Customer Story
Canada post delivers automated data loading to SAP users
$1.9 million
in operational cost savings per year
94%
faster to unlock employee records
72,000
SAP users, one of the largest implementations in North America
Introduction
Canada Post is one of the largest postal administrations in the world delivering 37 million pieces of mail each day to more than 31 million Canadians. Headquartered in Ottawa Ontario Canada, the company has 72,000 employees, 24 processing plants, 13.7 million points of call, and 6,000 vehicles. Each year Canada Post delivers 10 billion pieces of mail and earns approximately $6.2 billion.
With over 72,000 SAP users, Canada Post has one of the largest SAP implementation in North America. Canada Post began their SAP implementation in 2000 and is currently on SAP version 4.6D with enterprise portals 4.7. Canada Post has implemented the SAP HR, EHS, FI/CO, SCM,CRM, EBP, Event Manager and ESS products.
Challenge
Like many large SAP installations, Canada Post faced several challenges in loading data into its SAP solution. The first challenge the postal giant faced was that all data loads required their 3rd party IT supplier to develop CATT and/ or ABAP scripts for them. This was both time consuming and costly. The second challenge Canada Post faced was the increase in data entry errors caused by manual data entry from Excel spreadsheets into SAP R/3. And the third challenge the company faced was the labour intensive work processes. Canada Post realized that manual data entry of data into SAP was not an effective use of employees’ time.
Canada Post’s decision to invest in an automated solution came as a result of the number of CATT script requests in Time Management and a project within their Organization Planning function in 2004. The Organizational Planning unit needed to load job evaluation points for over 8,000 job positions into SAP. Each job position had many different job evaluation points and it was estimated that all of the manual data entry required to load this data would take as long as several months work.
Time Management was another unit at Canada Post that was also experiencing delays. It generally took the Time Management team 12 to 16 hours each week to unlock employee records by manually entering data from Excel sheets into SAP.
Industry
Postal administration
Challenges
- Time intensive data entry
- Data accuracy
- Limited IT staff
Results
- $1.9 Million in operational cost savings per year
- Improved data quality by eliminating manual data errors
- Reduced reliance on third-party suppliers
Solution
“We save around $1.9 Million per year in avoided programming, reduced data entry workload costs and Service Level Agreement (SLA) costs. Most importantly, we have given our users a tool that enhances their productivity and the accuracy of the data in our systems.”
Chantal Gauvreau, Business Process Manager, SAP Center of Excellence
Solution
After evaluating solutions from several vendors, Canada Post selected Automate Studio which allows business users or functional analysts to shuttle data between Microsoft Excel and any SAP® application without requiring any programming. Excel or Access provide the familiar interface for Automate Studio, simplifying the process of interacting with the various SAP solutions including mySAP and SAP NetWeaver without requiring any programming or IT support. Canada Post selected Automate Studio due to its ease of use, cost and speed when integrating data.
“Automate Studio has become a critical tool for the business users at Canada Post. By deploying Automate Studio we have improved efficiencies across a number of departments, increased productivity by giving employees the tools to augment their current tasks, and enhanced the quality of data in our SAP solutions.”
Chantal Gauvreau, Business Process Manager
SAP Center of Excellence, Canada Post
Results
By using Automate Studio, the business user in the Organizational Planning unit was able to automate the loading of job evaluation points in over 8,000 positions into SAP in less than one week compared to the several month estimate for this project if done manually. It now takes the Time Management team approximately an hour to unlock employee records, compared to up to 16 hours it was taking prior to implementing Transaction.
Since then, a number of other departments at Canada Post have used Automate Studio including payroll processing. Payroll processing is utilizing Automate Studio for making salary revisions and for time and schedule management for the letter carriers. Canada Post has expanded its use of Automate Studio for a number of other applications including updating customer master data based on customers’ credit rating as received from an external Excel file, changing GL codes in master data, and asset management data changes.
Automate Studio
Enable business users to automate complex SAP business processes and make mass data changes quickly and easily.