Agrosuper deploys SolMan 7.2 to optimize the IT division’s processes

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The project, carried out by Novis in 2018, has enabled Agrosuper to empower the development teams and increase their productivity by using Solman 7.2 tools.

Agrosuper is the leading animal protein producer in Chile. It has a worldwide share in both production and meat packing, as well as in distribution and sales of chicken, pork, turkey, salmon and processed foods. Well-known brands such as Súper Cerdo, Súper Pollo, Sopraval, La Crianza o Súper Salmón are part of the company.

Given its presence in the Americas, Asia and Europe, along with a necessary 24×7 service uptime throughout the year, Agrosuper requires a system that allows online operation and preserves product traceability. For this, it has been using SAP solutions since 2008 as its main management tool.

Better turnaround times

SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) version 7.1 was used to manage internal IT services until mid-2018, especially to oversee test plans and manage users. However, the steady increase in transport requests originating from several development teams – carried out and managed by the Change Management team – caused the latter to seek a new solution that could automate and optimize these processes.

Jesús Cordero, Change Management team analyst for Agrosuper’s Quality Assistant Manager and implementation leader, recalls that: “in 2017 we reached a monthly level of 400 requests for transfers to QA, consuming almost all of our time since we are a small team. We searched for alternatives, evaluating several options and, after visiting the clients of different providers, we selected Novis – who has been working with Agrosuper since 2009 – to install and leave SolMan 7.2 in operation.
Novis’ team reviewed our requirements and proposed implementing SolMan 7.2 from scratch instead of upgrading version 7.1, allowing us to continue to use SolMan 7.1 in parallel for as long as necessary”, she complements.

The results were immediately clear: “First, we installed ‘Urgent Changes’ for SAP ECC, thanks to which our time allocation was cut from 19 minutes to zero, since this operation was reassigned to the development teams, who now process transfers to QA. The tool’s autonomy and self-management capabilities facilitates test runs and allows for quick error corrections. The next step in the project was to upload the satellite systems: Business Warehouse (BW), Netweaver Gateway ‘Mobile Sales’ (GW), Netweaver Gateway ‘Fiori’ (NG) and Process Integration (PI), along with other process dataflows from ‘Non-SAP Systems’, which allowed us to reduce the transport times to production from 39 to 29 minutes on average”.

Future benefits

“In December 2018, all the updates to production received by the team were done with ChaRM, in SolMan 7.2”. Jesús Cordero underscores that it was an excellent experience: “we now have a much more agile service and are empowering the development teams. Benefits are already being seen. However, I believe the first six months will be about adaptation, since we have only begun this year with the new change flows normal for projects with corporate visibility, and this will require learning a new internal coordination. I am sure that we will see even better results when this period is over.”

The tool

As reported in previous articles:

Originally SolMan was designed as a tool for incident and problem management, with the purpose of providing support to SAP customers. SAP SolMan 7.2 is a service delivery platform that fully manages the entire lifecycle of the systems landscape.
Version 7.1 is centered in handling SAP systems and IT services management, while version 7.2 integrates business processes with IT processes and helps to speed up SAP implementations. Above all, it is a natural companion for standard S/4 HANA deployments, as it maintains the previous version’s functionalities, such as IT Service Management (ITSM) and ChaRM, which remain almost the same except for small functional changes. However, new functionalities have been added in other areas, for example, in Process Management and Project Management. Moreover, SolMan 7.2 incorporates the latest technology: SAP HANA. It also features significant improvements in user experience with the available Fiori Apps.

We invite all SAP customers in the Americas to discuss their projects.
Please use the contact form on our site.

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Jesús Cordero, Change Management team analyst

Agrosuper’s Quality Assistant Manager team