With SAP Sales Cloud, a solution of the Customer Experience Suite (CX), the BEUMER Group brings a high degree of transparency to the global sales pipeline and creates consistent lead-to-order processes for all 35 locations. The central data storage in the cloud also makes a significant contribution to improving collaboration among the 450 end users in sales worldwide, and round-the-clock data access shortens response times in dealing with customers and prospects. Parallel to SAP Sales Cloud, BEUMER is also gradually introducing the ERP software suite SAP S/4HANA.

Wherever goods and products have to be sorted, packed, palletized, loaded, transported from A to B and distributed, the high-quality intralogistics system solutions of the BEUMER Group are often used. This applies to the cement, building materials and chemical industries as well as to the beverage and food sector, postal and parcel logistics or baggage handling at airports.

Success factor international expansion

The family-run group of companies from Beckum in East Westphalia not only develops and produces innovative intralogistics systems but also offers comprehensive customer support: with a 24x7 hotline, smoothly functioning spare parts logistics, a residential service program, services for system modernization and a worldwide service network for on-site support.

But the competition is tough. In order to strengthen and expand its position in the market, BEUMER has single-mindedly pursued an international expansion strategy: by founding new and expanding existing locations, as well as through takeovers such as that of the Danish Crisplant Group. In 2018, the BEUMER Group, which is active in more than 70 countries with six production sites, 35 companies and agencies and 4,500 employees, achieved sales of approximately one billion euros.

Homogeneous IT for uniform processes

One of the core tasks of the group of companies is to secure the market-leading position and economic success achieved through, among other things, steady growth in the long term. To this end, product design, production and organisation are continuously improved and a uniform corporate and management culture is created.

"Equally important for success are digital and location-independent harmonised business processes of high efficiency and transparency," says Björn Mehlis, Head of Intercompany Sales, BEUMER Group. The company has laid the foundation for this with the SAP Sales Cloud sales software, which is part of the SAP Customer Experience Suite (CX). Parallel to this, the ERP software suite SAP S/4HANA is also being introduced step by step.

The BEUMER Group has commissioned the software and business consulting company ORBIS SE with the implementation. The Saarbrücken-based IT service provider convinced the jury not only with its expertise in SAP Sales Cloud and process integration with SAP S/4HANA and the development of a "big picture" of the future process and system landscape, but also with its international presence.

Thanks to round-the-clock data access at the click of a mouse, for example to current projects at customers or to key figures on incoming orders, the sales department can control its activities even more precisely. This is also a big plus. The KPI reports on incoming orders are provided by a reporting tool that reads the necessary data from SAP Sales Cloud. Another advantage is that sales employees can manage and change their data in the cloud solution largely on their own responsibility, which relieves the internal master data team.

Current information in every IT system

Since SAP Sales Cloud provides the ERP systems of other manufacturers installed in the individual locations with up-to-date sales information such as master data, sales documents, key figures on incoming orders, each location is always up to date. The corresponding data is replicated directly and synchronously to the local ERP systems via interfaces.

This should end in the near future. To this end, BEUMER will merge all companies step by step in SAP S/4HANA, as far as possible, to establish consistent and uniform operating processes across all locations. To keep the implementation as lean as possible, the individual locations will only receive the modules and functions that they need for their business activities. At present, the headquarters in Beckum and the site in Aarhus, Denmark, are already working with the ERP software suite, which the company also hopes will make it easier to integrate customers, suppliers and partners.

SAP Cloud Platform Process Integration (CPI-PI) ensures smooth bidirectional data flow between SAP Sales Cloud and SAP S/4HANA. Sales-relevant data from the ERP back-end is loaded directly into SAP Sales Cloud. Conversely, data captured in the cloud solution flows immediately into SAP S/4HANA for further processing.

Thanks to the partnership-based cooperation of all parties involved, the demanding SAP implementation project was successfully completed. The ORBIS experts provided comprehensive support to the internal IT team, which they continued to support with advice and assistance after the go-live, during the demanding SAP project: from scoping workshops to the implementation and integration of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Sales Cloud, including integration tests and data migration, right through to the completion of the Hypercare phase.

Björn Mehlis draws a positive conclusion: "With SAP Sales Cloud and SAP S/4HANA we are laying the foundation for a modern and uniform hybrid SAP process and system landscape and for agile and efficient digital processes in sales and other areas. We will continue to follow this path consistently". For example, additional sales documents for products and spare parts are to be integrated into SAP Sales Cloud. And to further increase service excellence, the introduction of another SAP CX solution, SAP Service Cloud, is planned.