Introduction
This case study of Fromageries Bel is based on a March 2017 survey of Rev-Trac customers by TechValidate, a 3rd-party research service.
Rev-Trac Case Study
This case study of Fromageries Bel is based on a March 2017 survey of Rev-Trac customers by TechValidate, a 3rd-party research service.
Fromageries Bel is a recognized world leader in the branded cheeses sector, with nearly 13,000 employees and 30 global subsidiaries. Its cheeses are prepared at 28 production sites and distributed in almost 130 countries.
The company has ambitious plans aiming to double in size by 2025. To help realize its aggressive goals, Fromageries Bel needed to address several challenges within its SAP landscape. On the agenda was the development of a formal release management strategy to deliver projects with greater success to the business faster, and with fewer go-live errors. Fundamentally, the cheesemaker wanted to automate recurring processes, establishing tighter controls and allowing their teams and consultants to work on higher-value tasks.
SAP environment transformed
Fromageries Bel reviewed available technologies that would help its IT team to manage their SAP change control processes. After much consideration, Rev-Trac – the SAP DevOps platform – was selected ahead of SAP Solution Manager ChaRM. With the formal decision made, Rev-Trac was deployed and productive in one to three months.
Initially, Fromageries Bel had specific goals in mind for the automation project. Aside from implementing a release management strategy across its SAP environment, the cheesemaker wanted to improve its production stability and simplify the SAP change control process. It was also a priority to achieve its SAP agile and DevOps initiatives.
“Rev-Trac changed not only our daily job but also all people working with SAP in our company. Nobody can even imagine going back to the old days.”
Fast track agile and SAP DevOps
Deploying Rev-Trac to manage its SAP change control processes has allowed Fromageries Bel to achieve its initial project goals. The company benefited from Rev-Trac’s advanced functionality, including workflow automation, conflict management through extended locking, and the Overtake and Overwrite Protection System (OOPS) to accelerate its SAP agile and DevOps journey. With OOPS, the SAP IT team can reduce the errors that may occur, which provides adequate security against production incidents and secures its transports.
Another valuable feature is the Release Management Workbench which simplifies the management of SAP change requests by release, Sprint or track, and supports the company’s agile and SAP DevOps objectives.
Automating its change management processes with Rev-Trac has enabled the cheesemaker to accelerate SAP change across its landscapes. Fromageries Bel relies on Rev-Trac’s workflow approval, transport deployment and sequencing, and object conflict management capabilities to significantly reduce the time it takes to get changes from development to production.
Production system stability under control
As part of the project, Fromageries Bel wanted to improve the stability of its production system.
Before implementing Rev-Trac, it took the organization between two to five hours to identify and fix an overtake/overwrite error. Implementing Rev-Trac has eliminated risky manual tasks resulting in an increasingly stable SAP environment. Production stability across its SAP landscape has increased by up to 69% (based on error reductions), and it receives up to three potentially dangerous overtake and overwrite error alerts per month.
Streamlining its operations and automating SAP change management has led to a more than 90% reduction in manual effort. The cheesemaker is spending less time on audit tasks — up to 90% — with a transparent and trackable history of every SAP change.
Adopting the automated solution has allowed Fromageries Bel to quickly realize other business benefits, including:
• Eliminating up to 70% of manual N to N+1 retrofit effort
• Up to 69% increase in the volumes of change managed
• A more than 70% improvement in the efficiency of its SAP change management processes
This data was sourced directly from verified users of Rev-Trac by TechValidate.
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