The client employed 2,500 van based engineers to provide a call out service to their customers. Each van carried a standard stock of around 40 parts but other parts could be sourced direct from the wholesaler on demand.
The wholesaler then provided a summary of the daily purchases, typically 1,000 in number. The van based engineers had their own (non-SAP) system to record and report sales, to be entered into SAP at the end of the day.
The issue was that the van based system did not keep a record of the stock on board for the purpose of traceability and auditing. Auditing stock levels necessitated a very laborious process of working through the movement of goods back to the point of audit. The goods movement tables within SAP ran into millions of records which demanded particular attention to database performance.
The client turned to Pivot for help rather than their usual partner. It wasn’t so much they were unhappy with what their incumbent partner had done for them over the years. They were looking for a more nimble solution provider though, one less bureaucratic and rigid in its approach. Pivot certainly opened their eyes to what could be achieved by a small focussed team, not only in delivering the solution but in clearing the way for it.
“The investigation and assistance from Pivot quickly resolved some of the options that were presented as possible solutions; some areas were enhanced and simplified. This was appreciated by the business,” reported the client’s SAP System Manager.
The first step was to compile a spreadsheet containing the stock levels for each van which was then loaded into SAP. This was then replaced by enabling the van based systems to generate flat files to cut out the manual transfer of data.
This delivered the objective of enabling the client to store the van based stock levels within their SAP, compare the physical stock with book style and align these as appropriate and to check stock levels at any given time.
The final stage in the process was to integrate the wholesaler system and the van based systems directly into the core SAP to do away with manual data entry and flat files altogether.
The Pivot consultants have breathed life into ABAP tickets that have stagnated and had birthdays on the “to do list”. They were quick and precise and had an uncanny intuition as to what was required in the face of very little information,”
Finance Support Specialist