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Holding NSAgro evaluates its first year with SAP HANA on AWS

Last updated : October 18, 2018
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Holding NSAgro evaluates its first year with SAP HANA on AWS

The NSAgro holding groups four companies for the distribution and sales of agricultural supplies from the world’s leading providers. Through its subsidiaries, Martínez & Valdivieso, ECSA Agrícola, C.R.O. maq and Cytoperu, they deliver services in Chile and Peru, via a network with 25 branches and a staff of 350 people.

Their offering of phytosanitary solutions, fertilizers, seeds, services and financing, is characterized by supporting farmers with highly trained technicians, who collaborate extensively with the productive labor of their customers.

The Systems division delivers services to all subsidiaries, in both countries, operating the IT platform to support the provision of comprehensive solutions for the agricultural world.

A story with good results

Felipe Ovalle, Operations Manager at NSAgro, who oversees IT services for the entire holding, says: “We understand the IT area as a permanent investment. We are capable of perceiving the acceleration in upcoming changes, so that both our technologies and processes are under continuous revision to support satisfactorily our customers’ needs, both internal and external.”

He claims the company wishes to continue working on its differentiation due to a good service, for which it is key to improve processes and achieve a harmonic synchronization in the supplier–transport–warehouse–point of sale–customer–vendor chain. Hence, information must flow efficiently across this chain, and this is achieved by the processes and support offered by technology.

“We have a SAP architecture and have defined we want to continue working with this platform. Our business relationship with Novis began in 2013, when we converted our old ERP to SAP R3. Given the previous good experience, in 2017 we decided to update our SAP version, migrating from SAP EHP4 to EPH8, based on SAP HANA.

We chose Novis because our relationship has always worked smoothly. We have had no problems and feel thoroughly supported because they are a partner knowledgeable in SAP, and it shows,” he argues.

He recalls that Novis was of great help in the migration project, which included all the proof of concept tests, business scenarios, the cutover and the migration itself. “It was a successful project for us, without any major problems, that lasted between three and four months. It was almost transparent to the organization. We developed it at the key user level and focused mainly in the IT area,” he adds.

In parallel, Novis planned the activities for the migration of the MAX DB database to SAP HANA on AWS. “To date we are very satisfied. I believe it was a wise decision; in fact, it didn’t even cross our minds that we had to do it with our own hardware solutions.”

As a result of this conversion, the company also chose to install the SAP Fiori interface. “This was a huge cultural change, which allowed to equip the sales team, about 100 people, with tablets. They can now visit each customer with their complete data sheet, as well as their order history, so they can verify the status their credit line, pricing history, etc. In the end, this clearly translates to pure efficiency and productivity.

We had an old reporting management model which ran on an Intranet’s webpage, and the information was frequently out-of-date. With SAP Fiori it is now on-line with the system. The main client for this project was the sales force, so the credibility of the information was considerably greater. All of this translates into full productivity: we started to sort out the business processes, follow-up meetings were scheduled, we set up our own CRM in this SCP solution, the forecasting, tracking, and online reporting methodologies improved, we have dashboards and control panels, in short, today the information that our vendors can access is much richer”.

As for the database, the benefits were also immediately perceived. It was evident that SAP HANA was radically different; we now have a considerably better performance. Online information is available for management and the board of directors, both for Peru and Chile, allowing for timely decisions. In short, we no longer have to wait for the monthly financial closing, everything is in real-time, not only in the corporation, but also in its subsidiaries, so we can take corrective measures whenever necessary”.

At Novis we are in charge of NSAgro’s SAP operation and support on AWS, via the SAP AMS service. We work to ensure their operational continuity and to be the technological ally they need for their business’s digital transformation process.

If you would like to know more about our services or talk about how we can help you enhance SAP for your business or undertake technological innovation projects, please get in touch with us using the contact form.