN is Europe’s largest brewer and the world’s
third largest by volume.”
HEINEKEN is a proud, independent global brewer
committed to surprising and pleasing consumers with
its brands and products. The brand that bears the
founder’s family name – HEINEKEN – is available in
almost every country on the globe and is the world’s
most valuable international premium beer brand.
HEINEKEN is committed to the responsible marketing and consumption of its more than 200 international
premium, regional, local, and specialty beers and
ciders. These include Amstel, Birra Moretti, Cruzcampo,
Desperados, Dos Equis, Foster’s, HEINEKEN, Newcastle
Brown Ale, Ochota, Primus, Sagres, Sol, Star, Strongbow,
Tecate, and Zywiec. Its leading joint-venture brands
include Cristal, Kingfisher, Tiger, and Anchor. In 2011
the company generated €17.1 billion in revenue and
employed 70,000 people worldwide.
The company’s goal is to be a leading brewer in
each of the markets in which it operates and to offer
one of the world’s most diversified brand portfolios.
“We’re present in over 70 countries and operate
more than 140 breweries that produce 214 million
hectoliters of beer sold,” says Lee Dawson, senior
vice president of business process and technology
“The HEINEKEN brand itself is available in almost every country
around the world.”
Lee Dawson, Senior Vice President, Business Process and Technology, Americas,
HEINEKEN International
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
Company
Investing in Latin America through
a strategic acquisition
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
Technically, this meant HEINEKEN needed to transfer data related to the beer business from FEMSA’s
41-terabyte SAP business application – located in
Mexico – to a newly created SAP ERP application
system based in Frankfurt, Germany. Altogether,
approximately 1 terabyte of business data had to be
moved internationally to the German environment.
“We also needed to carve out business data belonging
to FEMSA’s business intelligence system and archives,”
notes Dawson.
When HEINEKEN acquired the beer division of FEMSA
in Mexico and Brazil, it became a more competitive
player in Latin America – one of the world’s most profitable and fastest-growing beer markets. “We wanted
to build more strength in the Americas – in particular,
Mexico and Brazil, two of the largest beer markets
in the world,” notes Dawson. “Our deal with FEMSA
enabled us to accelerate execution of our strategy.”
But first, FEMSA’s beer business had to be integrated
into HEINEKEN’s systems and processes. “It quickly
became clear to the integration program office that
we needed to have governance and autonomy to move
the business forward,” says Dawson. “Without this, we
couldn’t implement our own commercial reporting,
ordering, and production systems; financial reporting;
and much more. Control and information about the
business was limited, to say the least.”
The challenge was to safely migrate the massive
amount of data represented by four company codes
with a minimal impact on regular business operations.
For help, HEINEKEN turned to SAP.
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
Company
Choosing the right partner for a high-risk
project
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
To help ensure success, HEINEKEN chose to leverage
the services of the System Landscape Optimization
group at SAP. The group helps companies strategically
consolidate, align, harmonize, and optimize IT systems
after reorganizations, acquisitions, and mergers.
As a long-term SAP customer, HEINEKEN had a
strong relationship with the company. But it chose
SAP because of its proven technology and standardized approach to managing a complex project that
required splitting and transforming data, as well as
its extensive know-how regarding system landscape
optimization.
“By tapping SAP global resources, tools,
and best practices, we were confident
that we’d have the process continuity
and data consistency we needed after
the data transfer.”
Lee Dawson, Senior Vice President, Business Process and
Technology, Americas, HEINEKEN International
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
Company
A massive, international migration in just
one weekend
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
The main challenge was to tackle the overall separation
effort. “Global-scale IT projects are a little like an iceberg:
the visible tip above the water represents the changes
to the user experience, but the real work lies in the kilometers of ice hidden below the surface,” says Dawson,
who was part of the intercontinental team that successfully completed the project. “It was the largest project
of its kind ever undertaken.”
