Overview

Baker & Baker drives seamless organizational change through SAP

Baker & Baker, a leading manufacturer of bakery products, needed to ensure the continuity of their business processes following a divestment that saw the creation of Baker & Baker as a new, independent organization.

This required a significant overhaul of the company’s business processes – including hardware, IT systems, shared services and manufacturing operations. With SAP forming a critical part of almost every business process they needed a trusted partner that could provide the necessary expertise and resources. They selected NTT to support the transition and to maintain seamless business operations during and following the change.


Client profile

Baker & Baker is a European leader in the bakery convenience segment, operating across 12 sites in seven countries, with around 2,500 employees and an annual turnover in excess of EUR 400m. Headquartered in the UK they manufacture a broad range of high quality own label and branded bakery products to suit the needs of customers and consumers in markets.


Services
Vision
Vision

Driving effective organizational change

“It was a complex business separation that involved the split and subsequent sale of one portion of the original business, and the creation of an entirely new business entity as Baker & Baker,” explains Danny McCarthy, IT Director at Baker & Baker.

Following this, Baker & Baker needed to establish an independent IT environment to ensure that they could continue to deliver an exceptional operational, customer and employee experience across their European operations. This complex undertaking involved the splitting of the company’s business processes, infrastructure and applications.

With these changes at hand, Baker & Baker needed to ensure that their SAP environment could seamlessly support the newly independent organization, while providing efficient management of their entire manufacturing and supply chain operations.

To achieve this, they needed a partner to help manage their SAP environment in a cost-effective, secure and compliant manner that was easy to work with and which had the ability to provide innovative solutions to their unique challenges.


“Managing our SAP environment and keeping up with the latest innovations is critical to ensuring operational efficiency. We needed a partner who could understand our unique business requirements and provide a cost-effective, compliant solution.”

Danny McCarthy
IT Director, Baker & Baker
Transformation
Transformation

Collaborating on a roadmap for the future

For Baker & Baker, splitting their business into separate entities presented the complex task of separating their manufacturing processes, while integrating disparate IT and data management systems.

Their SAP environment is the foundation of their business, spanning manufacturing, sales, order and supply management, transportation logistics, and HR management.

To support their new business structure, we worked closely with the team to identify areas that needed critical attention and collaborated to ensure that their SAP environment met their evolving needs.

“Because Baker & Baker is a smaller organization than we were previously we wanted to make sure that our SAP environment was sized appropriately,” says McCarthy. “Simply replicating the existing environment wouldn’t have provided us with a platform that was aligned with who Baker & Baker are as an organization.”

NTT and Baker & Baker worked together to analyze the current and future needs of the company. A decision was made to host their SAP environment on a private cloud platform.

“We didn’t want to make too many changes to the environment as our entire organization relies on SAP to function. This includes managing raw materials that could pose a health and safety risk if they’re not managed properly,” he comments. “When you run a 24/7 operation there’s no room for error.”

We also collaborated with Baker & Baker to optimize their customer and supplier relationships through an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system. This helped Baker & Baker streamline their ordering and payment processes, increasing efficiency and reducing costs.


“The NTT team were amazing to work with. They understood the scale of our project and were able to build separate systems that matched seamlessly while ensuring data integrity and segregation of duties. Their expertise in SAP and shared services was essential to our success.”

Danny McCarthy
IT Director, Baker & Baker
Results
Results

Achieving transformation success

Working with us, Baker & Baker was able to complete the separation of their IT environment while ensuring that the new environment was fit for purpose.

We successfully migrated the business to their own SAP environment, enabling them to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their business processes. More importantly, the project was completed within the planned timeline and budget, which was a significant achievement given the complexity of the transformation.

Delivering a successful transformation

With our expertise in managing complex enterprise environments, we helped Baker & Baker transform by providing a comprehensive managed services solution for their SAP environment that addressed their specific needs. Our managed services solution included ongoing monitoring and maintenance of their SAP environment.

Enhancing safety through supervisory controls

By providing supervisory control through the SAP system, Baker & Baker can now manage their risk with raw materials more effectively. These controls enhance the safety of their staff and facilities while also optimizing their production processes.

Setting the stage for further innovation

In addition to managing the environment, we also provided innovative solutions to help the company optimize their SAP operations. This included the use of automation and analytics tools, such as an EDI system to improve performance and reduce costs.

Working with us, Baker & Baker was able to achieve greater efficiency and flexibility in their SAP environment, while also ensuring compliance and security. The company can now focus on their core business activities while leaving the management of their SAP environment in capable hands.



SAP


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