Enteg Implements SAP EP for Suzlon Energy Limited.
Introduction
IT is not just an enabler for a business to increase revenue but can also be an indirect tool to increase internal collaboration between employees. Suzlon Energy’s knowledge management portal, which went live on 27th March 2007 focuses on sharing information and making connections between its employees spread all over the world.
A global manufacturer of wind turbines having operations in over 11 countries and 236 locations, Suzlon registered a 108% increase in sales in the last financial year. Its rapid growth, coupled with its large spread of operations across countries and continents gave rise to the need to manage data as also the knowledge generated at different locations and customer situations. According to Dr. V.V.Rao,Group Head of IT, Suzlon Energy, the logic is really simple. “We have operations in various countries, and a problem solved in one country can help a power plant in another. A knowledge management portal exclusively for employees is a platform where people can interact with information and with each other."
Choice of SAP EP as the portal solution and Enteg’s role in influencing the choice
After identifying the need to set up a knowledge management portal, it was decided that it would be based on the requirements of the users. Dr. Rao emphasized, “This initiative was not just a corporate tick mark. We were clear that the people who would use the portal would participate right from the initial stages.”
The team went through 5 stages before the launch. 49 workshops were conducted and about 1800 requirements were registered. The next step was creating a Proof of Concept (POC) in order to demonstrate a real time version of the portal. As Enteg was SAP’s Net weaver partner of choice in the region, Suzlon turned to Enteg to demonstrate a Proof of
Concept to enable users to visualize how SAP EP would help in consolidating the vast amount of knowledge spread across different locations. In completing the POC, Enteg demonstrated the scalability and versatility of SAP EP to Suzlon and convinced users that this was the way in order to implement the entire set of requirements of the company. According to Mr.Rao, “We did look at some .NET based portal technologies but they didn’t match our criteria of functionality, bandwidth utilization, licensing and cost of ownership. SAP was chosen as a portal environment as it was easier to integrate with their existing system, ECC 6.0 and faster to implement.” Suzlon was also greatly impressed with the business understanding and technical skills exhibited by the Enteg team that did the POC and chose Enteg as its SAP EP implementation partner. Further, Enteg’s experience in implementing the KM solution for Titan was another significant factor that favored the choice of Enteg as Suzlon’s SAP EP implementation partner.
Implementation of SAP EP for Suzlon by Enteg
Suzlon used the AIX hardware platform, with Unix as the OS to implement SAP EP. SAP Net weaver and Oracle database systems were used for content management. Being an intranet-based system, networking platforms like FDMA and MPLS were used. In the solution that has been implemented, there is a team of knowledge managers who go through the information, edit it and send it to the technical team who then design and publish it in order to manage the knowledge that is generated. Authorization is needed to access different layers of information, making the right information visible to the right people based on their ranks and roles. Also, the shelf life of the information is longer as it remains on the portal as opposed to an e-mail, which can be accidentally deleted.
The implementation was completed in 5 months by a team of 5 members from Enteg,comprising of 1 Project Manager and 3 Web Dynpro Developers. Some of the solution components that were particularly appreciated by Suzlon included:
- Integration with Legacy IT applications
- SAP xPD Integration
- SAP BI Integration
- Usability of the SAP Portal
