your journey
Synthomer | Chemical Manufacturing
A global business transformation, facilitated using SAP S/4HANA, designed to enable the delivery of key corporate strategic goals and prepare Synthomer for the next digital era.
Synthomer had embarked on a large scale global business transformation with a view to setting themselves up for growth in the digital economy. This involved standardising across global business units, consolidating legacy systems, adopting best practices and centralising key activities, all facilitated alongside the deployment of a groundbreaking SAP S/4HANA solution.
Problem
Synthomer recognised the need for a global transformation programme in order to facilitate the next phase of the companies growth and allow it to capitalise on the benefits of the digital era.
The programme started well, but Limelight was asked to review the transformation programme to ensure things were on track post 'discovery' phase. The executive team wanted reassurance their programme was 'as per normal'. It was hard for them to see the wood for the trees, the governance model wasn't quite right, stage gates were a little vague, and programme reporting seemed overwhelmingly complex.
"The plan was to create a capability within Synthomer to implement our new template into any future acquisitions. It was vital to be able to do that in-house."
Insights
- Creation of a Global Way of Working, with simplified processes and supported by intuitive, engaging technology
- Creation of a global, process centric governance framework across the organisation to drive the transformation
- Creation of the Target Operating Model which delivers strong cost to serve whilst enabling further growth
- Bringing the Business and IT together to agree a suite of applications for the new ways of working, including S/4HANA, Ariba, Concur, BPC, B/4HANA and Arkieva (IBP), and integration with SuccessFactors and C4C.
- Consolidating 6 legacy ERP systems of record, into a single S/4HANA application
- Enhancing the IT readiness of the organisation to be able to support a single global suite of applications
- Creating a legacy in the business of methodology and organisation capable of implementing the global template to any future acquisitions
Solutions
With our initial recommendations implemented, which included a simplified programme governance framework and the introduction of a stage-gate process complimented by programme wide status reporting, the programme was quickly recovered and proceeded to gain full board sanction for full delivery of the programme and benefits case.
Working with the team of executive sponsors, the Limelight team continued to manage the programme which delivered a business transformation across a newly formed structure of global divisions. Working with a multi-national team, the goal was to deliver a single global way of working which would enable scalability, efficiency and enhanced compliance for the organisation.