Main site / News 2008 / Sap Roll-Out In Scandinavian Tobacco

During the project, HICRON was responsible for the rollout of the solution in the area of sales and distribution, purchasing, materials management and quality management.

The turn of July and August 2008, marked completion of the work on the SAP system rollout in Scandinavian Tobacco. The rollout, implemented jointly by IDS Scheer and HICRON Consulting, involved transfer from Denmark to Poland of a SAP solution supporting all the key areas of the company’s operations. As a result of the implementation, the Polish branch of Scandinavian Tobacco received a single system which replaced a number of non-integrated applications. Additionally, cooperation between particular branches of the company has been improved. The experts from HICRON Consulting were responsible for the rollout of the solution in the area of sales and distribution, purchasing, materials management and quality management.

Rollout or implementation?

Standard rollout projects involve transfer of a template – a system launched in one of the companies – to other branches or sites. In many cases, however, even in this kind of projects a certain degree of customization is required in order to take care of non-standard needs of a company. An example of such a project was the rollout in Scandinavian Tobacco.
Poland was the first country to which the solution designed specifically for the Danish company was rolled out. There was hardly any template of the solution due to lack of documentation, so the first step was to analyze how the system had been built, area by area. Subsequently, the areas which required modification had to be identified in close cooperation with the employees of Scandinavian Tobacco in Poland and only then the entire system could have been implemented in our country.

Specific circumstances

The Danish settings of business processes had to be changed for Poland for a number of reasons, the key one being the Polish legal requirements, particularly concerning the issue and correction of invoices. Furthermore, the Polish regulations pertaining to the trade of goods subject to excise duty impose an obligation to issue AAD/SAD (Polish ADT/UDT) documents for the purpose of excise tax inspection. This requirement had to be reflected in the system. The nature of the Polish branch operations was also quite different from that of its Danish counterpart. Therefore, a completely new approach in the sales and distribution area had to be developed, including discounts and rebates and contracts with the clients..
Additionally, new system configuration was required with regard to Inter-Company Sales and Cross-Company Sales where both the Danish and Polish Scandinavian Tobacco branches are involved in a single sales process. Prior to the implementation the companies used different applications and the exchange of data was difficult and complicated in many situations, for instance, when a client ordered goods from the Danish company and the delivery was executed by the Polish branch. While streamlining the process in the SAP system, HICRON Consulting experts have also optimized the sales process at the interface between sales and warehouse management.

Another area which required customization was the specific excise bands registration procedure, meeting the highly rigorous demands of the Polish Customs Office. The excise bands had to be registered at different levels, depending on the place of manufacture and destination of the goods. There was a different registration procedure for excise bands intended for products manufactured in Poland, a different one for bands intended for imported goods sent to Denmark where cigarettes were manufactured for the Polish market under a subcontracting agreement and still a different one for export excise bands received from Denmark to be placed on cigarettes manufactured in Poland and exported to Denmark. The handling of all excise bands has been reflected in the SAP system in great detail, significantly facilitating the process of their registration.
Independent system

Scandinavian Tobacco Poland has a set of procedures, independent from the Danish company, which determine the amount of key raw materials purchased and maintained on stock. During the rollout of the SAP system, the job of consultants from HICRON Consulting included incorporation of such procedures in the system. As a result, Scandinavian Tobacco Poland has a solution which monitors inventory levels and proposes the purchase of materials on the basis of predefined parameters. The system users have an opportunity to overwrite the proposals and modify purchasing documents.

Scandinavian Tobacco is also quite independent operationally in the area of quality control. In accordance with the agreed schedule, control activities and measurements are carried out on the equipment used to assess the quality of manufactured cigarettes. The system regularly generates alerts e.g. to remind about the need to calibrate a particular piece of equipment.
 

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