Modern IT landscape for international locations

Services for people - that is the concept of the Dussmann Group, one of the world's largest private multi-service providers. Dussmann combines services in the business sectors facility management, technical plant construction, care and nursing for the elderly, company-run day care centers and a media department store under one roof. What began in Munich in 1963 with an investment of 2,000 deutschmarks has since developed into a company with over 60,000 employees in 21 countries and an annual turnover of over two billion Euros.

All signs point to growth in the future, and the corona pandemic has not changed this. On the contrary: the Dussmann Group has come through the corona pandemic robustly, Dussmann was able to compensate for crisis-related losses in catering thanks to its diversified business model. The next level strategy, with which Dussmann intends to utilize the strengths of the debt-free family company and become the innovation and quality leader, was consistently pursued.

Crucial to success are various growth initiatives in the areas of digitization and sustainability. These include the implementation of a modern IT landscape, including at the international sites, and the harmonization of processes. Dussmann selected the SAP full service provider from Kronberg, Nagarro ES, as its partner for this challenging project.

Facility Management

The status quo at the start of the project: In the EMEA business area, which comprises international facility management in many countries in Europe, the GCC region and Asia, different accounting and business management systems were used autonomously in the past. In some cases, business processes ran inconsistently, taking local regulations into account. In addition, some countries were working with outdated, high-maintenance systems that needed to be replaced in a timely manner anyway.

"The great time pressure was an additional challenge for our team. The go-live in Poland, the Czech Republic and the Arab Emirates had to take place just six months after the start of the project, in parallel and under pandemic conditions.", says Manuel Sedlak, project manager at Nagarro.

The aim of the implementation project was to harmonize the core business processes in the respective countries while retaining the ability to respond flexibly to local market and customer requirements. The decision was made to implement SAP S/4 Hana in the cloud, and SAP Integration Suite (SAP Business Technology Platform) was also implemented.

The focus was on finance and controlling, materials management, sales and professional services, as well as the provision or development of interfaces, consolidation and reporting systems. The decisive factor in all phases of the project was to follow the cross-site standards while at the same time taking into account individual requirements at local level.

"The key to success was the close cooperation with the countries throughout the entire project. This enabled us to identify problems in good time and optimize processes time and again", says Manuel Sedlak.

A special feature of the project was the rapid implementation. This was achieved with the help of SAP Activate, a project management method tailored specifically to S/4 that combines best practices and proven implementation tools. This approach was optimized by Nagarro based on customer project experience with a focus on effective and efficient project implementation, for example through standardized templates. In addition, all activities were bundled so that no actions were duplicated.

For the optimization of business processes, Dussmann and Nagarro relied on the process mining tool Signavio. Processes were not only modernized and streamlined, but also further standardized and unified based on best practices. A gimmick was the representation of the future IT system and the business requirements as a kind of suburban railroad network: On this map, processes and their interrelationships are graphically documented at Dussmann in such a way that they can be easily understood by every user.

A Board of Sponsors, consisting of internal and external stakeholders, was set up to monitor the overall project progress. Local project managers took over the coordination of various key users and the status reports. Each project phase was planned in detail in advance, approved step-by-step and adjusted as it progressed. On a common platform, all stakeholders exchanged ideas and tracked the individual tasks. The agile approach made it possible to react quickly to critical situations and make decisions.

To meet the additional challenges posed by the corona pandemic, all content from meetings and workshops was recorded, video tutorials were created, and training sessions were conducted digitally. This allowed all users to participate in the project via a web space, regardless of time and place. Language barriers were reduced by translating the content into the various national languages.

"Our assignment to Nagarro was much more than modernizing outdated software. The migration was part of a transformation and followed a clear vision. This has enormously strengthened the intrinsic motivation of everyone involved", says Hakan Lanfredi, Member of the Executive Board responsible for EMEA at the Dussmann Group. "Open communication and active change management have definitely proven to be key elements."

Low process costs

The advantages of the implementation quickly became apparent: process costs are lower, runtimes are shorter. At the same time, the automation of manual processes, such as data transfer, frees up personnel capacities. Standardization also simplifies all workflows. Whereas orders used to have to be approved personally or invoices signed by hand, the ERP system now takes over the tasks.

All purchasing is also handled centrally via the system. Among other things, a payment transaction system was established to increase payment security, and a comparison of incoming payments with open invoices was made possible.

The lean, transparent and efficient processes benefit all employees. From now on, employees in upper management can concentrate fully on strategic organizational and business development. The division and property managers, in turn, can handle their orders and reporting directly via the ERP system with just a few clicks. This saves a detour via accounting or controlling.

The success is also reflected in figures: Overhead costs have already been reduced by 20 percent. "The implementation of SAP S/4 Hana is an important step towards innovation leadership. In the future, we want to further exploit the potential, for example by using new technologies such as robotic process automation", says Hakan Lanfredi.

Three rollouts have been completed for the Dussmann Group to date, with seven more to follow. Project completion is planned for 2022. For the successful implementation of the S/4 Cloud, Essentials Edition, the Dussmann Group was recognized as a finalist of the SAP Quality Award 2021 in the category "Rapid Time to Value". The SAP Quality Award recognizes outstanding projects in which SAP software solutions have been implemented and quality principles applied.