Scapa Group
Opal Wave Ensures Upgrade for Adhesive Products Specialist is Delivered On Time
Executive overview
Company: Scapa Group
Industry: Bonding solutions and adhesive-based products
Products and Services: Various
Web: www.scapa.com/en
Partner: Opal Wave Solutions Ltd
Company
Healthcare and industrial market supplier with multinational sites
Scapa Group has a global footprint, with presence in Asia, Europe and the US.
The group’s healthcare business is a leading outsource partner in the advanced wound care, consumer wellness, medical device fixation and drug delivery markets. Its partners engage with it for reasons including that they are wanting a more efficient means of manufacturing their products, reduced complexity in their supply chains, and enhanced speed to market for new products. This part of the group has grown and been able to offer new technology, both through its own efforts and via acquisitions, and operates a series of development projects.
Scapa Industrial operates across a range of market segments. Its engineered products supply customers in the automotive, cable and speciality products markets, where demand is driven by approvals, specifications, localisation and technical solutions. The commercial products operation covers the consumer, construction and speciality products fields, where shorter lead times apply within a demand-driven supply chain.
Vision
Client seeks more modern means for consolidating data
Scapa’s relationship with Opal Wave goes back several years. Opal Wave originally built the technical infrastructure for the client’s implementation of SAP BPC version 5.0 and later rectified some major issues with the system’s implementation, which had been carried out by another consultancy. Opal Wave subsequently helped Scapa upgrade successfully to version 7.0.
When Scapa decided to adopt a more modern means for consolidating corporate reporting data, by having version 10.1 installed, as version 7.0 was no longer supported by the manufacturer, it called-in Opal Wave again.
Amanda Scott, Scapa’s head of financial reporting, says: “I hadn’t worked with Opal Wave when I came here in 2015, though my line manager at the time was very complimentary about how they operated and the support they’d given us over the years. They were therefore our preferred supplier and this project gave me the chance to build a relationship with them.”
Why Opal Wave?
Consultancy has delivered benefits to dozens of clients in many sectors
Opal Wave is the leading UK-based enterprise performance management and business intelligence software expert specialising in SAP BPC solutions plus SAP HANA, today’s most advanced in-memory database management platform. Founded in 2008, the company employs over 40 people and has offices in London, Bradford and Beirut. Opal Wave offers consulting, hardware, software, hosting, support and maintenance services.
The consultancy has worked successfully with dozens of clients, in many sectors, across the UK, Europe, the USA and Middle East. Opal Wave provides tailored solutions meeting clients’ unique needs, delivering exactly the results they desire, in areas such as planning, budgeting, reporting and analysis. It also delivers a fully managed pure cloud software-as-a-service option, making the enterprise capabilities of SAP BPC and HANA available to a much wider audience.
The consultancy’s services provide benefits such as improved compliance and enhanced profitability. Its specialisms include working with clients to ensure: their performance management strategy aligns with business aims; information produced is relevant and timely; and performance management systems adapt to alterations in their operations, as they grow and change. For new installations, Opal Wave’s experts work with clients through a disciplined and proven project methodology, starting with analysis and ending with reviewing the solution in use, with a strong governance model on top. The company also trains clients in developing, deploying, using and maintaining its applications, including integrating them with existing systems. It can host these at its state-of-the-art data centre and provides continuous back-up through 24-hour online support and a hotline phone service.
Opal Wave partners with complementary specialists in related fields, including data warehousing, business intelligence and enterprise resource planning. It is an SAP Gold Value Added Reseller, as well as being certified in SAP EPM solutions and SAP HANA. The consultancy is a certified SAP Partner Managed Cloud Partner and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.
Implementation
Opal Wave achieves tight deadline successfully, despite an expanded brief
Amanda Scott admits that Opal Wave were set a tough timescale for implementing the changes.
She says: “Opal Wave were involved from September 2016 but only really able to start in earnest in December and we needed their work to be complete in time for the February 2017 month-end, as we would enter our year-end reporting process after that.
“The project included the additional functionality and we’d also effectively extended the brief, by asking Opal Wave to do some work we’d originally planned to undertake ourselves. Nonetheless, they worked hard throughout the three months and got everything done on-time, without disrupting our normal business activity in any way.”
Three Opal Wave experts, led by managing consultant Ian Jamie, did the bulk of the work, which concluded with some generic product training for Scapa’s administrators. The client then trained its own staff across the world to use the new functionality.
Amanda says: “There were always going to be questions and issues, such as the odd template not working initially, but Opal Wave’s expertise and response times were always really good – they built and implemented the headcount functionality within a month, for example – and if something needed attention, they dealt with it immediately.
“At no time did we feel they wouldn’t achieve the tight deadline. In fact, their speedy work meant we had time for full parallel runs of the old and new systems at the December and January month-ends. That meant we could test everything as fully as possible, including the new functionality, before going live, and on the second occasion, we found next-to-nothing that needed changing.”
Ian Jamie is equally complimentary about Scapa.
He says: “The reality is that in any system project success or failure depends greatly on the client. Scapa were very good in respects such as the way they organised themselves, worked with us and trained their internal users on the new functionality.”
Scapa SAP BPC Implementation Benefits
Consolidation, Regulatory Reporting and Budgeting
GDPR risk reduction through new secure headcount planning model
Rapid on time SAP BPC upgrade and enhancement project
Reduced risk and improved performance:
- Replaced manual processes with headcount planning model
- Eliminated GDPR risks
- Accelerated planning process time
Solution
System facilitates better and more timely decisions
SAP BPC, version 10.1, enables organisations to enhance the speed, efficiency, relevance, consistency and accuracy of their reporting, leading to better and more timely decisions. Facilitating the production of reliable, detailed breakdowns and incorporating pre-defined templates, to speed reporting and consolidation, it is powerful and scalable enough to handle high demand.
With its automated data checking, collection and control, version 10.1 minimises manual input and therefore errors and redundancy. Its flexibility means it can be extended easily to new sites, acquisitions and countries.
Benefits
Solution received “really well” by Scapa staff
All Scapa’s finance teams across the world now input data for actuals and budgeting to version 10.1, with about 35 people directly accessing the system. This then consolidates the results on a monthly basis, with Scapa producing full accounts half-yearly.
Amanda Scott says: “We’ve no doubt we’ve done the right thing in moving on to version 10.1 and this has been received really well so far. Our continued use of the Microsoft platform for SAP BPC means the upgrade has also enabled us to move on to Office 2013.
“Where the headcount functionality is concerned, we now have full visibility and consistency, and the process is now much more effective and efficient.
“Ian and his team have also made data input much easier and we’ve had a really positive experience to date with this too. The fact that we now spend less time inputting data means we can devote more to the important task of analysing it.”
Overall, Amanda says her first real experience of Opal Wave has been hugely favourable.
She says: “I’ve worked with other software consultants on many projects before but I would say this has been my most positive experience so far”.
“They’ve been unfailingly very professional and proactive, and were always extremely approachable and personable. We were never in doubt that they’d done this before, which was reassuring. Their advice was excellent too, always steering us along the best practice route, which gave us confidence.”
AboutOpal Wave
Opal Wave was founded in 2008, the brainchild of three SAP BPC enterprise performance management (EPM) software specialists: Ivor Herman, Simon Bell and Ahtishaam Khan. Having worked for over 20 years each within the EPM domain, including with best practice processes, systems and technologies, they wanted to combine their experience and expertise to offer clients a genuinely valuable service that provided real benefit to their businesses. Since then, they have never looked back, with Opal Wave having gone from strength-to-strength, as more and more clients have discovered the benefits of better performance management.