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CASE STUDY

Croda

ABOUT THE CLIENTCroda is a world leader in natural based speciality chemicals which are sold to virtually every type ofindustry. The company has approximately 3300 employees,working in 34 countries.

Its activities can be broadly classified into three sectors:• Consumer Care which consists of global businesses

in personal care, health care and crop care – all markets with an increasing need for innovation and sustainable ingredients.

• Performance Technologies which comprises of home care, additives for polymers, coatings and polymers, lubricant additives, and geo technologies.• Industrial Chemicals which serves a variety of

important industrial markets with ingredients, additives and processing aids.

In addition, the group has a Technology Investment Groupfunction which identifies and integrates new technology into Croda’s global business structure.

INDUSTRY

PharmaceuticalBUSINESS CHALLENGE• Current System out of Maintenance• Lack of Multi-dimensional Analysis• Slow, Error-Prone Process

EOH SOLUTION• SAP BPC• Excellent Integration with SAP• Easy-to-use Reporting• EOH - Expertise & Dedication - Very Familiar with the Business

BUSINESS IMPACT• More Effective & Efficient• Analysis of Sales by Marketing Segment• Self-service Reporting Culture• Improved Insight

The business

challengeCroda had been using Infor’s FDC product to produce their group accounts for a number of years. Indeed, when it was installed in 1999 the product was viewed as providing a reliable and straightforward method for consolidating group results and was used to produce the report packs for both board and executive committee meetings.

However, there were a number of significant problems with the solution. As a product of its time, FDC’s functionality was very limited and provided only a restricted number of dimensions for data analysis and no support for multiple planning and forecast scenarios. Similarly, there was no facility to import ledger data directly into the solution and so submissions were collected by allowing end users to log into the system via Citrix and re-key their numbers into data forms. As a result, the data collection process was a slow and error prone one. Moreover, once the data had been loaded and consolidated, the system offered only a very limited insight into business activities. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, Infor no longer viewed FDC as a strategic product and had no further plans to develop or actively market it.

“In summary, we weren’t terribly happy with the old applicationor the way it had been supported”, says Paul Newton VP Corporate Finance & Group Reporting at Croda, “it produced the results we needed in the appropriate timeframe, but only in the most basic way. Similarly, our organisation had become much more complex since the FDC solution had been implemented. What we really needed was a tool that would provide us with a robust, scalable way of collecting submissions and deliver a goodlevel of multi-dimensional slice-and-dice analysis.”

The

requirement

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As Newton points out, “there were three main goals that we had in mind for the replacement solution. Firstly there was the overriding need to replace all of the existing reporting functionality of FDC. Secondly, we wanted to take the opportunity to enhance the quality and detail of the information that we provided to the rest of the enterprise. For example, we were very keen to look at sales margins by market segment, something that we couldn’t do with the old product. Thirdly and finally, we wanted a system that would interface directly with the ERP systems that we already had in place.”

This requirement to load data directly from Croda’s existing ERP was of prime importance: “we felt that it would provide the bedrock of the system and enable us to achieve our fundamental goals of providing reliable management information to the rest of the organisation as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Moreover, by increasing the levels of automation and integration, both Croda and EOH felt that there would be a significant shift away from the purely mechanical tasks of collation and data preparation towards more valuable activities such as analysis and review.

“We looked at the main solutions in the market place and evaluated them fully”, says Newton, “given that one of our major concerns was finding something with really strong integration to our SAP accounting package, the SAP BPC product became our preferred solution very early in the selection process. Certainly SAP BPC looked the easiest to use and was being actively developed by SAP which was important for us because, if we selected it, we’d be using it for a long time.”

Once BPC had been chosen as the replacement solution,EOH were engaged to compile the requirements for the new application. As Newton explains, “we had a working relationship with EOH of many years standing. Consequently, they knew our business better than any other consultancy and were able to document our requirements very quickly.” The outputs from this process were a number of high level objectives:

• Support for the multi-currency consolidation of financial and non-financial data, including the storage and management of historical information for comparative reporting purposes.• Integration with Croda’s underlying ERP, allowing the automatic upload of submission information from reporting sites into a centralised consolidation and reporting database.• Enable full multi-dimensional and drill-down analysis of consolidated data, enabling quick and reliable reporting of management information on both an ad-hoc and a scheduled basis. • A flexible and simple reporting front-end which could easily be tailored to suit the needs of the different user communities within Croda.