36 hours
Time to complete
cutover
the System Landscape Optimization group from
SAP, Wipro, Hewlett-Packard, T-Systems International
GmbH, and SAP MaxAttention™ support.
The project was completed within the agreed 36 hours –
despite the different time zones and languages involved.
What made this possible? Quick responses, a shared
mind set among all parties involved, clear deadlines,
and detailed planning and execution. The international
teams worked extremely well with SAP consultants
across the globe, leveraging everyone’s respective skills
to help ensure success. Team members included a
total of 140 people who came from FEMSA, HEINEKEN,
“We were often working across five or six countries
in Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, Indian,
and Dutch,” explains Dawson. “If people hadn’t been
so proactive and collaborative, we could have lost
12 to 14 hours, resulting in unacceptable downtime
for HEINEKEN.”
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
A stable, reliable system from day one
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
From an end-user perspective, the migration was
completely transparent. FEMSA’s people used
HEINEKEN’s SAP ERP functionality from day one
without incident; the only difference they noticed
was faster performance. Comments Dawson, “In
Mexico, we had 6 or 7 calls to the help desk on the
first day after going live and around 10 in Brazil – and
most of these were password resets. It was so quiet
that at one point we were checking whether there
was a problem with the phones!”
“The project timeline for the migration was extremely
aggressive,” says Jen Singer, integration program manager at HEINEKEN. “The pressure was really on, but
we did it – on time, within budget, and with no business
interruption.” Following the migration, HEINEKEN had
a complete, harmonized copy of FEMSA’s data. There
was very little impact on normal business operations
for either company, and management was extremely
pleased to see that employees had immediate access
to SAP ERP right after the new system went live.
Future plans
“The stability and reliability of the new SAP ERP application
immediately after going live was praised by both the business-user
community and HEINEKEN’s senior leadership.”
Lee Dawson, Senior Vice President, Business Process and Technology, Americas,
HEINEKEN International
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SAP Customer Success Story | Consumer Products | HEINEKEN
Executive overview
Company
On time, within budget, and without
business disruption
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Now HEINEKEN has complete governance over
FEMSA’s beer-related operations and data. “With full
control over the infrastructure and data, we can make
changes to the business as needed so that it’s aligned
with HEINEKEN’s strategy and processes. This was
the ultimate goal,” explains Dawson. “We committed
to integrating these businesses, and that’s exactly what
we’ve done. To the outside world, particularly for investors and shareholders, it was important that we complete the migrations on time and within budget.”
HEINEKEN was extremely satisfied with the results and
overall service quality delivered under the leadership
of the System Landscape Optimization group. “That
weekend showed us the real added value of having
chosen SAP as our premium partner in this enormous
challenge,” says Hector Calva, CIO of Coca Cola FEMSA.
Adds Dawson, “We especially liked the fact that several complex elements, such as the beverage industry
solution and country specifics for Brazil’s nota fiscal,
were handled with great ease by the SAP team.”
Future plans
“With this smooth transition following the announcement of
our deal with FEMSA, we sent a powerful message about our
professionalism as a company.”
Lee Dawson, Senior Vice President, Business Process and Technology, Americas,
HEINEKEN International
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HEINEKEN
Taking integration
to the next level
Executive overview
Company
“This was one of our largest and most complex
project challenges,” explains Singer. “We delivered
the new solution in a controlled and predictable way,
providing a sustainable operational solution that went
live seamlessly and without impact to our business
operations.” HEINEKEN is currently in the process of
converting FEMSA’s chart of accounts and standardizing reporting so that it complies with the HEINEKEN
standards. This will enable management to receive
more transparent business figures via automated,
consolidated reporting.
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
“From a business perspective, this project
could be described as open heart surgery.
We are glad to say the patient is alive and
performing very well.”
CMP17020 (12/06)
Lee Dawson, Senior Vice President, Business Process and
Technology, Americas, HEINEKEN International
Copyright/Trademark | Privacy | Impressum
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Picture Credit | HEINEKEN, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Used with permission.
Vision