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Pharmaceutical

How Scout Assisted Bayer
Navigate a Complex SAP
S/4HANA Migration

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The Customer

Bayer, a leading pharmaceutical company with over 110,000 global employees and an annual revenue of approximately $40 billion faced a significant challenge: migrating their complex SAP ECC systems to SAP S/4HANA as part of their CORE transformation program. This multi-year initiative aimed to streamline business processes across their global operations in the EMEA region.

Industry

Pharmaceutical

Location

EMEA

110,000+

Employees

~$40B

Annual Revenue

110,000+

Employees

~$40B

Annual Revenue

The Challenge

Massive Scale
and Complexity

The multi-year S/4HANA migration required careful coordination and detailed planning across a vast array of processes and applications.

Risk of Errors

There was a substantial risk of errors during the fit-to-template analysis, which could lead to critical process failures.

Undocumented Process Variations

Variations in the as-is processes across core and satellite applications were undocumented, further complicating the migration effort.
Scout’s expertise was crucial in overcoming these challenges, ensuring a smooth and efficient migration while significantly reducing manual effort for Bayer’s Customer Interaction (CI) team.

Enter

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Within 4 weeks of deployment, Scout mapped 3600 hours’ worth effort across 18 users in Bayer’s Customer Interaction, Supply Chain and Master Data Management teams. Scout also began identifying redundant effort, validating benefits from Bayer’s CORE implementation.

Within just

4 weeks

of deployment Scout mapped 3600 hours’ worth effort

The Pre-Migration Deployment of Scout

To address these challenges, Scout was deployed to aid discovery analysis and facilitate a smooth transition. The deployment focused on:

Business and Leadership Teams

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Gaining comprehensive visibility into all processes and understanding how work is executed.

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Identifying short-term improvements to processes ahead of the S/4HANA migration.

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Mapping interactions between SAP and other applications to ensure seamless integration.

CORE Team

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Providing detailed insights into how SAP is utilized within processes.

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Offering data on usage at a module/T-code level to help test the viability of the future-state process.

The Pilot

Scout was initially deployed in Bayer’s supply chain teams in Spain, Portugal, and potentially Switzerland, which were pilot countries for the CORE implementation. The goal was to drive data-driven decisions to ensure the migration’s success and foster wider continuous improvement efforts.

Scout’s AI to “find and fix”

Step 1: Find

Scout provided detailed insights into current processes by scouting 43 and identifying 73 variations, potentially discovering 19 non-core applications.

Scout also identified and highlighted areas where manual checks were being performed, pinpointing specific processes that could be automated.

With AI layered on interaction data, Scout offered comprehensive and consumable visibility across core and satellite applications.

Harvard Business Review

Do You Know How Your Teams Get Work Done?

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Step 2: Fix

By implementing the insights provided by Scout Bayer was able to:
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Eliminate manual checks, saving the CI team 430 hours of effort

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De-risk the CORE pilot with a significantly lower cost to program.

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Significantly minimize integration efforts.

It is important to note that in all of these recommendations, privacy was of the utmost importance – and no employee data was shared. Empathy was at the core of all recommendations and the focus was on addressing and improving the core issues i.e.

  • Getting teams to work together across functions
  • Fixing disconnected systems
  • Simplifying and optimizing work processes
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Business outcomes

In summary, Scout was able to drive the following business outcomes

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Eliminated manual checks to save 430 hours of effort

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Help de-risk the CORE implementation pilot

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Lowered cost to program

AI connects interaction data to business outcomes

Scout lights up the ‘dark side of the moon’.

Your business generates billions of data points from team-machine interactions. Scout, our AI model, deciphers this interaction data to reveal what often remains unseen—the hidden challenges your teams face at work and how they affect business outcomes, whether it's cost optimization, revenue growth, customer or employee experience, or business continuity.

The AI then provides data-based recommendations to address these challenges, paving the way for improved outcomes.
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Forbes

The 'Dark Side Of The Moon' In Enterprises

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