The

solutionWorking closely together, the Croda and EOH resources were able to build the application and develop the reports required by the business. “The development process took a little longer than we anticipated”, says Newton, “but this was because we were able to develop many more reports than we had previously. Having a good quality multidimensional data source on-hand meant that we wanted to expand what we had provided in the past, as well taking advantage of all the new features that the SAP BPC product provided.”

Similarly, to ensure that the application would be as ‘future-proofed’ as possible, the development team opted to implement the replacement application in the recently launched Version 10 of SAP BPC. This way the project would avoid having to go through an upgrade process relatively early in its life cycle. While this approach made good sense it was not without its challenges.

“We were very happy to be moving to a new, actively evolvingapplication”, says Newton, “the only drawback was, if anything, that the product was a little too dynamic in the early stages of the implementation and so we ran into a couple of stability issues that we wouldn’t have been able to resolve had we been implementing the product ourselves. Fortunately, EOH were on hand to guide us through those teething problems and their proactivity and dedication ensured that we were able to resolve the issues and complete the initial phase of the project.”

Indeed, Newton believes that the BPC product has fundamental benefits to the organisation. “Our month end close still takes a few days to complete, but we are doing much more during that time than we were ever able to before”, he says. “The business processes are much more efficient than they used to be and the improvements in the detail and quality of reporting mean that we are able to be much more effective than we were. This is only the start”, he concludes, “there is so much untapped potential in the product we feel very confident about where we can go with it in the future.”

Kirit Patel, Regional Managing Director, UK & Europe, EOH concludes, “Croda will continue to benefit from SAP BPC as it continues to develop its scope and push the application out to more of the user community. Moreover, with the truly collaborative approach which was taken, I very much look forward to EOH supporting and further strengthening our working relationship long into the future.”

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About

EOHFounded in 1996 EOH UK has been making a tangible difference to the finance function for decades. We build trusted relationships by bolting deep business know-how and proven technology capabilities to our collaborative leadership values.

At the heart of our success is the recognition that building trust with clients is critical. We go to extraordinary lengths to understand the full picture, from current challenges to future goals, while inspiring clients to become more visionary across the system landscape.

Breaking away from legacy systems and streamlining processes is a bold and increasingly necessary step. Choosing EOH UK ensures you have a partner with you at every step of that journey.

Together we deliver the optimum technology solution – grounded in pragmatism but always with an eye on innovation. The result? A faster, leaner, smarter solution delivering returns as well as improved business performance.

Technology makes it possible, people make it happen.

“The response from users has been very positive, a large part of that is down to the fact that we are now able to produce much more attractive reports with data that is of a much higher quality. Similarly, the new system really encourages users to analyse their numbers.”

The SAP BPC based consolidation system at Croda has provided many benefits. Not least of which is that the new solution provides a single, reliable source of financial and non-financial data. “The response from users has been very positive,” says Newton, “a large part of that is down to the fact that we are now able to produce much more attractive reports with data that is of a much higher quality. Similarly, the new system really encourages users to analyse their numbers.”

As expected, the integration of the SAP accounting packagewith the new consolidation application has proved to be a major benefit; since submission figures can now be loaded directly into SAP BPC, the manual-input stages of the old system are becoming a thing of the past.

“The ability to load data automatically has completely removedthe data validation issues we used to run into”, says Newton,“and we are collecting a wider range of information than we were previously.” One example of this is in the area of sales and margin tracking. The new system enables users to analyse consolidated numbers across a number of dimensions including market segment and product type. As a result the new system enables them to spot relationships between data items and use the results to drive the executive decision making process.

“We really do have a much improved level of insight”, says Newton, “it’s not perfect, and we really haven’t as gone as faras we’d like to yet, but it’s a real start.”

These factors in combination with the centralised, modernarchitecture of BPC have had a positive effect on the reportingprocess. Specifically, the availability and ease-of-use of the product have allowed the finance team to instill a more self-service reporting culture within Croda. “There have been challenges all along the way”, says Newton, “but now we havea robust and integrated financial platform in place that is easyfor users to learn. In the past, we’d probably end up having tobuild reports ourselves for our customers in the business. Weare now starting to encourage them to do it themselves.”

The

benefits