BASF achieves massive SAP consolidation milestone

It’s a significant milestone for BASF IT Services, in what has been one of its largest IT projects – and probably among the biggest in the world. Some13,000 people are now working with the new system, dubbed Cobalt (Consolidated BASF Accounting, Logistic and Technic System), which administers a 5Tb data inventory. By consolidating the SAP systems, BASF says it’s reducing its annual IT operating costs by double-digit millions of euros. The company also says that its PACE (Process and Application Consolidation Enterprise) project also results in faster and more cost-efficient business processes, data comparable on a worldwide basis and the operational benefits of a uniform SAP standard. “The new platform constitutes one of the most modern IT landscapes in the world, ” says Andrew Pike, head of information services BASF Group. “The new IT structure can be flexibly adapted to organisational changes within the company. This will make it possible to master the business challenges of the upcoming years even more efficiently.” All that has been achieved by finally getting away from BASF’s former heterogeneous environment and the hitherto large number of internal and external interfaces – without causing problems for users during the project. Dr Ralf Sonnberger, managing director of BASF IT Services, says that was the biggest challenge. “The 13,000 users in Europe hardly noticed the migration activities, since [we] made sure that the system was always available in spite of all the work being done. “We orientated our support organisation to the new Cobalt application at an early stage, and our team was already providing active support for the project during the various test phases. As a result, we know the new processes very well and can guarantee a consistently high level of support quality in the future.”