SAP Automation Case Study | Fromageries Bel and Rev-Trac

Fromageries Bel, a subsidiary of The Bel Group, based in France, is a recognised world leader in the branded cheeses sector, with nearly 13,000 employees and 30 subsidiaries around the world. Bel Group cheeses are prepared at 28 production sites and distributed in nearly 130 countries. Its portfolio of differentiated product brands includes The Laughing Cow®, Kiri, Mini Babybel®, Leerdammer®, Boursin® and a score of other local brands.

The company has ambitious plans to further scale, aiming to double in size by 2025. To help realize its aggressive goals, Fromageries Bel needed to address a number of challenges within its SAP landscape. On the agenda was the development of a formal release management program to deliver projects with greater success to the business faster, and with fewer go-live errors. Fundamentally, the cheese maker wanted to automate recurring processes, establishing tighter controls that allowed their teams and consultants to work on higher value tasks.

SAP environment
transformed

Fromageries Bel reviewed technologies on the market that would help its IT team to manage their SAP change control processes. After the due diligence was completed Rev-Trac SAP change control automation software was selected ahead of SAP Solution Manager ChaRM. With a formal decision made to implement Rev-Trac, the software was deployed and productive in one to three months.

Initially, Fromageries Bel had specific goals in mind for the automation project. Firstly, it wanted to implement a release management strategy across its SAP environment. At the same time, the company wanted to improve its production system stability and simplify the SAP change control process. Achieving their agile and DevOps initiatives for their SAP landscape was also a priority.

Fast track to
SAP agile and DevOps

Since deploying Rev-Trac to manage its SAP change control processes, Fromageries Bel has successfully achieved the initial goals of the project. To realize their agile and DevOps initiatives the company used Rev-Trac for workflow automation, conflict management through extended locking and the software’s Overtake and Overwrite Protection (OOPS) function. The IT team also utilized Rev-Trac’s Release Management Workbench to support the company’s agile and DevOps goals.

Making use of Rev-Trac has enabled Fromageries Bel to significantly accelerate change delivery in numerous areas. For the global brand the four key priorities were Workflow approval, Transport deployment, Object conflict management and Transport sequencing. All contributed to significant savings in time and in the acceleration of changes across the landscapes.

Production system stability
under control

Rev-Trac has enabled Fromageries Bel to achieve its initial project goal of improving production system stability. Production stability across its SAP landscape has increased by up to 69 per cent – based on error reductions. Additionally, simplifying its SAP change processes has led to a more than 90 per cent reduction in manual effort. The cheese maker is spending less time on audit tasks through the implementation and deployment of Rev-Trac. Time spent on audit effort has been reduced by up to 90 per cent.

“Rev-Trac changed not only our daily job but also all people working with SAP in our company. Nobody can even imagine going back to the old days.”

Jean Christophe Omer, IT Administrator, Fromageries Bel

Other project goals Rev-Trac helped Fromageries Bel to achieve include:

  • Eliminated up to 70 per cent of the manual N to N+1 retrofit effort
  • Up to 69 per cent increase in the volumes of change managed by the team
  • Overall change control change management efficiency has improved by over 70 per cent
  • Rev-Trac users were trained between one and two hours

This case study of Fromageries Bel is based on March 2017 survey of Revelation Software customers by TechValidate, 3rd party research service.

Business Results

  • Change control management is more efficient with less manual effort
  • Streamlined operations and simplified SAP change processes
  • Massive reduction in the time spent on audit tasks
  • Great improvements in production system stability, based on error reduction
    • 90% reduction in manual effort
    • 69% production stability increase

Rev-Trac ends Fromageries Bel’s production blues

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