Follow Our Social Media

About The Client

The client is the Indian subsidiary of one of Japan’s leading manufacturers of industrial rubber products, including wiper-blade rubber, seals, and anti-vibration rubber products for automotive applications. The client is the leading producer of wiper blade rubber for automobiles and has a 50% share in the OEM market worldwide.

Business Challenges

The client was facing several challenges in operations and financial management.

  • Manual processes
    The client relied on legacy tools like Excel and paper for planning sales and production and entering results of quality inspection, fixed asset depreciation, and landed cost. The approvals were also paper-based. This led to an increase in manual work and chances of errors.
  • System Silos
    The client was using multiple systems to record data captured from different facilities. There were silos between these systems, due to which there was no single source of truth available to the client.
  • Lack of transparency
    Since there was a lack of transparency, the client had no accountability or control over stores. They also could not calculate or track actual material consumption. It was done theoretically. Additionally, the production cost tracking and controlling happened at the cost-center level.
  • Fragmented operations and supply chain processes
    To add to the woes, the client did not use advanced technology components like Bar Codes/QR codes or online punching of data in operations like goods receipt, Production Booking, Quality, Dispatch, and Invoicing. This impacted the client’s operational and supply chain processes.
  • Complex manual reporting

    The client still produced 70+ financial reports manually, and those were in Japanese formats. This was time-consuming and increased the probability of errors and inconsistencies across reports.

    The client wanted a partner who could understand their business requirements, has experience in their domain and industry, and is also technically an expert in SAP implementations.

    Since Sapours has deep knowledge, technical prowess, and program management skills, the client approached us to help them solve these challenges. We offered our consultancy services and provided our recommendations and roadmap to the client.

How Sapours Addressed These Challenges

Here’s how we built a roadmap for the client:

  • A detailed workshop
    The client conducted an initial as-is workshop with the process owner teams to run the Sapours team through their current processes, solutions, and systems. The Sapours team visited every plant of the client in India and gathered an in-depth understanding of their processes, challenges, and pain areas. We also studied the process parameters and understood them from the TraceX integration perspective.
  • Post-workshop Analysis
    After gathering all the requirements, we captured our understanding and plan in two reports-
    • Business function-wise report: This report provided details of functionality classification on how all requirements should be handled in the SAP system.
    • Phase-wise functionalities report: This report proposes how all the functionalities will be implemented in different phases.
  • Roadmap recommendation
    We recommended a roadmap that can be implemented in two phases across four years.
    • Phase 1 is the Build Phase, where we recommended integrating the following modules to improve operations, sales, distribution, product costing, and financial management:
      • SAP S/4 HANA implementation module
      • SAP Finance and Controlling
      • SAP Product Costing with WIP and Variance Analysis
      • SAP Production Planning
      • SAP Materials Management
      • SAP Sales and Distribution
      • SAP Quality Management
      • TraceX - Std. Material Flow Traceability
      • India Tax-Compliance Reporting
    • Phase 2 is the Boost phase, where we recommended improvements in MIS reporting and dashboard analytics and suggested ways to submit all the financial and compliance reports of Japan to the client’s main location in Japan.
  • Solution architecture design
    We also submitted a solution architecture proposal for both phases.
    • In Phase 1, we recommended the following
      • Use SAP S/4 HANA with RISE to integrate modules like Material Management, Sales and Distribution, Production Planning, Quality Management, Finance and Accounting, and Controlling and Cost.
      • Implement Standard Material Flow Traceability using TraceX and the Clear Tax portal.

      We shared a detailed business process mapping and high-level project plans for the first phase.

    • In Phase 2, we suggested
      • Implement Plant Maintenance and Standard Embedded Analytics using SAP and integrate Power BI Analytics, SAP Fiori, and Embedded Analytics.
      • Sunset legacy systems like Tally, CATS, and FICS after SAP S/4 HANA goes live.
  • Detailed explanation of implementation risks and mitigation
    We shared the potential risks clients could face during implementation and presented actionable steps to mitigate them.

Roadmap Deliverables

We have submitted the following technical proposals to the client:

  • SAP S/4 HANA Implementation Proposal and Roadmap for ERP
  • Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)
  • List of existing processes and fitment to SAP S/4 HANA, the customization, and Developments (RICEFs), and the complexity