Piaggio: Business Innovation and Technical Monitoring with SAP Enterprise Support

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1 2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Picture Credit Piaggio & C. SpA, Pontedera, Italy. Used with permission. Piaggio: Business Innovation and Technical Monitoring with SAP Enterprise Support

2 Company Piaggio & C. SpA Headquarters Pontedera, Italy Industry, products, and services Automotive scooters, motorcycles, and light commercial vehicles Revenue 1.41 billion (2012) Engineering excellence and a global presence To help manage its far-flung operations with efficiency while maintaining the quality that has become synonymous with its name, Piaggio & C. SpA runs SAP software throughout its extended enterprise. For more than 17 years, SAP has been working with Piaggio to help the company maximize its potential and serve its customers better. Web site SAP solutions and services SAP Enterprise Support offerings, SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council The wind in your hair, the sun on your face, and before you stretches a pleasant afternoon roaming the back streets of Florence on your Vespa. If you ve spent time in Italy, you re likely to have spent a day similar to this. Because the Vespa scooter, and many other models made by Piaggio, is ubiquitous throughout the country making it possible for you to get where you need to go with ease and comfort. Made to serve a population recovering from the Second World War, the Vespa introduced an affordable mode of transportation that was suitable for almost all riders. Its iconic design, with a pressed steel body that encloses the engine to protect the rider from dirt and grease and a flat floorboard for comfortable foot placement, proved wildly popular. This classic combination of need, engineering excellence, and innovation has helped Piaggio grow into a global player. Now a leading manufacturer of two- and three-wheeled scooters and motorcycles as well as light commercial vehicles, the organization operates in more than 50 countries and manages seven different brands. Read more 2 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

3 Greater insight for IT and the business Starting out with a single implementation of the SAP ERP application, Piaggio has seen its SAP software landscape grow substantially in recent years. Merger and acquisition activity, such as the purchase of Moto Guzzi in 2004, have helped fuel this growth. Global expansion and new lines of business have added to the mix as well. For example, Piaggio now maintains a considerable presence in Vietnam. It is also the leading producer of three-wheeled vehicles in the growing Indian market, where it maintains multiple facilities. As the company s SAP software landscape has grown, tracking system health has become more demanding. Downed servers could be detected, but there was a lack of insight regarding the applications and business processes impacted. At Piaggio, Pietro Andria, vice president of supply chain systems, manages the company s SAP software systems. To support the business more effectively, Andria wanted global system-monitoring capabilities with fast root cause analysis and key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide insight into the health of critical business processes. Basically, we wanted more control over our environment, says Andria. As we ve grown as a company, the role of IT has become increasingly important. To deliver value to the business, our IT group needed the ability to identify issues and address them in a timely manner before the business felt the impact. To improve on this score, Piaggio decided to participate in the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, offered through the SAP Active Global Support (SAP AGS) organization. 3 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

4 Support, advice, and expertise Piaggio maintains an on-site Customer Center of Expertise (Customer COE) location for SAP solutions, where the focus is on driving innovation to realize as much value as possible from its SAP software. Through the Customer COE, the company regularly works with SAP AGS, using services offered as part of its SAP Enterprise Support agreement. When the opportunity arose to participate in the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, says Andria, we knew we would be in good hands. The advisory council brings together customers and SAP software experts to codevelop new SAP services that help customers innovate. Collaborating through specific focus areas, or work streams, companies get individualized attention while SAP gets the feedback it needs to fine-tune its service offerings for general availability at a later date. Motivated to improve landscape monitoring, Piaggio joined a work stream that has helped the company benefit from the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service. Alerts from this service give companies detailed information about what is happening in their environment so that they can proactively identify potential issues before business operations are impacted. Activities for this work stream focused on integrating timely alerts into an in-box hosted on the SAP Manager application management solution, customizing the alerts to fit landscape requirements, and building KPIs to track business processes. Working with SAP Active Global Support is a consistently positive experience. And it always makes good business sense. Pietro Andria, Vice President of Supply Chain Systems, Piaggio & C. SpA 4 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

5 Better monitoring, smoother business operation The engagement kicked off with a questionnaire to help gather requirements and information about Piaggio s IT environment. Next came an expert-guided implementation service in which a specialist from SAP AGS helped Piaggio customize the alert in-box on SAP Manager. A similar process was followed for setting up KPIs for better business process analysis. These KPIs focus largely on backlogged documents associated with sales orders, warehouse movements, accounting, and other critical aspects of business operations. Throughout, the Piaggio team provided feedback on the quality of services delivered as well as suggestions for improvements. Since then, SAP has incorporated this feedback along with input from other customers participating in the same work stream. Based on this, SAP has made new services that focus on integrating and monitoring alerts and enabling business process analysis generally available to all SAP customers. As for Piaggio, the company now has in place a robust monitoring environment that allows the IT group to identify issues in its environment, drill down to pinpoint the root cause, and act quickly to remediate issues before business processes are interrupted. It makes us more effective as an IT organization, says Andria. And by showing the business exactly the actions we take to ensure smoother operations, we re able to demonstrate our value and build trust. With SAP Enterprise Support offerings at our disposal, we re able to get where we need to go faster. Pietro Andria, Vice President of Supply Chain Systems, Piaggio & C. SpA 5 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

6 Fast innovation with more to come Piaggio s work with the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council lasted less than two months, with group meetings occurring about once a week. Andria, who assigned two people to participate in the work stream, received regular progress reports. It couldn t have been easier, he says. One of the best things about the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council is its simplicity. Another advantage is the speed of innovation. Andria believes his group could have achieved the same results on its own, but the road would have been longer and bumpier. For the tremendous value we received, he says, we saved a lot of time, money, and energy. This innovation has had clear business benefits. As Piaggio has expanded, one of its challenges has been a lack of global business process compliance. Rolling out SAP software to all global business units has helped alleviate this issue, but problems can still occur. The difference today is that Piaggio can see what s happening earlier and take action. Based on this success, Piaggio has further plans to innovate with SAP Enterprise Support. Andria and his group may use the customer code management service to help minimize code modifications and maximize its usage of standardized SAP software functionality. This will help simplify its environment so that Piaggio can take advantage of new innovations coming out of SAP such as in-memory computing with the SAP HANA platform. When it comes to driving innovation at Piaggio, it s difficult to overestimate the value of SAP Enterprise Support and the SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council. Pietro Andria, Vice President of Supply Chain Systems, Piaggio & C. SpA Studio SAP 29958enUS (14/06) 2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 6 / 6

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