SAP integration, training and support specialist Quartet Solutions has completed a complex upgrade for the South African subsidiary of Air Liquide, one of the largest manufacturers of industrial and medical gases in Europe.
The French giant is currently implementing SAP onto its European platform and this local upgrade will align the versions used.
Air Liquide acquired the South African business of German Messer Fedgas last January and integrated the business onto the SAP system used by Messer Fedgas. Quartet, which successfully completed the initial phase of integrating both customers onto the older SAP version in June 2002, brought all areas of its expertise to bear in making sure the upgrade was a smooth one.
"All areas of Quartet's business expertise were implemented," says Paul Bouchier, Quartet Solutions' marketing director. "This includes our sales consultants, project team training, support and maintenance, as well as Quartet's own Accelerated Skills Assessment tool (ASA) that identified the non-standard reports and enhancements that were currently being used, to allow the project members to ignore those functionalities that were not used in the past. This in turn, lowered the costs of the upgrade."
Project manager at Air Liquide, Hannes Pienaar says the company's previous version of SAP, version 3.0 F, was very old and SAP no longer supports further enhancements to it.
"Upgrading to version 4.6C was challenging because of the new functionality and the changes in the user interface," he says. "The super users - the project team at Air Liquide - and our end-users - the staff - all bought into the necessity of the upgrade at the beginning. It was successful because the ASA tool assisted us in identifying what the users are doing, what their current authorisations are and what the new, upgraded profiles should be. It should be mandatory for every project to run ASA first in order to accelerate the process, since it reduces costs significantly."
Bouchier says that only senior consultants from Quartet worked on the project, which has definitely contributed to its smooth running.
"They are very familiar with the business processes and know exactly what to look for as a result of their many years of SAP experience. They can pre-empt things that could possibly go wrong and know what difficulties to avoid. Costs therefore were ultimately cut in getting the project delivered to the client on time and within budget."
Originally called Union Liquid Air, Air Liquide first opened its doors in SA in May 1948. The company initially operated from two small offices in Johannesburg, selling industrial gases and later welding equipment to the mines on the reef. From the small base, the company has grown in stature over the years, having made a considerable contribution to the development of the local industrial gas market. The company currently operates more than 100 gas-producing plants throughout SA.
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