Overview
Döhler GmbH produces and markets technology-driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems, and integrated solutions for the food and beverage industry under the motto “We bring ideas to life.” We have 45 production sites, 24 application centers, and more than 50 sales offices across Europe and subsidiaries in North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And we reach across the globe with healthful ingredients for soft drinks, juices, wine and spirits, spreads, sauces, and dairy and baked goods. Sustainability has always been at the core of our vision, and today we are actively helping to drive the trend toward plant-based foods.
Supernova Award Category
Data to Decisions
The Problem
When our legacy systems could no longer deliver trusted, usable data quickly enough, we needed to migrate to a modern in-memory ERP system supporting complete processes across lines of business. We chose SAP S/4HANA and took the opportunity to fine-tune master data quality management at the same time. Especially challenging were the heavy volumes of data Döhler collects, typical of a firm in the consumer products industry. We had to define a way to identify and transfer relevant data records by mapping source fields to target fields. And we had to develop a means of ongoing transfer of legacy data to the new system, including import from spreadsheets and sequential files developed by business users on their personal computers. We used SAP Integration Suite for process integration.
We identified and transferred relevant existing data through SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit. Each migration object in our cockpit describes how to migrate data for a specific business object. It also contains information about the source and target structures and their relationships to one another, along with mapping information for the relevant fields and any rules used to convert, automatically upgrade, and extend the migrated values. And we used the SAP Legacy System Migration Workbench tool to support both one-time and periodic data transfer from spreadsheets and sequential files. Finally, we instituted continuous checks for data quality through SAP Master Data Governance.
The Solution
The project team assigned responsibilities for data governance and developed templates and business rules for data transformation. Guided data entry processes help ensure local variables are identified for enrichment or change as appropriate, and proactive monitoring through operational dashboards implements data controlling.
Thoughtful use of SAP Master Data Governance and the SAP Analytics Cloud solution brings to our whole enterprise a scalable data management system that continuously checks our crucial master data for quality. Automated evaluation jobs deliver a score for each business rule and a list of data entries needing attention.
The results
"We realized improving data management meant helping local data entry people do it right the first time. They needed to assume accountability for their input and understand how data moves through the organization. Our project team empowered our people while improving our use of technologies with the excellent master data quality and data management solutions from SAP." Mirjam Heijnen, Head of BI – Data Governance and Data Quality, Döhler GmbH
Agility and predictability significantly improve the time-to-market of new products and boost the competitive edge. The efficient, effective view of data quality with automated monitoring drives trusted business outcomes. Comprehensive product data creation in production processes shortens throughput time from five days to two. We’ve improved data quality for the company’s core process of material and business partner master data.
Processing time for master data creation through data migration is reduced by 90%. We developed a dashboard that monitors the data quality of Döhler’s core data processes for the chief data office. We instituted an automated continuous cross-functional measuring, monitoring, and analysis of data quality.
Immediate access to source system data and continuous data quality monitoring support faster, more confident, and more sophisticated decision-making for all stakeholders.
Metrics
90% Reduction in master data creation time
2 x New data available for use in less than half the time
>1000 Data quality attributes managed automatically each day
https://www.sap.com/bin/sapdxc/inm/attachment.10098/pitch-deck.pdf
The Technology
SAP Master Data Governance - Our master data quality management system uses machine language in rule mining, cash application, and batch picking.
SAP Integration Suite - We implemented API management among applications and deployed SAP Business Technology Platform to enable scalable, lean IT architecture.
SAP Analytics Cloud - We delivered the executive dashboards in co-innovation with the Customer Success organization and SAP’s product management team.
Disruptive Factor
We plan to implement a “One Domain Model” using the SAP Master Data Integration service in combination with SAP Master Data Governance. We are in the proof-ofconcept stage with this project.
Plans at Döhler for the coming year include: ▪ Reducing throughput time for data maintenance with further digitalization of our material lifecycle ▪ Using SAP Master Data Integration as the center and single point of truth for master data sharing to SAP on-premise and cloud solutions ▪ Implementing additional features of SAP Master Data Governance ▪ Using artificial intelligence to enhance the user experience with real-time, contextsensitive data insights
Shining Moment
The shining moment is the digital transformation that is taking place meeting all the digital touchpoints for Dohler in their data quality management journey.
The best example to show this is the diagram on slide 13 on this deck