Various SAP customers presented their SAP implementation experiences at this week's Saphila 2012 conference at Sun City, highlighting how they have integrated SAP solutions into their day-to-day businesses.
ITWeb sat down with representatives from Consol Glass and SA Breweries (SAB) on the sidelines of the Saphila conference to discuss how they are utilising the SAP product suite.
According to Johan du Plessis, IT director and CIO at Consol, Consol has been using SAP since 1997, and the company's use of the SAP product suite has grown over the years.
As the largest glass packaging manufacturer in Africa, Consol was one of the first manufacturing companies to heavily implement SAP. "Consol uses SAP extensively. We run our complete business on SAP," said Du Plessis, adding that all of Consol's core business is heavily reliant on SAP, from finance and logistics, to procurement and HR.
SAP is so entrenched in Consol's day-to-day business that Du Plessis calls it CSAP, which he says stands for Consol SAP.
Joy Hilton, business systems executive for marketing sales and distribution at SAB, estimated that SAP has been running throughout SAB's business for over 12 years.
"SAP is the main system for our order-to-cash process. SAP works through most of our value chain, from beginning to end," said Hilton, who adds that, from a systems perspective, it is a very sound platform.
"SAP works very well for SAB, especially SAP's CRM offering, which has added a lot of value to our business by enabling us to service our customers in a better way," said Hilton.
For Du Plessis, SAP delivered on his vision and strategy to have one central place where staff can access whatever they are looking for. He described Consol's relationship with SAP as "a partnership", adding that SAP's African expansion plans are closely aligned with Consol's business strategy.
Both Hilton and Du Plessis acknowledge that implementing SAP is not without its issues. "There are obviously a lot of things that are challenging for us, but these are not major in comparison with the value we get out of it," said Hilton.
"We have ironed out the challenges we had in the past and have made our SAP solutions more personalised to suit our unique needs," said Du Plessis.
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