Overview

Technology helps make Sappi’s woodfiber products more sustainable

Operating globally today requires organizations to innovate to stay competitive. Sustainability has become a massive focus for many organizations. To prioritize these business drivers, Sappi needed a team of skilled consultants who could support their SAP system and run its maintenance.

In order to realize their goal of a low-carbon future, Sappi has been driving sustainability and efficiency across their entire business. This approach extends to the incident management for their global instance of SAP, with a fixed price per call being introduced.

Having the peace of mind that their business processes operates efficiently, has allowed the woodfiber giant to focus on its business goals – realizing a low-carbon future by driving sustainability.

Client profile

Sappi is a leading global provider of everyday materials made from wood fiber-based renewable resources.

They produce both raw material offerings (such as dissolving pulp, wood pulp, biomaterials and timber) and end-use products (packaging and specialty papers, graphic papers, casting and release papers, and forestry products) from sustainably managed forests and plantations, in production facilities powered, in many cases, with bio-energy from steam and existing waste streams.

They have over 12,400 employees in over 35 countries and manufacturing operations on three continents (ten production facilities in Western Europe, four in North America and five in Southern Africa).

Services

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Vision
Vision

Why Sappi needed innovative SAP system support

With operations in 20 countries around the world, Sappi needed a cost-effective way to support their SAP system. The traditional time and material model for support proved inefficient in supporting their business operations. Prolonged system downtime would have massive cost implications for them – affecting not only their admin process, but logistics too.

To fulfil their business goal of providing sustainable woodfiber production and solutions, they needed to drive innovation across their business. It required efficiency across their entire organization, while reducing their business risks. With over 3,000 users of SAP spread out across different geographical locations, Sappi needed a support partner that understood its business, and the collaborative hybrid IT environment it operates with.

“This partnership has allowed us to successfully transition SAP platforms and versions allowing us to leverage next generation SAP products which are aligned to our growing business.”

David Wood
CERP & BI Manager, Sappi
Transformation 
Transformation

How a combined innovation and support approach drove efficiency

With an average of 250 support calls a month for their user base of 3,000 employees, Sappi needed a more responsive approach to resolving SAP incidents. Delays in resolving incidents could have repercussions that spread across the entire organization. Making use of a fixed price per incident removed the risk of them paying for delays in resolving calls, drastically reducing support costs. Combining innovation with support activities to maintain user skills, as well as system and data integrity saw an overall reduction in call volumes.

Having proactive support for SAP across all of their locations has meant a decline in support costs, the amount of system down time experienced and the number of support calls logged. Having this degree of efficiency has freed up their people to focus on other areas of the business, like driving sustainability and being part of improved business value creation.

“Dimension Data’s innovative approach and broad industry knowledge helped Sappi successfully implementation its business strategy. The core team which engages with us also has an in-depth understanding of our business and strategy and embraces our value of execute with speed.”

David Wood
CERP & BI Manager, Sappi
Results
Results

What a fixed price model meant for the environment

Sappi, the world’s leading producer of dissolving wood pulp has been leading the competition thanks to their culture of innovation. Implementing a robust ITIL process which involved incident management, service request, knowledge management and problem management were the main drivers in cost saving.

Having defined their business processes and knowing that this side of operations is supported by a strategic partner, has allowed Sappi to focus on expanding its product offerings. To keep them competitive in today’s eco-conscious age, they’ve evolved from a supplier of paper to the world’s leader in dissolvable wood pulp products.

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