Stork Colombia runs SAP Cloud ERP

Stork Colombia improves the execution of processes and gets control and insights

Stork Colombia SAP ERP Cloud implementation

Stork is a market leader in maintenance, modification and asset integrity services (MM & AI).

Headquartered in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Stork is dedicated to improving asset performance, safety and cost-efficiency for Clients throughout the asset life cycle. For Clients operating in the Oil and Gas, Chemicals and Process, Metals and Mining, Food, Pharmaceutical, Power, and Manufacturing industries, Stork aims to be their asset integrity partner. Stork offers a wide range of integrated solutions and specialist services across all areas of maintenance, modification and asset integrity. With approximately 20,000 employees in over 100 countries, Stork serves more than 4,000 Clients across six continents. Stork enters life-long partnerships, growing their Clients’ business sustainable and successfully.

Stork Colombia, with more than 7.000 employees, provides Asset Management Services for the Oil & Gas, Energy and Mining industries on the LATAM continent. The headquarter is based in Bogota and there are offices in Neiva, Yopal and some project specific locations.

Stork/MASA Colombia is a subsidiary of Stork. Stork Colombia is executing projects with various levels of risk, like:

Unit Rate Services where effort and costs of a repeating activity are rolled up in a unit rate;
Lump Sum Project Services with fixed scope against a fixed price;
Time & Material Services with hourly rate for labor and equipment;
Reimbursable Services with cost plus arrangement.

Involved Project Members:

Javier Márquez – Project Manager Stork Colombia

Rik Ellenbroek – CFO Stork Americas

Ferry Bogaards - Managing Partner Scheer Netherlands

SAP Cloud ERP as Corporate Platform

What was the driver of the SAP Business ByDesign Implementation?

The implementation of a SAP ERP Cloud system in Colombia is part of the Global Strategy of Stork to improve operational excellence across all subsidiaries. By working on a common Stork system with harmonized corporate standards, processes and data structures, Stork Colombia can ensure a clear and reliable Project-, Financial- and Management Reporting structure.

Stork Colombia was using various isolated and non-integrated applications to facilitate the business and activities such as analysis and reporting were mainly done in Excel. This resulted in too much time and effort needed to generate reliable reports to support decision making during daily operations. As a result, it was impossible to ensure up-to-date information at various levels in the organization.

Javier Márquez says: Our Management wanted to participate in the global ERP initiative to improve the execution of our processes and to ensure good control and insights for:

Better decision-making in our business in short time with reliable data;
Close monitoring the performance of our operations (actual versus planned projects margin);
Traceable information in case we require deeper analysis.

The project in Colombia

The Colombia project started in March 2017 with an orientation session and went live on January 1st, 2018. SAP Business ByDesign is used to support Sales, Project Operations, Logistics, HRM, Procurement and Finance, including Revenue Recognition for fixed price and time material projects. Due to the size of the operation the project is split in two phases.

Scheer has been chosen as the implementation partner for the Colombia implementation. Ferry Bogaards explains: "Scheer started the support of Stork’s cloud ERP journey in 2015 supporting Houston and Trinidad and Tobago. In 2016 we supported the creation of a Global Reporting & Process Template in SAP Business ByDesign. This template was initially implemented at Australian based Stork subsidiary Giovenco. Stork/MASA Colombia is now added to the Stork ERP Cloud environment".

In the project the best people from Stork and the Scheer consultants worked as one team to understand the operation and requirements; The main challenges for Colombia were related to simplifying the processes, language support, change management and localization of the system (Colombia is a non-localized country in SAP ByDesign).

The process-oriented implementation approach from Scheer enabled the identification of business improvements and the process of managing the change. This process-orientated approach also made it possible to manage process optimization and innovations. The solid understanding of the process flow in combination with the capabilities of the application, are the foundation to define “Keep it Simple” solutions. The activities in the implementation were focused on preparing the end-users and to ensure high quality master data. So, detailed work instructions were developed and used during the Integration- and User Acceptance Testing (UAT). The UAT was performed with real-data as a final test of the Data Migration.

Javier Márquez says: "the most important value added by Scheer in this successful implementation was the capability to transfer knowledge to Stork’s employees, not just in terms of what possibilities the system has, but how to reflect the processes in the application to obtain maximal performance. Beside the excellent technical support, I would say that the Scheer philosophy that change is a process (in stead of a single moment) and the tools and ideas provided helped the change of mindset in our people.

We changed an ERP we used for decades!

Changing the Culture related to Project Management

"The implementation enabled creating a culture of preparing, planning, manage performance and continuous monitoring. Reports with useful data can be used for analysis of the business from different point of views such as Operational, Financial, HRM and Project Controlling. Stork can now better manage projects using the real-time visibility of details. From the start the information in the ERP was of very good quality. In an easy way our people started to understand the power of real-time information", says Rik Ellenbroek

The deployment of the SAP Business ByDesign in Colombia provided the following benefits:

Uniform way of working based on SAP proofed Best Practices to enable consistent performance management and accountability framework;
Efficiency gains by eliminating manual and repeated tasks to ensure single data entry but multiple uses within the process;
The broadening of the user base and the guidance into the integrated end-to-end processes leads to a better and solid process and system know-how within the organization;
Replacement of data silos by structured and transparent governance of business metrics improves decision making across all departments.

The impact of implementing a non-localized country

Seidor (with the help of Scheer) has now realized a Localization for Colombia with Withholding Tax for Purchases and Sales, Self-withholding, Employee Expenses and DIAN reporting.

"The effort to create a reliable localization has led to a great result" - Ferry Bogaards

Download

Feedback from the project members

Our management wanted to participate in the global ERP initiative to improve the execution of our processes and to ensure good control and insights

Javier Márquez - Project Manager Stork

Scheer started the support of the Stork cloud ERP journey in 2015 supporting Houston and Trinidad and Tobago. In 2016 we supported the creation of a Global Reporting & Process Template in SAP Business ByDesign. This template was initially implemented at Australian based Stork subsidiary Giovenco. Stork/MASA Colombia is now added to the Stork ERP Cloud environment.

Ferry Bogaards - Managing Partner Scheer Nederland

Ferry Bogaards - Scheer Nederland

From the start the information in the ERP was of very good quality. In an easy way our people started to understand the power of real-time information,

Ton Bruijne - Finance & Business Services Director Stork, project sponsor.

Rik Ellenbroek CFO Stork Americas

[socialbuttons]