Kennametal: Gaining Transparency in IT and Business with SAP Enterprise Support

Transcription

1 2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Picture Credit Kennametal, Latrobe, PA/USA. Used with permission. Kennametal: Gaining Transparency in IT and Business with SAP Enterprise Support

2 and Services Kennametal Inc. Industry Industrial machinery and components machinery and equipment Products and Services Provides innovative wear-resistant products, application engineering, and services backed by advanced material science Web Site SAP s SAP Manager application management solution, SAP Enterprise Support offerings, SAP Enterprise Support Academy program, SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council innovation work stream for the SAP HANA platform Kennametal began with a vision: gain clear visibility into both IT and business processes. It then established an approach: standardize technical monitoring across its entire IT landscape, for both SAP and non-sap software systems. It joined SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, applying the offerings from the innovation work stream for the SAP HANA platform. The result: Kennametal is well on target to meet its monitoring and support needs as well as its business process performance goals. 2 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

3 Pioneering in wear-resistant metallurgical products From its headquarters in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Kennametal products and services influence manufacturing processes around the globe. Founded by Philip M. McKenna in 1938 with a metallurgical breakthrough in tungsten-titanium carbide steelcutting tools, the company hit its stride during World War II and never looked back. Kennametal thrives on continuing technological innovations in wear-resistant products. A global market leader in tooling for the mining and highway construction industries, the company serves the aerospace, earthworks, energy, transportation, general engineering, and machine tool industries as well. It currently employs some 14,000 people in more than 60 countries and earns approximately US$3 billion in annual revenues. 60+ Countries hosting Kennametal operations 3 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

4 Standardize technical monitoring across the IT landscape In 1996 Kennametal implemented the SAP ERP application and completely transformed its highly customized business. The company s IT team began designing a road map for the SAP Manager application management solution and adopting application lifecycle management tools, processes, and methodologies. The team s foremost challenge was to manage a technology transition that would transform IT from an implementation-based organization into a successful support organization. The third challenge was to innovate across the landscape at the pace that the business required by rolling out new tools as quickly as possible. All of these challenges required that Kennametal standardize technical monitoring capabilities across the complete solution landscape, including the SAP HANA platform and SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) solutions, along with other non-sap software systems. The team s second challenge was to understand the alternatives and options already available within the solution landscape and then decide which new tools would best support application lifecycle management. A driving force behind this effort was to lower the total cost of ownership of any tools being implemented. It would have been easy to spend a lot of time doing analyses to find the best tools available, but we also needed to be able to roll out tools and support at the rate the business wanted to grow. Justin Mallgrave, Manager, SAP Basis Administration, Kennametal Inc. 4 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

5 Better alignment of SAP tools with the business road map Ravikanth Gadicherla, IT business partner for enterprise reporting and analytics at Kennametal, points out that selecting SAP Enterprise Support offerings was about more than just leveraging the company s existing SAP technology landscape. It s really about bringing better business value to Kennametal employees and stakeholders for process standardization, process ownership, and ongoing innovation, says Gadicherla. Adds Justin Mallgrave, Kennametal s SAP Basis administration manager, We work with our SAP Enterprise Support advisor and her team to identify areas where SAP has value-added services that align with the Kennametal road map. After each regular review of major IT projects and activities within the company project plan, Kennametal works with the support team to proactively identify services that can maximize the value of planned activities. This includes ongoing services, quality checks, innovation ideas, and project innovation initiatives. One such initiative was to join SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council and participate in its innovation work stream for SAP HANA. SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council helps us better align our SAP tools to our road map and better frame the tools and talents of SAP to support our customers. Ravikanth Gadicherla, IT Business Partner, Enterprise Reporting and Analytics, Kennametal Inc. 5 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

6 Better wins for Kennametal IT customers By participating in SAP Enterprise Support Advisory Council, Kennametal acted as a co-innovator to help bring continuous improvements to, and extend, SAP Enterprise Support offerings. As part of a tailored service and support plan, the team from SAP Enterprise Support proposed expert-guided implementation services for SAP HANA, as well as continuous quality checks, best practices, and a system-monitoring enablement workshop for SAP HANA. The workshop helped Kennametal understand the functionality available within SAP Manager to support SAP HANA. Support tools such as SAP HANA studio and SAP Manager, including the database administration cockpit, were also reviewed. The workshop also included remote setup of technical monitoring, knowledge transfer and handover, and ongoing help and customer feedback for continuous business improvement. The enablement workshop was specifically chosen to enable us to better leverage SAP HANA and improve our success in rolling out functionality to our customers, says Mallgrave. Kennametal was subsequently selected as the first North American customer to host meet-the-expert customer panel sessions through the SAP Enterprise Support Academy program. The sessions would focus on support-related topics, including diagnostics and system monitoring for SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions and SAP HANA. 6 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

7 Visibility of KPIs across the enterprise The absence of organizational visibility has been a pain point for years and years, says Mallgrave. The company is now on track to acquire visibility into key performance indicators (KPIs) from across the enterprise and to start measuring those KPIs based on targets that have been set at the C level. Use of the SAP Business Process Performance Optimization service a continuous quality check is also playing a role in Kennametal s ongoing progress. Says Gadicherla, The optimization service from SAP Enterprise Support helped reduce the runtimes of three critical sales and marketing queries executed by SAP HANA by nearly 40%. In addition, the best-practice documents provided by the team from SAP Enterprise Support have helped set the stage for future modeling of SAP HANA database queries. Using these support offerings, Kennametal has also benefited from an early focus on real-time information, trending information based on needs, and tailored information sharing to help its internal IT team avoid wasting time. Kennametal has successfully set up a prototype-monitoring environment, constituting the first step of the Run SAP Like a Factory methodology. And using tools for business process performance optimization, the company can successfully meet the business needs of its end users. In short, the goal of standardizing as well as centralizing the technical monitoring of all systems has been accomplished. ~40% Reduction in three critical report response times 7 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

8 Kennametal CMP28315 (14/01) 2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. Rolling out future enhancements Kennametal continues to roll out business process KPIs and dashboards for automated business process monitoring. We re also targeting some enhanced archiving and data volume management activities to get better insight into our data volume management challenges and response time metrics around key business processes, says Mallgrave. And then we ll improve and clean up some of our change management processes. The company also continues to use many SAP Enterprise Support services, including innovation enablement sessions for its SAP Product Lifecycle Management application. And, by conducting meetthe-expert sessions through SAP Enterprise Support Academy, the company is sharing its knowledge with other customers of SAP Enterprise Support. Ongoing activities in analytics and reporting are being planned for the next fiscal year, concludes Mallgrave. 8 / 8 Picture Credit Kennametal, Latrobe, PA/USA. Used with permission.

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