Client

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Jason Finishing Group is a global brush manufacturer with production facilities in 12 countries and customers in over 100. Their brushes are used for hundreds of applications in the manufacturing finishing process to improve repeatability and cycle times. In 2009 Jason Finishing Group implemented SAP with the assistance of a Big 4 integrator. The same integrator provided post go-live support utilizing an off-shore support model in addition to Jason Finishing Group’s own internal support team consisting exclusively of Super Users.

Challenge

Jason Finishing Group faced a number of challenges associated with their SAP support model. Internal bandwidth was extremely limited due to the small number of internal Super Users. The internal team also lacked the practical SAP knowledge and experience required to support such a complex SAP implementation without risking day-to-day business operations.

Jason Finishing Group also faced increasing issues with their SAP Support Provider’s off-shore model. SAP support was adversely affected as issues with time zones, communication barriers and business process knowledge for this mid-sized manufacturer became increasingly frustrating and time consuming.

Additionally, Jason Finishing Group identified gaps in their SAP system (specifically in their financial reporting capabilities in COPA and BI) that needed to be addressed quickly.

Solution

BayForce was initially selected to fill the gaps identified in Jason Finishing Group’s SAP system due to the fact that our Platinum-level Consultants are experienced with multiple years of practical SAP knowledge, possess exceptional communication skills (both written and verbal), possess business process knowledge and were able to understand Jason Finishing Group’s unique needs.

BayForce was able to provide Jason Finishing Group with Platinum-level remote support at a significant cost savings that was flexible and based on their teams availability as to not disturb their normal working process. In phase 1 of this project, BayForce was able to deliver this functionality before their fiscal year end and prepare the road map for their global reporting template.

Jason Finishing Group’s Executive Team was so pleased with BayForce’s ability to complete this project on-time and on-budget with minimal disturbance to day-to-day business operations that we were asked to become Jason Finishing Group’s exclusive SAP service provider.

BayForce has gone on to provide Jason Finishing Group with our SAP Managed Services Solution (BayForce Remote 360) which encompasses a complete family of support solutions that are completely customized to their unique environment offering Jason Finishing Group true three hundred and sixty degree support, covering their Basis/Netweaver, Functional, and ABAP support needs.  Jason Finishing Group is now able to leverage BayForce’s “Always On” Emergency Production Support, Dedicated Remote Support Teams, and our U.S.-based Platinum-Level Consultants.

BayForce immediately set up an SAP Early Watch Session and provided Jason Finishing Group with an executive summary of recommendations detailing improvements that could be made to greatly improve the efficiency of their ECC and BI environments.

BayForce has gone on to make a number of significant, proactive, changes and upgrades to Jason Finishing Group’s SAP environment such as a reimplementation and upgrade of Solution Manager, Support Pack implementations, and a QA environment refresh.

Why BayForce?

BayForce, a Certified SAP Services Partner, has focused exclusively on providing SAP services since 1996. Our service offerings encompass the entire SAP suite and include (but are not limited to) full lifecycle SAP Project Services, SAP Managed Support Services, and Staff Augmentation.

BayForce was not selected based solely on our ability to deliver Platinum-level consultants that deliver consistent results, posses years of practical experience, and possess exceptional communication skills.  We were also selected because we take a holistic approach to meeting our clients’ unique business requirements, including developing alternatives to business issues not identified during the initial selection process. BayForce’s ability to provide a combination of remote and onsite support, and our commitment to ensuring that internal teams are acclimated with changes to the technical environment through knowledge transfer, also weighed heavily in the decision to select us as an SAP service provider.

Another determining factor in BayForce’s selection by Jason Finishing Group was our flexible SAP Managed Services Solution (also known as BayForce Remote 360).

BayForce’s SAP Managed Services offer a robust portfolio of completely customizable services that cover all of our client’s Technical and Functional support needs. Clients are able to take advantage of our U.S.-based, Platinum-level resources while ensuring their SAP environment is monitored and maintained 24/7. BayForce’s Managed Services are available at varying levels of commitment and can be customized to fit any budget without sacrificing service integrity.

Our Managed Services ensure “Steady State Operations” by offering a wide range of services such as 24/7 emergency support, system monitoring, proactive troubleshooting and error resolution, transport management, performance tuning, support stack applications, and landscape refreshes among others.

BayForce’s dedicated remote support team model provides a depth and breadth of experience and knowledge unattainable with individual consulting models, while providing our clients the continuity of resources to ensure your support is being provided by resources intimately familiar with our client’s individual SAP environments, policies, procedures, and internal support teams.

Benefit

BayForce’s approach to meeting the business needs of Jason Finishing Group quickly established BayForce as a partner upon whom Jason Finishing Group can depend. The routine process improvement efforts allow Jason Finishing Group to recognize continued operational excellence not just internally, but throughout the entire SAP landscape.

Contact Us

If you are interested in learning more about our SAP Managed Services or another of our other SAP Services (such as Staff Augmentation) please contact us using the information below:

Contact: Kim Snow, Vice President

Email: ksnow@bayforce.com

Phone: 813-908-8593

As part of this initiative, BayForce was tasked with creating Profit and Loss statements via New General Ledger, Profit Center Accounting and Profitability Analysis. The deliverables covered a 12 week timeline to install PCA within a New GL implementation, as well as align CO-PA characteristics and value fields to provided Business Intelligence and OutlookSoft information structures. Document Splitting and Profit Center Accounting integration played a central role in the project that also included multiple Make-to-Order, Make-to-Stock and Assemble-to-Order business scenarios were revisited and some were redesigned to apply a SAP Best Practices approach and to ensure an efficient business process.

The existing pre-configured system install leveraged the quick setup approach. This approach successfully provided access to SAP business processes, but lacked the report design needed to manage the details on the Profit & Loss. Changes in the control measures were necessary to allow an ease of use which presented a challenge in report structures and necessitated a change to a more controlled environments. Several major business practices were adapted to ensure compliance with the corporate directed reporting logic.

The result is that JFG now has a system which provides a consistent Profit & Loss from the Financial Statement Version, through a PCA Profit & Loss by Profit Center and an organized CO-PA set of value fields. This alignment will allow the population of the OutlookSoft consolidation system.

Due to the previous lack of documentation, heavy emphasis was placed on documenting each phase of this initiative. During user and customer acceptance testing, a step by step testing model was developed for each effected business process which has allowed the users access to a training model for future employee re-training and new hire education.

The successful delivery of this project has led to an additional phase in which JFG will integrate the SAP Planning modules. This phase of the project is currently underway.