Offshore and Nearshore IT Support

A pharmaceutical production site in Zurich needed reliable IT support for 300 users across multiple locations, covering a complex mix of laboratory, manufacturing and quality systems.

Most support requests could be resolved remotely. The company retained a small on-site team to manage physical equipment and provide hands-on assistance, while outsourcing the majority of ERP, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity support to ETC.

This model combined local presence with access to a broader international talent pool, allowing the company to adapt its support capacity without relying on additional permanent headcount.

• Reduced dependency on fixed internal headcount.
• Greater access to specialist expertise.
• Offshore resource costs approximately 80% lower than the equivalent on-site resource costs.
• Fewer open support tickets and improved SLA performance.

Migration to SAP

ETC Consulting have been actively involved in multiple migrations from Oracle and other ERP systems to SAP.  Our involvement has been in managing data cleansing, conversions, process design, transfer of interfaces and hardware (such as printers, terminals and scanning solutions).  By strictly applying a proven implementation methodology, our skills have been invaluable in the success of the migrations.  The team get involved in project management as well as process engineering and testing.

A migration project normally starts with an as-is assessment of the processes in the legacy ERP system and mapping of the to-be processes in the target (SAP) system.  Generally, the goal is to maintain the core processes in the target system as much as possible.  However, a gap analysis will form the basis of the changes that may have to be made in either the business processes or the system design.  Such analysis requires business process expertise and an ability to work with the business stakeholders to form an accurate picture and reach agreement on the optimal approach.  Compromises are inevitable in such projects as systems need to be delivered to a fixed budget and timeline whilst maintaining a high level of quality.

An additional factor in global projects is the coordination and cooperation of teams in multiple locations.  Also, whilst English tends to be the project language, there tends to be a multitude of nationalities and business back-grounds, which therefore requires a methodical approach directing the project deliverables.  All of ETC’s consultants have extensive experience in dealing with such international teams and possess the tools to operate in a virtual team-room.

In addition to the skills and expertise required for global ERP roll-outs, commitment and team-work are of equal importance.  For ETC, such projects go beyond simply offering a service and we all take personal pride in achieving the maximum possible.

Implementation and Roll-out of an Infor DP/RP Planning System

ETC Consulting were engaged to manage the IT aspects of a new installation for an Infor DP/RP (demand planning and replenishment planning) system for a large Pharma multinational.  The implementation involved assessment of required hardware and supporting infrastructure for the system, an integration platform for bi-directional interfacing of data with over 50 legacy source systems, alignment with a central Master Data Management system and building a team to implement and support the system.  The entire process was managed in parallel with a team of Supply Chain Management consultants.

The system was installed on a Windows server with an SQL database and with user access through Citrix.  Besides a robust back-up process, a hot disaster recovery system was installed at a separate location with Zerto software for replication between the primary and DR server.

Due to the limited expected life-span of the system of approximately 5 year, the integration process with about 50 source systems required low investment and had to offer flexible and easy roll-out.  The data import process was done through manual loading of planning information collected by business users from the legacy systems into centrally stored CSV templates.  The formatting of these CSV templates was protected to ensure consistency.  The data transfer and conversion process into the Infor system was performed by Biztalk middleware.  In addition to processing the planning information from CSV files, the middleware had an automatic integration with the central MDM system to retrieve global item and vendor numbers and convert these based on values in the source data.  The middleware team also provided a portal to capture incomplete or incorrect data to ensure on-time processing of data across the 50 source systems.

The pilot implementation for three sites was chosen to be for a group of companies and business users with extensive experience of implementing software systems.  Major emphasise was placed on managing master data in the source system as well as the MDM system, as this would prove to be crucial for correct and timely processing of the planning information.  Project teams collaborated from multiple locations across Europe.

The team opted for a technical go-live in which the system and its interfaces were used in a production situation but alongside the legacy planning system for a period of three months.  This gave the business and IT time to address issues in the integration process, Infor system as well as master data.  The latter proved to be most complex and critical.  The ETC team also used this period to establish a Business As Usual support process.  This was based on a strict Software Development Life Cycle methodology and the companies ServiceNow system to manage issues and changes.  The various team members collaborated from multiple locations using the Virtual Office tools (Sharepoint, Skype conferencing and ServiceNow) typically used by ETC ITSolutions.

The business, SCM and IT teams worked tirelessly for months to provide a stable platform to roll out the system to the 50 entities across the globe.  Despite its ‘simple’ integration platform, the system has proven to be highly dependable and has so far continued to service the company successfully well beyond its expected life-span.

Critical for its successful implementation were a strong focus on master data, end-to-end ownership of the interfaces by a team of IT/process experts, and lastly a very effective support process to address business as well as IT issues.