When Actebis Peacock GmbH & Co. KG (Actebis) in Germany wanted to gain control of its complex processing running on SAP software, it turned to the SAP Central Process Scheduling application by Redwood. With SAP Central Process Scheduling, Actebis significantly improved business process efficiency, enabling fulfillment of 5,000 customer orders per day. With 2,700 employees located across 13 European countries, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Actebis, a leading European IT and telecommunications distributor, achieves revenues that exceed €4 billion annually. Part of the Otto Versand Group made up of 90 companies (including Eddie Bauer, Crate & Barrel, and Spiegel) across 23 countries, Actebis has leveraged the experience of the world’s largest mail-order company to become a successful distributor of IT and telecommunications products.
Operational Challenges
During the production rollout of SAP software to 1,300 end users, effective management of background business processing was essential. On a typical day, there were 4,500 jobs that needed to be run, and many of the jobs were recurring. As a result, the staff that runs the core functions of the SAP software found themselves spending a lot of time creating and submitting jobs manually. As Jörg Heinemann, SAP Basis administrator at Actebis Distribution (UK) Limited, explains, “In our environment, the users need to run a lot of work on a periodic basis – in some instances every 10 minutes throughout the day. [But] there was no easy way to define a single job to run on a repeated basis during business hours only. We found ourselves having to create separate jobs, each scheduled to run for one of the set intervals during this period.” This was a problem when users wanted to stop the recurrent jobs for a couple of hours. It meant that existing jobs for the period requested had to be deleted and new jobs created for the same period of the following day.
Another major requirement for Actebis was the need to manage business processing where there were multiple steps and dependencies. “Some jobs we run have more than 20 steps… Without knowing when one job finished, it was difficult to predict when the following job should run,” says Heinemann.
Growing Business Requirements
Against this background of operational challenges, processing requirements had reached approximately 5,000 orders a day. Actebis needed a solution that would address the current issues and offer a foundation for integration between SAP solutions and other applications, including its third-party warehouse management system, DLS. Further, due to the high volume of processing required, the implementation needed to be quick and seamless. As Heinemann explains, “In order to complete our conversion to the euro, we needed to shut down all SAP [software] for one weekend. This presented us with a timely opportunity for the production deployment of SAP Central Process Scheduling. It was a very smooth transition. At the end of the weekend, we had our new euro-compliant SAP [software] up and running, with SAP Central Process Scheduling managing all the [processing] workload.”
Taking Control of Processing
Prior to implementation of SAP Central Process Scheduling, there were more than 46,000 different definitions for processing jobs. Taking advantage of SAP software’s powerful features for administration and workload control, Actebis achieved a 98% reduction in administrative overhead.
Further, Actebis significantly reduced the cost of administration via simplified workload management. “Instead of sometimes needing six administrators to create and submit jobs, we now have only one administrator looking after things, enabling the rest of the team to deal with other important issues that arise during the day,” says Heinemann. Additional productivity was gained via centralized management, a single point of control for the management of all business processing.
“We dramatically simplified the way we manage our background workload. The system runs more efficiently with dependent jobs starting as soon as preceding ones have completed. We also have much greater control over how the workload is distributed. We are using the rule-based calendaring feature to deal with the recurring jobs. This feature has been extremely helpful in enabling Actebis to schedule jobs that need to run across multiple time zones and in countries running on different business calendars,” explains Heinemann. Heinemann adds, “Knowing what our expansion plans are, I feel safe in the knowledge that SAP Central Process Scheduling will be a part of our infrastructure and continue to help us be more effective in the management of our daily workload.” 100% Order Fulfillment with SAP Application The SAP Central Process Scheduling application has enabled Actebis to be more responsive in processing customer orders.
Heinemann summarizes, “Actebis operates in a highly competitive market with very demanding customers who expect prompt delivery on the orders they place. We like to try and achieve 100% order fulfillment for the following day, and SAP Central Process Scheduling is certainly playing a large part in helping us to achieve this.”
100% Order Fulfillment with SAP Application
The SAP Central Process Scheduling application has enabled Actebis to be more responsive in processing customer orders. Heinemann summarizes, “Actebis operates in a highly competitive market with very demanding customers who expect prompt delivery on the orders they place. We like to try and achieve 100% order fulfillment for the following day, and SAP Central Process Scheduling is certainly playing a large part in helping us to achieve this.”
“Knowing what our expansion plans are, I feel safe in the knowledge that SAP Central Process Scheduling will be a part of our infrastructure and continue to help us be more effective in the management of our daily workload.”
Jörg Heinemann, SAP Basis Administrator, Actebis Distribution (UK) Limited
