9,000 Rexam users live on SAP and Hewlett-Packard

Consumer packaging giant Rexam, the largest beverage can manufacturer in Europe, with customers including Coca-Cola, Heineken, L’Oréal, Bacardi and Nestlé, is rolling-out mySAP Business Suite on Hewlett-Packard systems to more than 100 of its sites world-wide. The system will eventually integrate all of £3.4bn Rexam’s global business processes across its five key packaging divisions for 9,000 users in 20 countries, with particular focus on Rexam’s supply chain and customer collaboration. Rexam is among the first to base its entire information management structure on SAP’s open integration platform NetWeaver, with the goal of creating a single standardised system, greatly reducing custom integration, and thus encouraging uptake. It’s also fast becoming a reference point for Hewlett-Packard’s ‘adaptive enterprise’ initiative, with a new data centre at Rexam group HQ in Stevenage and disaster recovery at the Luton Beverage Cans HQ, both equipped with scaleable, high resilience HP servers and SAN (storage area network) technology. The news follows what has been an unmitigated success in the US for Rexam, and the aim is to replicate that world-wide. Paul Martin, formerly CIO of Rexam Americas, has been moved to Rexam group CIO and based in the UK, for the task. “The success in the Americas will be replicated world-wide,” he says, indicating that it’s well underway, with the Glass division and Cans Europe and Asia both completing with their roll-outs now, the Beauty division initiative launched and due to start roll-out this year, and Plastics just starting. Bo-Inge Stensson, Rexam’s group supply chain director, says: “We run global operations and need to produce world class quality products. At the same time we need to ensure a responsive and agile supply chain with as few assets as possible, while delivering excellent value and service to customers locally, regionally and globally. “SAP is enabling us to be more efficient in collaborating with customers, suppliers and partners. It will help us to run our operations leaner, using an infrastructure and software that rapidly integrate, share and streamline our business processes.” It’s all about information flow and visibility, and deep supplier and customer collaboration executed locally but also world-wide, using web technologies at the heart. Martin says that for him there are two “extremely special” elements. “We’re going to use mySAP Business Suite to streamline our customer, supplier and manufacturing environments and to deliver exceptional value to our customers. The goal is to reduce the cost to the business and our supply chain, not only with our suppliers and our suppliers’ suppliers, but our customers and their customers.” And he explains: “It’s very important to integrate and collaborate with customers and suppliers so that you become responsive both ways… Competition is no longer about company versus company; it’s supply chain versus supply chain. You need a rock solid information management system so you can all be efficient and responsive.” The firm started on mySAP in the US two years ago, with the goal of bringing all business processes internally and with customers and suppliers into the electronic age. Says Martin: “In the past customers and suppliers would use Excel spreadsheets, emails, phone calls and faxes to communicate with us. Now, all but a handful use our customer and supplier portals. “For example, of the 23bn cans we produce in the US every year, 19bn are now ordered through our online portal.” And he indicates that account management, invoicing and the rest are also online, with around 85% of transactions now managed electronically. Quite apart from the clear efficiencies resulting, a knock-on effect for Rexam in the US was a transformation from 67% order-to-cash position to 99.7%. “That alone represented millions of dollars of savings... We’ve significantly reduced the capital tied up in our supply chain… Less than a day in the time it takes to get from order to cash because we have a very good information management system.” And he adds: “It also means it’s very easier to do business with us... We’re inter-twined in our customers’ business processes. So they would have to think twice about changing their supplier, because no-one else will be providing this level of service.” Then on the suppliers side, Martin says the portal is personalised according to information access requirements, display type and the rest. “They have access to our production schedules, inventory positions and so on, and we’re moving them towards VMI, with the suppliers managing their own inventory… “We just want the right products delivered to the right place at the right time.”