Global paper and pulp producer, Sappi, has renewed - for a further three years - its SAP support and innovation contract with Britehouse SAP specialist division. The renewal comes six months early, as the original three-year contract was to end in May 2012.
“Our partnership with Britehouse is strategic because, other than one or two manufacturing and plant management systems, everything within Sappi runs on SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software,” says Deon van Aarde, Sappi Southern Africa IT director. “So, the support and innovation function has a direct impact on the business's ability to reduce costs and improve efficiencies overall, not just in the IT department.
“During the past two-and-a-half years, Britehouse has reduced the cost of support several times, and in recent regular governance meetings, has demonstrated that it can push down costs still further. There was, therefore, no point in going through the expense and disruption of a request for proposal process. And, of course, staying with Britehouse gives us continuity.”
Mike Constancon, Sappi Southern Africa solution delivery manager, says that because of Britehouse's efficiencies and innovation, the new contract has been structured to provide for additional training and process improvements that will ensure continuous cost reduction.
“One of the advantages Britehouse offers is the deployment of senior consultants and a strong customer management team who not only have the capacity to innovate, but also the maturity to build close positive relationships with their client's business process engineers. The result for us has been a proactive combination of their best expertise with ours, and consequently, solutions that are always extremely effective.”
Sappi has 2 800 SAP users, with the helpdesk handling 600 incident and support calls per month.
Britehouse ramped up to 100% service level agreement (SLA) monitoring in its first month on the original contract, and in the past 18 months, has not breached a single SLA. At the start of the first contract, the total number of open calls was in the 30s. It is now down to no more than 18 at any given time. The number of calls older than seven days is less than three per month.
“Our innovation, optimisation, and support business unit is focused on integrating support and innovation,” says Britehouse IOSS manager, Christo Pieters. “We implement new processes that are designed to improve customer performance and drive down cost and then we support those processes in such a way as to drive down the number of calls, reducing the need for support.
“In a way, we work ourselves out of the support part of the job by continuously enabling the customer to work more productively. We innovate to reduce the amount of support that is needed.”
Van Aarde says the outcome for clients is that there is no need to remind Britehouse about its contractual obligations. “There's 99% compliance with SLAs. Just as importantly, Britehouse works within the spirit of the contract, which makes my job much easier.”
Sappi has recently undergone a restructure aimed at increasing efficiencies as well as moving the company into new markets - reducing its focus on paper production, where the economic slowdown has caused a decline in demand, and increasing production of chemical cellulose (used in the textile, food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries).
Also, while Sappi's plantations already store carbon, Sappi nonetheless continues to invest in further reducing its carbon footprint through the increased use of renewable energy in its production processes.
“In a repositioning phase, the last thing you need is to be a training ground for your IT support and innovation outsourcer,” Van Aarde says. “With Britehouse, we got dedicated consultants with a blend of experience in other industries and other non-competing corporate environments. So they added value from day one, helping the company to keep doing more with less and still remain agile, responsive to its markets, and socially responsible.”
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