When the outdoor pool season starts in spring, the sales and distribution and production departments at SPECK Pumpen Verkaufsgesellschaft GmbH are very busy. The manufacturer of swimming pool, domestic and industrial technology for major enterprises, municipal facilities, hotel industry and home owners is known for its high-quality swimming pool pumps, which are in demand throughout Europe.
The expansion of business activities goes along with the wish to map them within IT. The previous ERP solution of a local provider was no longer able to meet the requirements, i.e. multilingual forms and user interfaces as well as further features such as the regular automatic import of legal reforms. This is why SPECK opted for the changeover to SAP and commissioned FIS to carry out the project.
The go-live of the MM, PP, SD SAP modules as well as further modules for Warehouse Management and Customer Service was in spring 2017 exactly when Speck was confronted with an unprecedented rush of orders. SPECK was well prepared and planned enough material; serious delivery bottlenecks could be avoided due to overtime hours and Saturday work. In this tense situation, the FIS project team had to ensure that the ERP implementation affected live operation as little as possible.
A particular challenge was the connection of the SAP ERP system to diverse third-party systems, such as an express delivery service provider (for Tracking&Tracing processes), a quality management solution as well as software solutions for label print and shipping control with RFID chips being imported on a pallet. “We even had to manually connect an existing archive system without certified ArchiveLink interface to SAP”, reports FIS project manager Werner Gößmann.
Since the implementation, 150 users have been working with the solution that runs on an SAP HANA database. The servers are located at SPECK; the solution is maintained and hosted by FIS-ASP. “Our employees rapidly acquired the necessary knowledge and familiarized with the new program – also beyond standard working hours”, explains Armin Herger, managing director at SPECK Pumpen Verkaufsgesellschaft GmbH. “We are well equipped for the future concerning EDP and opted for a very good solution for the next decades”.
