Customer Story
Philips Lighting streamlines SAP® material master data creation with Automate Studio
1,600
hours saved
13
manual transactions replaced
10 months
to save equivelent of one FTE
Overview
As the global leader in lighting and LED technologies, Philips Lighting is dedicated to innovation and continued growth. In a competitive market revolutionized by digital technology and sustainable development, the company sought to become the leader in connected lighting systems.
Philips Lighting offers over 25,000 products, and has been managing their product lines with SAP since 2011. IT was responsible for managing this database, and any mass data changes were a resource-intensive tasks in ERP. “We had to call our India-based technical support team whenever we needed changes, which involved time-consuming management of support tickets,” said Sylvain Darve, SAP Data Manager MM LO/VC, at Philips Lighting.
This process became unmanageable very quickly. “With over 40 people managing between 150 and 500 materials, requests were never-ending,” said Darve. “The risk of errors, time involved, and energy expended stifled our efficiency and, by extension, the productivity of our teams.”
Automate Studio makes life easier
Philips implemented Automate Studio to create and update data en masse in SAP, simplifying and streamlining their processes. Using Automate Studio has now become second nature for business users. “It changed our life,” said Darve. “Implementing a scenario even for twenty or so records is so simple now that we have Automate Studio.”
Philips has gradually rolled out the solution across most of their European sites. Data managers are now using Automate Studio’s Query module to create ad-hoc reports from SAP data in real time, using Excel. “Thanks to Query, we’ve been able to determine the exact number of active references, and clean up our data efficiently,” said Darve.
Automate Studio Manager has allowed Darve’s team to easily synchronize documents created in SAP in a secure server environment.
Industry
Solutions, systems and services for lighting
Results
- Automated daily data extraction into Excel (millions of lines)
- Reduced time required to create finished products
- Significantly improved error management
Solutions
“With Automate Studio, our business users can change, add or delete data with ease and flexibility.”
Sylvain Darve
Data Manager, Philips Lighting
“Using Automate Studio has now become second nature for business users - it changed our life.”
Sylvain Darve, Data Manager
Philips saved 1,600 hours after just 10 months
Philips experienced significant results very quickly after implementing Automate Studio. It used to require 13 transactions to manually create a material in SAP. With Automate Studio Manager, their automated workflows begin as soon as the material creation sheet is made.
After using Automate Studio for 10 months, they saved 1,600 hours, or the equivalent of one FTE (full time employee) a year!
Empowering the business with Automate Studio
“We can create all the requests we need without any IT programming,” said Darve. “The Data Management team can focus on maintaining high quality data in SAP, and provide departments with detailed reports and analysis in real-time.”
Thanks to Automate Studio, Philips Lighting has a solution that fully complies with their SAP system, and empowers the business to manage their own data, saving significant costs in IT time and resources.
”Given the choice between an internal SAP development and a Precisely Automate solution, we chose Automate Studio to stay within budget and save time and resources,” said Darve. “With Automate Studio, our business users can change, add or delete data with ease and flexibility.”
Future projects
As SAP evolves, Philips Lighting hopes to move some of their tasks to an Automate Evolve web portal.
Automate Studio
Automate complex SAP business processes and make mass data changes quickly and easily using Excel-to-SAP solutions.