Alpina Savoie Rolls Out Automate Studio to Maximize Competitive Advantage at a Low Cost

Established in 1844, Alpina Savoie produces and distributes 700 varieties of pasta, couscous, semolina, and polenta both throughout France and around the world. The company is the second-largest producer of pasta and couscous in France, generating annual revenue of approximately €75 million. Alpina Savoie went live with SAP in 2001.

When Philippe Freychet joined Alpina Savoie as a consultant in the finance department in 2007, he had his work cut out for him. The company needed to enter more than 100,000 FICO transactions into SAP, as well as regularly maintain 30,000 product references. Since most transactions required approximately one minute to manually enter into the system, a single employee could execute no more than 480 transactions each day. “We could have accelerated the data upload process by building a custom program, but the development costs would have been too high,” says Freychet, now general manager at Alpina Savoie. “In addition to that, we would have spent even more money keeping the program updated. We needed a more affordable data upload solution that was robust enough to handle large numbers of transactions, but flexible enough to meet our changing needs.”

“Automate Studio helps us keep up with intense business demand without overwhelming our business users or our IT support staff. I honestly don’t know how we would manage without it.” — Philippe Freychet,General manager, Alpina Savoie

Alpina Savoie now uses Automate Studio to upload master data not only in finance and accounting, but in material management and production planning as well. “The great advantage of Automate Studio is that it is very powerful but not very complex,” says Freychet. “If you understand how to set up an SAP transaction, then you’ll understand how to use Automate Studio. For companies like ours without extensive IT departments, it’s indispensable to have something so intuitive and reliable for executing large-scale transactions.” “If you understand how to set up an SAP transaction, then you’ll understand how to use Automate Studio. For companies like ours without extensive IT departments, it’s indispensable to have something so intuitive and reliable for executing large-scale transactions.” — Philippe Freychet, General manager, Alpina Savoie

Read more about how Alpina Savoie managed a complex SAP imple mentation without increasing staff.