SAP Rollout and Carve-Out Americano

Ten months after the start of the project, the first go-live in Brazil over the stage.

In a second wave, the countries followed Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Panama & Central America and Caribbean.

Roche Diagnostics relied on the broad expertise of the Heidelberg-based consulting firm cbs Corporate Business Solutions in this ambitious international project.

Headquartered in Basel, Roche is one of the leading companies in the research-oriented healthcare sector.

In 2014, the Group employed around 88,500 people worldwide and generated sales of 47.5 billion Swiss francs (approximately 44 billion euros).

Gloire maps diagnostics processes

Roche was faced with the challenge of SAP-The aim is to harmonize the processes of all Diagnostics sales sites in South, Central and North America and thus make the sites comparable.

To this end, it was necessary to remove all affected sales branches from the Pharma-SAP system and an old, non-template-based diagnostics system into the new SAP-ERP system from Diagnostics.

To this end, Roche has set up a five-year rollout project to introduce its corporate template "Global Implementation Reference System" (Gloire) in the Americas region.

The diagnostics processes defined in this template and the Best Practices differ significantly from the processes that have been used to date in the Pharma-system of sales offices in South and Central America were implemented.

These did not sufficiently cover the processes of the Diagnostics sales branches and were too time-consuming to process.

Broad rollout program in several waves

The central requirements were: The template Gloire used in the Diagnostics world with Diagnostics-specific processes and Best Practices in all twelve Roche Diagnostics countries in South, Central and North America.

In parallel, a new system landscape based on Hana be established as a target system. The aim is to gradually integrate the sales branches into the AmericasSAP-system line from Diagnostics based on Hana integrate - and thus from the Pharma-system to separate.

The plan for the international rollout project calls for four waves.

In the first wave, the rollout was to take place at the São Paulo site in Brazil The first task was to develop the new Americas system line based on Hana build up.

Wave two was also challenging because several countries were rolled out and set productive at the same time: First were Argentina and Colombia the turn, then followed Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean (Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica).

As part of a "big ticket" workshop and detailed fit-gap sessions in the USA the project participants worked out which processes, developments and interfaces exist in the countries of wave two, which system differences and legal requirements (such as "legal reporting" and "e-invoicing") exist and which process adjustments are therefore necessary.

This preparatory step was helpful in meeting the tight timelines and successfully coordinating the large project team spread across four continents.

Oktay Yavuz, IT project manager for the Gloire for Americas program at Roche Diagnostics:

"Our goal is clear: After completion of the project, all Diagnostics sales offices in South, Central and North America are to be equipped with an independent Diagnostics-SAP-System work"

Know-how in demand

Especially with its Brazil- and LATAM expertise, cbs was the first choice.

Here, the company was able to draw on its extensive experience from more than
50 projects in Brazil refer to. This also includes special expertise on the very complex legal requirements imposed by the Brazilian tax system on companies operating there.

Finally, cbs has special experience in the area of Hana - from training courses to Implementation the cbs consultants are very familiar with the new database technology.

The integrated solution approach for the complex carve-out and migration project was also convincing. SAP-system transformations, cbs offers the cbs ET Enterprise Transformer, an integrated standard software that can also be used for combined use cases of SAP-system transformations at the process, system and data levels can be managed holistically.

Oktay Yavuz:

"With cbs ET, the extensive migration to the processes of Roche Diagnostics could be implemented in a structured and secure manner within the specified time."

From Pharma to Diagnostics in Brazil

Roche Diagnostics chose the following project approach for the first wave of the international rollout: The new template Gloire was to be implemented with an international team in Brazil be rolled out, including the SAP-GRC NFe solution for tax reporting and the transmission of tax documents, the so-called Nota Fiscals, to the Brazilian tax authorities.

In a period of only ten months, including onboarding of the 80-strong international project team from Germany, the USA, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Brazil and the Switzerland, it was a matter of Brazil the own America-system line based on Hana build up.

In addition, it was a matter of rolling out the Gloire template in the South American country and implementing the country-specific requirements based on the Brazilian tax system and extensive legal reporting.

In order to set up the new system line, it was necessary to check the template to be rolled out and, in particular, the customer-specific developments for their Hana-suitability.

All template processes and functions were fully tested. The rollout of Gloire comprised the functions Sales, Service, Logistics, Order Management, Contract Management, Finance and Controlling.

In this first wave, Roche pulled Brazil from the Pharma-SAP system and integrated into the DiagnosticsSAP-This was possible in such a short time thanks to the long-standing partnership between Roche and cbs.

The Data The cbs ET was used to transfer the data from the productive Pharma-SAP system and transferred to the new Diagnostics-SAP-system imported.

In order to keep data quality consistently high and avoid redundancies, data cleansing was also carried out in the production system in advance of the data migration.

In order to be able to check its results at an early stage, the Data already for the first time Test extracted from the production system.

The organizational unit in Brazil adapted to the Gloire template, which was extended to include local legal and business-critical requirements. At the same time, the team tested the Brazil-specifics and put them on.

More Tests with migrated Data followed. During the entire Brazil-project, it was also necessary to implement a large number of Interfaces adapt and implement.

After numerous test routines and the implementation of all local and legal requirements, the solution was installed in the new Diagnostics-SAP-system was finally put into production.

In the meantime, users in the Brazilian organizational units are working with the Diagnostics SAP-ERP system from Roche on the basis of Hana.

The successful start in Brazil marks an important milestone in the overall project: The chosen strategy and project approach have proven their worth. In Brazil out-of-the-box solutions are now available that are precisely tailored to the needs of Roche Diagnostics.

With the separation of Roche Pharmaceuticals and Roche Diagnostics at the system level, the company benefits from a new lean SAP-system line.

The number of Interfaces could be achieved through the use of Best Practice-processes and the know-how of cbs also reduce. The Roche Group's company-wide guidelines were ensured.

The project was completed "in time & budget" and the go-live date was met.

After the successful go-live in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and in the other Central American countries, the challenging project is entering the next round: the third wave with the system conversion in Chile, Peru and Ecuador, Venezuela and Uruguay and parallel to this in the USA is pending. Finally, the last rollout follows after Canada.