During a global health crisis, logistics and warehousing companies like Belgium-based ODTH are tasked with keeping vital supplies moving. But being in demand was not enough for Bart Weymans, ODTH Innovation manager. Bart wanted innovation on-demand.
Bart had a special need for speed and wanted his custom-made business applications to be ready for the challenges ahead. So he led a team of eight towards the successful completion of an SAP S/4HANA migration. Read this blog post to learn how he did it, while saving five weeks of functional testing in the process. But first, let’s meet Bart.
Bart Weymans,
Project & Innovation manager, ODTH First Class Logistics.
A Vlerick Business School graduate, Bart has been with ODTH, a leading Belgian logistics and warehousing group, for over 20 years. Since taking office ten years ago as an SAP Project & Innovation Manager at ODTH Bart has had a chance to realize a number of pioneering innovation SAP projects. For Example, the implementation of IoT sensors in loading bays that enables status reporting. An SAP custom implementation, which is now becoming a common practice among logistics companies.
What Motivates Him?
Bart is driven by the ability to technologically realize ideas that enable his organization to achieve better results using fewer resources. In other words, he loves to find new ways to do more with less.
What Does A Typical Day Look Like?
Bart is normally tasked with Integrating new customers into ODTH warehousing management system (WMS), executing connectivity projects with customers, or with optimization projects that lead to leaner operations for ODTH customers.
Most recently, Bart’s team, comprising two implementation managers, five developers, a functional analyst (and multiple user acceptance testers) completed a record time SAP S/4HANA migration using Panaya.
Life Before Panaya
“I’m not old enough to remember life before Panaya,” Bart laughs in response to my question. “Seriously, though,” he adds, “We have been running SAP since 2003 and upgraded in 2013 from 4.7 to ECC6 with Panaya. That project was a big success and therefore I suggested looking into the use of Panaya for our S/4 conversion as well.”
Why SAP S/4HANA Now?
Bart believes that ODTH should be able to benefit from all that SAP has to offer.“ We are a technology leader – not a follower,” he explains. This means that sooner or later, ODTH had to move to S/4HANA. Bart thought, the sooner, the better. Most SAP application code at ODTH is customized. As the organization grows, Bart knows, the complexity of an S/4HANA move can only be expected to grow.
And How Did Panaya Help?
Being able to use Panaya made life a lot easier for Bart’s team working remotely during the COVID-19 outbreak. The team used conferencing apps to share progress dashboards. Everything was visual and the whole team did a great job. “We couldn’t have done it with excel.” Bart says.
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Thanks to Panaya, project planning was so accurate, we were able to assign tests even before corrections.
Life After Panaya
“Panaya test and requirement traceability enabled us to save about five weeks of functional testing on the S/4HANA migration. Thanks to Panaya, project planning was so accurate, we were able to assign tests even before corrections. We also scoped out low-priority testing based on our actual usage of different modules. Panaya is a smart tool that makes sure project managers remember to look at everything.”
SAP S/4HANA®: START HERE!
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