Business Need
Being a global manufacturer of highly complex products that include thousands of components, the client had no centralized system in place to collaborate with its suppliers. They relied on using a silo approach where each communication method was independent of one another. Fax, email and phone communications, each separately, were used to assure crucial workflow information such as forecast and purchase order commitments were relayed back and forth. Client identified the need for Supplier Collaboration Portal that can alter the turn-around time for these priority items.
Solution
The client was searching for an alternative to SAP Enterprise Portal while achieving the capabilities of SAP Netweaver PI. CIGNEX suggested the adoption of a Liferay, an Open Source portal solution. The technical architecture recommended by CIGNEX included the integration of Liferay with client's SAP ECC portal. The integration was planned to be carried out via SAP Process Integration component. Key features of the Collaboration portal include:
- Client/Supplier collaboration via message boards, upload and download of documents and contact information all enabled at the supplier level via permissions
- Registration with approval for new supplier users
- Email capabilities for suppliers to request information or purchase order
- Special alerts on forecast or purchase order lines where immediate action may be required
- Excel download capabilities for both forecast and purchase order information
- SSO enabled for client LDAP users
Key Benefits
- Portal that enables supplier to forecast and procure purchase order along with seamless features to communicate important and critical information
- Scalable solution in various SAP functions including ESS, CRM, MSS and more
- Estimated potential savings of over US $1,500,000 in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) for three year period
- Eliminated the highly priced SAP resources for portal
