In 2008 and 2009, HICRON cooperated with Kompania Piwowarska on the expansion of the SAP system by adding non-standard solutions.

The extensions implemented by HICRON Consulting included an innovative solution for the management of return packaging and a new model of logistics discounts incorporated in the SAP system. HICRON Consulting also supported Kompania Piwowarska in the implementation of Sales Force Automation (SFA) solutions and their integration with the SAP system. Due to complexity of the latter project, involvement of a third-party expert, other than Anica Systems, the software supplier, was necessary. Therefore, the role of HICRON Consulting in the project was not limited to the development of the business concept of the implementation or translation of Kompania Piwowarska’s expectations into the system capabilities. The Client’s employees, knowing the high level of competence of HICRON Consulting and its deep insight into the business processes, appointed a representative of HICRON Consulting as the SFA Implementation Project Manager.

"We took a very serious approach to the replacement of the SFA application, similarly as in the case of all other IT projects implemented in Kompania Piwowarska. First of all, we wanted to have the best available solution on the market and that’s way we decided to work with Anica Systems. But we also wanted to have in the project a person who will not only be aware of our needs, but also will have a good knowledge of the environment of the applications, will be able to identify the best solutions from our point of view and will have sufficient experience in managing equally complex projects. Therefore, we invited Michał Guzek from HICRON Consulting to join the project" - says Krzysztof Ptak, IT Solutions Manager in Kompania Piwowarska.

The success of Kompania Piwowarska is based on the unique know-how and the specific ways of work developed over the years. As a result, their SAP system is highly complex and heavily customized to match the individual needs. Kompania Piwowarska’s system is full of dedicated functionalities, extensions and additions incorporated in the SAP standard. Hence, implementation of new functionalities and additional solutions had to be done in such a way as to avoid interference with the dozens of existing modifications, including goods return processes, corrections, sales, buyer’s credit, buyer’s control, other discount and rebate policies etc. The purpose of all that work was to further enhance the quality of the company’s customer service.

"We have always realized that the planned SAP development projects involve complex, sophisticated work, for instance securing compatibility of the new solutions with other non-standard SAP modifications. That’s why we believed the projects should be managed by a company with extensive experience in the development of dedicated SAP extensions. Hicron Consulting experts have convinced us many times that the choice of the company as the IT solution supplier was like a shot in the bull’s eye and the company is a trusted and competent business partner, fully aware of our needs", says Włodzimierz Sobczyk, Business IT Systems Director, Kompania Piwowarska.

The majority of projects implemented by Hicron Consulting were launched globally, in all regions of Kompania Piwowarska operations. The transition from old to new solutions designed by Hicron Consulting was dictated by business reasons and the go-live timing had to be precisely planned in order not to disturb the thousands of daily operations. Such constraints posed a big challenge to Hicron Consulting, particularly in the context of migration of large volumes of data. Therefore, Hicron Consulting experts prepared procedures facilitating express migration, thanks to which individual units of Kompania Piwowarska where the new solutions were implemented, could switch to the new model from day to day, without any downtime. This was especially true in the case of implementation of a series of SFA applications and the packaging dashboard, a solution enabling management of return packaging in SAP.