Akzo Nobel, the Dutch-based chemical manufacturing company, has gained competitive advantage through increased efficiency and better customer service. And the company has given much of the credit it to the ARIS toolset, supplied by Germany`s IDS Scheer.
Headquartered in Arnhem, Akzo Nobel is a worldwide manufacturing firm with 70 000-plus employees and activities in more than 50 countries. Business groups represent four product categories: chemicals, coatings, pharmaceuticals and fibers
"ARIS provides real visibility to how you run your business - visibility you don`t get with drawing tools. It provides a snapshot of your company - where you are, and where your opportunities are for improvement," says Bram Reinders, SAP project manager for Akzo Nobel`s Polymer Chemicals Group in the US.
As part of Akzo Nobel`s expansion, the chemicals group in North America is one of several groups implementing SAP`s R/3 business application solutions by business unit. Though each unit functions autonomously, the various units have been hampered by a legacy of sharing the same central systems. So the integrated functionality of the SAP solution was a natural fit. And ARIS provided valuable support.
For example, Polymer Chemicals North America, one of the business units in the chemicals group, credits ARIS with streamlining business processes and accelerating R/3 implementation time.
In two years, five different locations of the unit had implemented R/3`s finance, controlling, sales and distribution, and materials management modules, along with parts of the production planning module. Today, the unit is using R/3 for everything from order entry, pricing, scheduling, shipping and invoicing, to accounts receivable, accounts payable and purchase orders.
"ARIS is the ideal tool for SAP implementation," says Reinders. "ARIS worked in tandem with SAP to help us achieve our business goals."
Integrating processes and functionality
ARIS`s modelling capability couldn`t have been a better fit for the unit`s reengineering challenges. When it chose to implement R/3, Polymer Chemicals North America had commissioned a set of logistics studies to uncover which areas in operating efficiency could be enhanced through the combination of redesigned business processes and SAP functionality.
"Our goal was to achieve serious business unit process streamlining during the R/3 implementation without extending the implementation time," says Reinders.
ARIS made it possible.
"There is a fine balance between business unit reengineering and SAP implementation." says Reinders. "For this reason, the ARIS best business practice representation is usefuo for concurrent reengineering. It helped us convert a variety of strategies into SAP solutions."
In addition, ARIS drove the project to have a more process-oriented implementation approach than it would have had otherwise.
"With ARIS, we were able to read the SAP best practices and use that information as the starting point for describing our own business and the scope of our projects," says Reinders. "For example, the function trees in ARIS help show you what functions are supported by SAP and what are not supported by your current system. It serves as a great fit/gap analysis tool."
Real visibility
Using ARIS for modelling business processes, certain items from the R/3 reference models such as business processes, function models and business unit organisation could be selected from R/3, so much of the business modelling work was already done, saving valuable time for the Akzo project team.
"In addition to the time savings, ARIS is helping us do a better job of process modelling," says Reinders. "ARIS provides real visibility to how you run your business - visibility you don`t get with drawing tools."
ARIS can depict business processes at different levels or views: people and departments in an organisation (Organization View); data used or produced to complete each process (Data View); activities related to each process (Function View); and a Control View that shows the business process as a whole, integrating all the organisation, data and function views into one view, showing their logical sequence and interdependencies.
"ARIS provides a snapshot of your company - where you are, and where your opportunities are for improvement," says Reinders. "You can really see how doing business differently can improve your competitive performance."
Consistency and communication
Reinders also likes the consistent method ARIS provides for modelling business processes, communicating about those models and reusing them across the enterprise.
"We started out with a paper-based system of drawing our business processes. If you do it manually, the information can`t be used over again. All the reengineering money you spent and information logged on a project is not readily accessible by anyone else."
With ARIS, business process models can be communicated as needed to anyone in the company. "We can communicate information about our models not only to people within our business unit, but also across business units and across countries. It`s a valuable communications vehicle for us."
ISO 9000
ARIS will be instrumental in the unit`s receiving ISO 9000 certification, and in facilitating documentation and training.
Akzo Nobel plans to use ARIS to capture all relevant documentation including business process flows, roles and responsibilities in the organisation, policies and procedures, and work instructions. Because it`s relatively easy to capture work processes and SAP screens in ARIS, the team intent is to use the toolset as the glue that brings all the documentation together.
"With ARIS, we will have an integrated set of documentation," says Reinders. "This is another way ARIS helps us focus our implementation on the way we do business. We have our own documentation, based on our specific business practice and SAP install base. That`s power."
Foundation
Even with all the benefits the unit has realised from the ARIS Toolset, Reinders believes there are many more on the horizon.
"Reengineering is never completed," he says. "You must have a tool that allows you to reuse your business process modeling work and rebuild on it. It has to be a continuous improvement activity.`
ARIS is living up to the challenge, he says.
"The real value we`re getting from ARIS is the foundation it`s helping us build. When we roll out SAP to other sites, we can reuse the models and optimised practices that we have developed for the initial site, possibly through our intranet. And we can use them as the engine to drive the implementation of a new SAP release. That is the power of ARIS. You can drive it further and further into use within your organisation."
Simply put, ARIS is a tool with a future, Reinders says.
"In business process improvement with SAP, you need a tool you can build on, a tool with a future. That`s the real value we`re getting. If I had to make the decision all over again, I`d choose ARIS.`
ARIS is distributed in South Africa by Software Futures, a subsidiary of Computer Configurations Holdings.
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