Bachem Case Study
Find out how Bachem moved their manual processes online
Bachem integrated SAP & Salesforce and was able to move their manual processes online creating a better experience for their employees and customers.
Results:
- Increased sales reps’ efficiency and effectiveness by using Salesforce as their single system
- All quote documents are created out of Salesforce without having to touch SAP
- Ensured consistency of data between SAP and Salesforce
- Abolished redundant data entry
The Challenge
Bachem is a supplier of essential products and services to the global pharmaceutical industry, based in Bubendorf, Switzerland. Before enosix, their quote-to-order process was due for a productivity upgrade.
They were running Salesforce and SAP, and the customer record had to be replicated in both systems so that when the quote was built in SAP and used to create an opportunity in Salesforce, the two records would be synchronized – or as synchronized as possible across two disparate and disconnected systems. They had to create the customer in Salesforce, create the customer in SAP, go back to Salesforce and create the opportunity, print, sign and scan the quote, then send to the customer.
“Having two separate systems created data inconsistency, added redundant manual tasks and reduced the possibilities for automation.”
– Fabian Huber–Group Leader, Order & Process Management at Bachem
Tackling a Complex SAP Integration
The company embarked on a major project to upgrade their ERP instance by deploying a new SAP landscape based on a combination of ECC and S/4HANA. As part of that process, Bachem decided to fix the problems in its quoting process. An important requirement was that Salesforce, a popular choice among the company’s sales staff, become the sales staff-facing application instead of moving to a fully SAP-based quoting solution.
That mandate came with an important requirement, Huber explained. “We wanted Salesforce to be the screen and the background to be 100 percent SAP,” said Huber. “We didn’t want to rebuild the complexity of SAP in Salesforce.”
The resulting enosix-based integration project was an unequivocal success. “Without argument it’s been a massive improvement,” said Huber.
Future-Proofing the SAP Upgrade
The ability of enosix to support an eventual migration path from ECC to S4/HANA was also an important factor in Bachem’s decision to use enosix. ECC will be eventually desupported by SAP, which in turn will require virtually every SAP customer to migrate to the new system. Knowing that enosix was S/4HANA-ready allowed them check the box next to “easy upgrade path” for their integration.
Because the enosix platform supports both SAP ERP systems, virtually no incremental work will be required to move the Salesforce integration to S/4HANA when the time comes.
Rapid Deployment and Time to Value
“Knowing that we were going to move to S/4HANA in the future was factored in as an advantage” in choosing enosix
– Fabian Huber
The use of enosix had several impacts on time to value at Bachem. In addition to a long-term cost savings, the use of enosix made it possible to forego having to lean heavily on the company’s internal SAP competence center.
Not only was the overall cost of deploying enosix extremely favorable relative to custom interface deployment, subsequent integration projects involving SAP and Salesforce promise to have a similar cost profile.
Bachem was able to get the enosix Surface product up and running in only 2 days. The deeper integration of SAP pricing with custom fields and processes took about 3 months of total time, spread out over their project.
Now the sales team is able to sell with a connected Salesforce & SAP system which allows their employees to have an easier time doing their jobs. The real-time integration empowers their business to move at the speed of their customers so they can deliver a better customer experience overall.
“When we have future development needs, we can access SAP data quickly in Salesforce and go after those projects much more quickly”
– Fabian Huber
