BUCHER MOTOREX Group extends its presence in international markets with SAP and IBM

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From its headquarters in Langenthal, in the heart of Switzerland, BUCHER MOTOREX Group researches, develops and produces innovative lubricants and chemicals, and sells them on the world market. The complete range includes well over 2,000 products, designed, produced and marketed by around 220 people, including lubrication specialists, engineers, chemists and technicians.

For some years BUCHER MOTOREX Group has been stepping up its marketing and sales activities in order to build its position in niche export markets, and today the company exports to more than 60 countries. Turnover is growing every year, and exports account for more than one-quarter of sales.

Reaching new customers
The marketing team has been spearheading the drive to reach new international customers and serve existing customers more effectively. To support that effort, managers wanted access to detailed business analysis to help them understand which customers were buying which products, by value and volume. This information will help them guide and target new marketing programs, improving the return from each campaign.

Additionally, within the company it was important to measure the true operational costs in each business area, to help identify savings and improve efficiency. With tighter control of its own business and a greater ability to understand its customers, the company aimed to maintain its worldwide growth.

The existing business support systems were nearly 15 years old, and while they had been successfully extended in many areas, but a number of management functions were relatively weak. Rather than select standalone solutions for different functions and invest in integration work, BUCHER MOTOREX Group decided to look for a new integrated ERP solution. Additionally, BUCHER MOTOREX Group wished to understand more about customers’ buying habits. This information would enable the creation of tuned, customer-oriented marketing campaigns to help improve total sales revenues.

The main requirements were ease of maintenance, a long-term software strategy, excellent performance and, of course, cost-effective pricing.

Finding a solution
EFP Consulting, an SAP Gold Partner, proposed its SAP Business All-in-One partner solution ExpertPROCESS as being an ideal fit for the company. Where many other ERP solutions would require extensive modification or even third-party software to provide all the different functional areas, from finance to marketing, ExpertPROCESS provides a single, integrated solution.

Erich Neukomm, Head of Data Center Operations, comments, “ExpertPROCESS covered all of BUCHER MOTOREX Group’s requirements, whereas many other software offerings would have needed modifications or additional programs to meet all the specifications set by marketing and management. We extended the core solution with SAP Customer Relationship Management, and have the option to add integrated functionality exactly as the need arises.

“Additionally, long-term stability was a key requirement: we did not want to invest in solutions from small vendors that might not exist in a few years’ time. SAP Business All-in-One provided a comprehensive package from a single, strong vendor that should be able to meet our needs for the foreseeable future.”

Building on IBM i
The former solution had been running on IBM Power Systems servers with the IBM i operating system, and BUCHER MOTOREX Group had considerable in-house experience of the reliability and performance of this platform. By continuing with IBM i as its platform of choice, the company would be able to implement the SAP software on a single server, avoiding the expense and complication of multiple smaller servers in the data room.

BUCHER MOTOREX Group took advantage of a packaged offering from Wagner, including implementation services and an IBM Power Systems 550 server. The company also purchased an IBM Power Systems 525 server to act as a backup and disaster recovery service, implemented at a second location. The setup is completed by two IBM System x 3850s, which are attached to the Power Systems servers for storage purposes.

“ExpertPROCESS, based on SAP Business All-in-One, proved to be the most compact solution because the other ERP suites would have required multiple Windows servers,” explains Erich Neukomm. “MOTOREX’s IT staff specialized in managing IBM i systems, and the training effort and technical complexity of a Windows-based solution made a significant difference to the financial case.”

EFP Consulting deployed ExpertPROCESS and ExpertCRM on the IBM Power Systems platform, installed by IBM Premier Business Partner Wagner AG. Working in close co-operation with Wagner AG, BUCHER MOTOREX Group was able to implement the new solution with a relatively small team of IT experts. The rapid implementation cycle of approximately two months and the forecast long life of the IBM Power Systems servers were both attractive considerations for the BUCHER MOTOREX management board.

The 550 server was configured with three logical partitions, running SAP Business All-in-One, SAP Customer Relationship Management, IBM DB2, and a virtualized Windows and VMware environment to support other applications. The single 550 server effectively performs the role of two standalone servers and a storage subsystem, and uses just two active POWER5+ processors to support 160 named users. The 550 chassis also contains two inactive processors, which can be enabled on a temporary or permanent basis as the need arises.

The BUCHER MOTOREX Group also implemented two x3850 servers running VMware ESX server, connected to the Power Systems servers, and consolidated 12 former physical servers onto each machine. These two machines now deliver Microsoft Exchange, file, print and related shared services.

The former hardware landscape of more than 26 systems now consists of just four IBM servers, greatly simplifying IT administration tasks and reducing total maintenance costs. IBM PowerVM virtualization technology embedded in the IBM Power Systems servers and VMware solutions on the x3850 servers help to cut complexity and exploit these powerful hardware platforms to the full. Further positive aspects of this solution’s approach are the savings in terms of electricity and reduced heat emanation, thus providing a Green IT landscape.

Leveraging DB2
As the company expands, more customer information is being captured. Growing volumes of data require powerful analysis, management and storage. The IBM i operating system includes IBM DB2 as an embedded high-performance database, which is optimized for SAP solutions.

“Implementing DB2 with the new ERP system has helped MOTOREX to limit the size of the new database, which helps us avoid the cost of expensive additional disk capacity,” says Erich Neukomm. “In the transition to SAP Business All-in-One, the database size only increased by about a third even though we have introduced numerous new functionalities. Compared to other database systems, DB2 has provided us with the cheapest and easiest to implement solution.”

Getting the best from SAP Business All-in-One
To ensure it gains the maximum return from its investment, BUCHER MOTOREX invested in training employees to use the new SAP applications effectively, with 160 people spending several days each on specific courses. With integrated data available from all operational units, the company is able to examine many aspects of its business in entirely new ways.

“We see SAP solutions as the business standard both for us and for our industry. Having access to state-of-the-art IBM Power Systems and SAP Business All-in-One solution enables us to make much more qualified decisions,” says Erich Neukomm. “MOTOREX is now able to monitor far more business processes and to understand and identify bottlenecks and solutions.

“On the sales side, the reports generated by the SAP solutions provide valuable insights that are very important for planning processes. For example, we can run more customer-oriented marketing campaigns because we can analyze who is buying which products, when, and in what volumes; and we can tailor our promotions to appeal to their behavior. We were previously unable to do this, and the IBM and SAP solution makes a considerable contribution to the accuracy and effectiveness of our marketing efforts.”

“We are very pleased that MOTOREX now has a very robust and comprehensive ERP suite that fulfils our needs for the foreseeable future – and we have the ability to extend it with integrated SAP components as required. Because we are using just two of a possible four processors, the IBM Power Systems platform offers very great scalability and therefore an extended useful lifetime.

“BUCHER MOTOREX Group has invested in SAP and IBM technologies to support its international expansion, and we feel that we now have the best tools for the job.”