In companies of a certain size, it is common to have a multitude of applications with similar functions but which only cover specific departments or systems within the company.
This entails high maintenance costs, use of resources, documentary needs, users without access to the systems they need, and so on and so forth.
This was also the case for our client Saica Group. Starting from a scenario like the above, and with multiple challenges affecting their day-to-day work, they finally opted for a tool that would allow them to integrate all their systems into one: OpenText Extended ECM. In this article, we are going to talk about the success story of this project for Saica.
About Saica Group
The Saica Group is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of recycled paper for corrugated board, with an annual production capacity of 3.3 million tonnes. With more than 10,000 employees and a presence in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Turkey, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United States and Poland, the Saica Group has four business lines: manufacture of recycled paper for corrugated board (Saica Paper), waste management and environmental services (Saica Natur), production of corrugated board packaging (Saica Pack) and flexible packaging (Saica Flex).
Saica’s challenge
The starting point was very complex technically, as 5 different systems had to be integrated, in addition to the existence of a non-SAP system such as PRISMA – an ERP system developed 100% customised by SAICA for one of its business areas.
In Saica, workflows were very well defined and functionally, a tool was needed that would allow full interaction between users and global access to documentation.
The large volume of documents generated in Saica in the different management systems associated with the business flows made it necessary to be able to control the entire process of creating, receiving, locating, accessing and preserving them. The efficient storage, retrieval and access to the documentation generated was essential for the Group. Not to mention the cost savings of centralising the entire document management flow in a single application.
The Solution: OpenText Extended ECM
We were looking to deploy an environment capable of covering all the challenges associated with the growth in volume and criticality of access to information. An environment where stability and high availability were paramount.
It was a challenging project, requiring the coordination of all systems teams. A project of a technological nature, a priori less visible for the business, but very necessary for the company.
On Saica’s side, analyses of the most resource-demanding scenarios were carried out. Once located, Brait helped to size the number of servers and resources needed for the coming years.
In conjunction with this, Brait worked on reorganising Content Server services and processes to improve response times on the one hand, and to increase the availability of the environment on the other. Very briefly, we ensured that all services that could be duplicated were duplicated and critical services were located on dedicated servers.
Now, after several months with the project completed, we can see that it was a success and the quality of the service has improved a lot.
Results
In summary, these are some of the benefits gained from the OpenText Extended ECM systems integration project:
- Multi-system integration, both SAP and non-SAP.
- 360 Repository, where all the company’s users converge.
- A stable, well-dimensioned platform that provides a quality service to users.
- Control of the growth of the platform so that its growth is within the quality parameters imposed by Saica.
