Find out how one of the world’s leading distributors of electronics and maintenance products implemented technology for SAP that improved critical product data update times by 75% to enable IT to keep up with business expansion.
RS Components reduce downtime and enable aggressive SAP rollout strategy to support business growth
1. About the Customer
RS Components reduces
downtime and enables
aggressive IT rollout strategy
to support business growth
How one of the world’s leading distributors of electronics and maintenance products
implemented technology for SAP that improved critical product data update times by
75% to enable IT to keep up with business expansion.
2. 32countries
ofoperationand
distributorsina
further
37markets
RS Components (RS)
is the trading brand of
Electrocomponents plc,
the global distributor for
engineers.
Astheworld’sleading
highservicedistributor
ofelectronicsand
maintenanceproducts,
RShasawideandvaried
supplierbase,withhundreds
ofthousandsofproducts.
RSreliesonanSAPRetail
solutiontodeliverontheir
customerservicepromises.
About the Customer
3. About the Customer
Genuine parts
from 2,500
trusted global
brands 1m
customers
globally
founded in
1937
44,000
parcelsshipped
daily
500,000
products in stock
globally
16
distribution
centres across
the globe
5. The Challenge
When RS introduces a new system or roll out to
a new business unit, they need to load a new set
of product data into their “Assortment List”; their
master data list of the different components
and products, which feeds various subsystems
including warehousing and planning systems as
well as their website.
To avoid any negative impact on the business, RS
only works on the Assortment List in pre-defined
cross-over periods, in very limited windows of
downtime. Their commitment to customer
service and same-day order despatch turnaround
times means they simply can’t afford to have long
systems outages.
new product
data
warehouse planning website
Assortment
List
6. The Challenge
Because of their vast product range,
maintaining this process was becoming
increasingly difficult. RS had to work
24 hours a day for a number of days in
preparation, to be able to get the data
loaded within the allotted downtime
window.
RS had a business objective to roll out
their Back Office solution to a set number
of additional business units, but had
reached a point where they simply
couldn’t fit in the volume of work
required into the available downtime
window to reach this target.
Put simply, there was
no way of achieving
their rollout strategy
unless the length of the
update process, and
therefore the downtime
window, could be
reduced.
8. The Solution
RS selected a trusted technology
partner to help accelerate and
streamline the Assortment List update
process.
The solution implemented enabled RS
to tackle rollouts that would otherwise
be beyond the technical reach of RS.
The new-found efficiency means that
Assortment List updates are no longer
a bottleneck and RS is now able to reach
their business unit rollout targets.
9. The Solution
“We’ve got operations in 32 countries and ship more than
44,000 parcels every business day. Orders placed with us can
be ready for despatch within the hour. It’s all about speed of
delivery; there’s no way we can afford an outage during the
week. That’s why it was so important to reduce the system
downtime.”
Matthew Ling
Back Office Functional Team Lead, RS Components
11. What were the benefits?
The time taken for the RS SAP system to process
the Assortment List has been cut by 75%.
processing time reduced by 75%
12. What were the benefits?
Processes that were taking upwards of
7-8 hours now take less than 3, allowing
RS to easily fit critical data updates into
planned windows of downtime.
3 hours
13. What were the benefits?
RS is able to deliver on their
core values of single-day order
turnarounds while still growing
their product base.
14. What were the benefits?
RS no longer needs to see adding product
lines or additional business units as an
inhibitor to growth and can now continue
their strong business growth plans.
15. How did RS achieve
such a huge
process efficiency
improvement?
16. How did RS achieve such a huge process
efficiency improvement?
RS implemented a Business Performance
App – Articlus.
Articlus runs on Basis Technologies’ Diffuser
architecture – enabling ABAP code to
process large data volumes many times
faster without additional hardware.
“We were already a client
of Basis Technologies,
using the Transport
Expresso solution. We
needed technology
that would allow us
to do things faster.
An App built on their
Diffuser technology was
suggested as a possible
solution.”
Matthew Ling
Back Office Functional Team Lead, RS
Components
17. “Diffuser does exactly what it’s meant to do. We’ve found
it helps maximize the usage of our infrastructure. I’ve been
blown away with the results from Diffuser – they were even
better than I expected. I thought we might perhaps see a 20%
performance improvement, which I would have been happy
with. We’ve hit 75% reduction in the time taken to roll out which
means we can now carry out our cut over processes well within
the required timeframes. It’s allowed us to do rollouts that
otherwise we’d have really struggled to do.”
Matthew Ling
Back Office Functional Team Lead, RS Components
How did RS achieve such a huge process
efficiency improvement?
18. How did RS achieve such a huge process
efficiency improvement?
“We’re soon looking to start using Diffuser on a day-to-day
basis with another of our programs. Based on the fact that
we’ve been using it successfully, we’ll be looking to utilize
Diffuser to support new product introductions. With such
high new product targets to meet, we’re confident that
Diffuser will help.”
Matthew Ling
Back Office Functional Team Lead, RS Components
And it doesn’t stop here with RS and Diffuser
19. “Basis Technologies are great. I’ve dealt with them before in
the past. The technology offered and the consultants are
great, and the company is easy to work with. Diffuser is a
solid technology.”
Matthew Ling
Back Office Functional Team Lead, RS Components
How did RS achieve such a huge process
efficiency improvement?