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Adith Charlie

Sasta roe barambar (The one who goes in for cheap services will repent umpteen times)

This could very well have been in the back of Subrata Dey’s mind when he decided to rope in IBM as the partner for implementing SAP’s enterprise wide software solution, at healthcare products major Godrej Sara Lee.

With IBM, Godrej Sara Lee ended up paying 35-40 higher than what majority systems integrators were charging for implementing ‘my SAP’ — a tool that delivers content to the user based on his or her role in an enterprise, Dey, the Mumbai-based company’s Executive Vice-President - Information Systems and Logistics, told eWorld.

This assumes significance, as not many Indian CIOs are known to pay a premium to their IT partners. Even if they want to, convincing the top management for the same becomes an uphill task.

So what really prompted the Godrej group company to join forces with SAP and IBM?

First, the healthcare major felt that its legacy ERP systems of 12 years was no longer capable of supporting the fast growing company, which today has around 30 manufacturing locations, 40 warehouses and 1,400 distributors.

A joint venture between the Godrej Group and the US-based Sara Lee, the company uses information technology both in production as well as distribution of its household insecticide and body care products such as Good Knight, HIT, Ambipur, Kiwi and Brylcreem.

Being a pan-India player, it leverages technology to ensure that the stocks of its products are available at the right place at the right time.

Hence, Godrej Sara Lee decided to use the Germany-based company’s ‘my SAP’ suite; the task of deploying the SAP applications was handed over to IBM.

And about 25 people, picked from the various business units of the Godrej group-company, played an active part in the implementation process, says Dey.

Any CIO would agree that the rollout phase is very critical; if the project gets delayed or stuck, it causes financial losses to both the client and vendor.

A delay of two-three months would automatically increase the total cost of ownership for the project by 40-45 per cent, believes Dey.

“Hypothetically speaking, these costs could have been passed on to the customer,” says Dey.

“Hence, we were keen to make those incremental investments needed to engage with an implementation partner like IBM as we wanted to ensure that the SAP rollout happens as quickly as possible without compromising on the quality of the implementation.”

Going in for a costlier partner bore fruit — the rollout was completed in the stipulated time frame of six months.

According to Dey, this implementation is ‘much faster than the industry benchmark’ for an engagement comprising 55 locations and over 300 users.

IBM moved out of the project in the month of April. Post-implementation too, Godrej Sara Lee retained IBM for providing various enhancements on the business intelligence front.

“Currently, they are helping us to make digital dashboards for a real time view of the company,” concludes Dey.

adith@thehindu.co.in

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