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Best Practices in SAP ERP Modernization for Chemicals

Chemical industries across the globe are working at a swift pace in their manufacturing and warehouse facilities to produce and ship products daily. Throughout production, logistics operations teams are key players in the productivity of business workflows within the chemical industry. For many companies, these workflows are falling short in terms of automation and flexibility due to the complex infrastructure and expected standards required to maintain operations.

In one such case with Toray Plastics, Inc., a world leader in chemical manufacturing, they were struggling with a legacy SAP environment, which was preventing them from making customer deliveries within a specified timeframe and budget. Toray’s value is that they produce products that are utilized by many converters and manufacturers that make a wide variety of finished goods for consumers and industrial applications. Toray was struggling to hold to their value and due to the lack of automation within their SAP system. It was creating inefficiencies and issues within their day to day operations, and, in some cases, causing forklift operators to manually enter data into a system that was not easily accessible from their operations floor – far from their natural, working environment.

Toray really needed an SAP solution that would not break the bank and offered more flexibility in connectivity, device usability, and real-time updates in data entry. When Toray came across EdgeReady Cloud, a low-code, rapid application development platform (RAD) for SAP, they were able to quickly connect with a team of SAP experts and discuss their current use case. The customer success team at Pillir helped them initiate a plan to follow best practices while integrating into their SAP system, keeping it pristine and standard, while gaining valuable automation abilities for their existing manual workflows – streamlining their data communication and flexibility.

Here are some of the best practices that they followed when modernizing their SAP system with EdgeReady Cloud.

Best practices for modernizing SAP ERPs for Chemicals includes being able to operate on any device, with any connectivity landscape

In order to operate efficiently, Toray had a crucial need to be able to connect wherever their workers were and on whatever device they had to use to complete their daily operational tasks.

In the case of Toray’s forklift team, drivers were having to leave their stations to manually enter data on a computer in a separate office. This caused serious safety concerns as the operators would have to navigate a busy plant floor where other forklifts were being operated while trying to do this. For this reason, Toray began to search for a cloud-native SaaS solution that would allow employees to remain productive and safe, while automating data entry within their SAP system.

When they discovered the solution offered by Pillir, they were able to easily resolve their safety concerns. Forklift drivers, while utilizing the low-code solution put in place by Pillir, could now easily scan bar codes sales, access and place order inquiries and conduct inventory lookups instantly on an iPad.

In turn, this also allowed for the management of finished-goods pallets to be tracked properly and safely as they came off their belt systems, ensured material movement internally within their plant, monitored the correct delivery of doors, trucks, and locations; along with door management and loading/unloading activities. All of this was successfully completed while their core system of record (SAP) was being updated in real- time.

Toray discovered that there was a major difference between using a product that modernizes systems easily that can be used any device and in any landscape, and just any old SAP modernization plug in. Pillir’s rapid application development solution for legacy modernization proved to be indispensable and enhanced the safety of the workers at Toray, all while providing an efficient solution that helped reduce costs by saving the time of their staff. Using a solution that operates on any device within any connectivity landscape is essential when trying to follow best practices for modernizing SAP ERP systems in the chemical industry.

To read more about Toray’s case study and how they improved business workflows with Pillir, click here.

Best practices for modernizing SAP ERPs for Chemicals need to include a customized and automated approach to app development

The ability to customize and automate applications and workflows for warehouse productivity is another critical best practice to adhere by when modernizing any SAP ERP system.

Before Toray searched for a solution, they were facing both lengthy and manual paper processes, along with out-of-the-box apps that were not customizable. The experience that resulted from this inefficiency cause frustration and prevented warehouse productivity and efficiency. Processes were cumbersome and, overall, they did not have a user-friendly experience.

With EdgeReady Cloud, operations can be modernized rapidly – providing a user-centric, customizable experience that tightly integrates with SAP and automates once manual processes and increases efficient productivity and operations – saving companies time and unnecessary costs.

Best practices for modernizing SAP ERPs for Chemicals need to include cost-saving solutions

With today’s shaky economy, it’s common for companies to have cost at the forefront of consideration when reviewing ways to modernize their SAP system. Investments into modernization can be expensive, and many vendors can’t offer a way for companies to transparently evaluate how they can save money with modernization.

Limited budgets can make it impractical for a legacy SAP ERP system customer to achieve legacy modernization, and SAP ERPs in the chemicals industry are no exception.  It’s crucial to adopt a solution that fulfills your business needs while also being affordable and working to uplift and add value to your budget, not work against it.

In Toray’s case, they has been overpaying for their own legacy SAP environment, resulting in high operational costs, and extra work to maintain data accuracy. Already having to pay the hefty expense of managing and maintaining a massive SAP system, additional unnecessary costs were not an option for Toray.

With modernization solutions like EdgeReady Cloud and it’s NANCI app, technical debt can be discovered and opportunity to decrease the TCO of SAP systems can be easily seen.

Reducing costs and keeping a pristine SAP digital core is essential when considering best practices for SAP ERP modernization. When Toray implemented Pillir’s customized modernization solution, they were able to significantly reduce costs and remain in accordance with their budget.

Best practices for modernizing SAP ERPs for Chemicals need to include a streamlined deployment strategy

 The last best practice to consider when modernizing SAP ERPs for Chemicals is to be wary when searching for solutions to modernize your SAP ERP system that does not have a consistent and streamlined deployment strategy.

The integration of any modernization solution should take little time to build and deploy. In the chemicals industry, there’s never a dull moment and no time to waste, so a rapid and efficient deployment plan is essential.

Saving companies time, effort and unnecessary costs, EdgeReady Cloud offers companies like Toray the ability to take back time lost within inefficient processes and to implement SAP web and mobile apps quickly, using significantly less resources than traditional development tactics.

If you’re interested in learning more about how your chemical company can benefit from the rapid modernization and application development opportunity for SAP systems offered by EdgeReady Cloud, get in touch with our team today.

Cecilia Santis

Cecilia Santis

Cecilia is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Pillir and loves to write about emerging technologies.