Customer Stories
Sycor: Supporting innovation and growth through standardization
Explore Sycor’s journey with SAP
A lack of integration between enterprise applications and high levels of customization made it difficult for IT consultancy Sycor GmbH to quickly scale its IT infrastructure to support ongoing business expansion. To address this, Sycor deployed the RISE with SAP solution to establish an intelligent digital foundation.
usage of SAP standard processes.
scope items and processes implemented within 10 months.
reduction in complex process variants.
RISE with SAP helped us simplify and standardize core processes across the company, while making workflows more efficient and customer centric.
Manfred Grossmann
CIO and Vice President Corporate IT and Project Excellence, Sycor GmbH
The Challenge
Simplifying a complex IT landscape
By developing innovative IT solutions for customers around the world, Sycor GmbH has grown quickly. However, an IT landscape that incorporated multiple disparate applications and data silos was hampering the company’s ability to run efficient operations.
With nonstandard processes representing more than 60% of its existing ERP solution, high levels of customization made it difficult to adopt business innovations and scale up to support rapid growth. Furthermore, complex and duplicated logon processes and repetitive workflows for end users resulted in a poor user experience.
To address this, the company wanted to integrate and standardize core business processes on a single, unified, digital foundation. And to add to the challenge, an upcoming merger meant that Sycor needed to complete the project in just 10 months.
Using various cloud solutions from SAP, connected using SAP Integration Suite, we created a highly integrated, digital process network, based on best practices. This supports growth and has optimized our total cost of ownership.
Manfred Grossmann
CIO and Vice President Corporate IT and Project Excellence, Sycor GmbH
The Solution
Integrating enterprise applications on a unified, digital foundation
With help from SAP partner Walldorf Consulting AG and using the SAP Activate methodology, Sycor reimagined its IT landscape to create an intelligent business foundation based on SAP Business Technology Platform. Implemented as part of the RISE with SAP solution, SAP S/4HANA Cloud replaced the company’s existing ERP software. In a rapid deployment, the new cloud ERP solution delivered comprehensive support for end-to-end business processes across sales, sourcing and procurement, supply chain, finance, controlling, and R&D and engineering.
Using SAP Integration Suite, the project team then integrated other cloud solutions from SAP with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. These include the SAP Marketing Cloud and SAP Sales Cloud solutions as well as SAP SuccessFactors solutions. In addition, the team used the SAP Analytics Cloud solution to analyze different sets of data coming from the cloud solutions. For example, the company analyzed product sales using data from SAP Sales Cloud and HR master data from SAP SuccessFactors solutions to track leave patterns.
Mobile functionality enables employees to access information and process workflows from any location. Meanwhile, straightforward, browser-based logon and single sign-on across solutions provide a smooth and cohesive user experience.
The Result
Improving efficiency with harmonized processes and on-the-go access
With the unified digital foundation in place, Sycor has now standardized more than 98% of its processes, achieving 100% standardization in financial and sales processes. Improved systems performance enables the company to efficiently manage more than 1,100 projects and handle up to 10,000 time-sheet entries each month, while advanced analytics provides managers with an operational overview in real time.
Working from a single version of the truth, sales personnel can respond faster to inquiries, improving service quality and strengthening customer relationships. Meanwhile, marketing personnel can efficiently track and manage workflows from lead to order while functionality in SAP Sales Cloud offers advanced insights into product sales.
Intuitive mobile apps provide self-services that enable employees to quickly and efficiently complete routine HR administration tasks from any location, freeing their time to focus on higher-value tasks. In addition, the ability of partners to access cloud-based processes enables better collaboration across company boundaries.
Our new, intelligent business foundation improves communication with partners and suppliers and provides real-time insights that enable proactive action.
Manfred Grossmann
CIO and Vice President Corporate IT and Project Excellence, Sycor GmbH
Future Plans
Providing a foundation for expansion and innovation
By switching to a software-as-a-service model, Sycor can scale its IT solutions quickly to support ongoing business growth. Furthermore, the company’s standardized infrastructure enables it to take advantage of regular updates. This provides the company with the latest capabilities, enabling it to access innovative technologies.
Further plans include the deployment of planning and budgeting functionality in SAP Analytics Cloud and a rollout of SAP Concur solutions. In addition, Sycor is looking at using SAP Extension Suite to develop side-by-side extensions. In this way, the company can provide nonstandard functionality where needed, without the need to customize core solutions.
SAP helps Sycor run better
Key business outcomes and benefits
- Support for integrated, more-transparent processes
- More-efficient, collaborative working, using a single source of truth
- Less time spent on routine HR administration, freeing up time for higher-value tasks
- Standardized, cloud-based model, enabling regular updates and access to the latest innovations
- Ability to quickly scale the IT infrastructure to support rapid growth
Featured solutions and services
- RISE with SAP is a comprehensive offering that provides cloud ERP, functionality based on industry best practices, analytics, and business process intelligence.
- SAP Business Technology Platform combines data management, analytics, artificial intelligence, application development, automation, and integration in one unified environment.
- SAP Activate provides a clear, guided methodology to deploy, adopt, and extend new capabilities across your organization.
- SAP Integration Suite allows you to integrate on-premise and cloud-based applications and processes with tools and prebuilt content managed by SAP.
- SAP Analytics Cloud combines business intelligence, augmented and predictive analytics, and planning capabilities into one cloud environment.
About Sycor
Sycor provides its customers with sustainable support along their entire value chain, around the clock, 365 days a year. As an IT service provider, Sycor combines know-how and many years of experience in focus areas such as SAP and Microsoft products, along with the cloud and other technology. Sycor helps customers with everything from advisory and consulting to operations.
Featured partner
Founded in 2015, Walldorf Consulting is a fast-growing professional services company with subsidiaries on three continents. Working closely with Sycor as an implementation and development partner for its intelligent business foundation, Walldorf Consulting provided program and project management, implementation and development support, and identity provisioning and authentication services.