Odyssey Automation

Post-Acquisition Data Migration to Parent ERP

Mergers & Acquisitions Case StudyThis case study we look at a mergers & acquisitions department with focus on a post-acquisition data (product, customer, vendor, financial, etc.) migration to parent ERP.

INDUSTRY: MANUFACTURING
INDUSTRY APPROPRIATE: ANY INDUSTRY WHERE COMPANY IS ACQUIRING OTHER COMPANIES OR ARE DOING A DATA MIGRATION DUE TO APPLICATION UPGRADE, ETC.
DEPARTMENT: MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS, IT

Challenge:

The manufacturing company was on the acquisition trail, buying and adding several companies a year. As part of the process, the company assembled a migration team. The team was using Excel to compare the information and scrub the data by going manually through every line item of information. This included product names, inventory, vendor information, customer information, financials, etc. When they found an exception, it then had to be routed to the proper person to respond. This would vary from Product Marketing to the acquired company. A typical migration took six to nine months to validate all of the information and then load to the SAP ERP system. To load into SAP, upwards to 30 scripts were run for each load. Post-live clean-up typically took six weeks to three months. The company was looking for a more efficient way of migrating a customer to their ERP platforms.

Solution:

The Pantheon team created several applications, based on the type of data, to migrate the information. The Odyssey rules engine was used to validate the data, with exceptions routed automatically to the correct people for clean-up. Odyssey also validated the information (e.g. vendor information, customer information, product names, etc.) against the current SAP information to avoid duplicates. All exceptions were then routed via Odysseys’ workflow engine to the appropriate person/group for cleansing. Odyssey would then put the data into a good from for acceptance by SAP directly with the Odyssey SAP task agents, avoiding using Wind Shuttle or similar products. Several actionable dashboards were created to track status and activity for various user groups.

Benefits:

  1. The migration process was cut down to three months with exception processing simplifying the focus area.
  2. Post Go-Live clean-up was virtually eliminated due to the automated fashion the data was cleansed and migrated.
  3. All participants more easily performed their required task as they were focus on the few issues versus reviewing everything.
  4. The manufacturing company is able to more quickly on-board acquired companies, meeting acquisition goals and making the team available to target future acquisitions more quickly.

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