The client is a merger between two big global giants with annual revenues of GBO 9.4 billion (USD 15 billion)

The First company had already completed the implementation of SAP for its back office functions like Human Resources, Financials, Materials and Procurement. This installation was being supported by an in-house SAP Competence Center (CC). The second company was also in the final stages of implementing SAP for its Metering business. This project was called ‘Rainbow’.

The Second company was interested in assessing whether a separate support setup was necessary for its SBU or the existing SAP Competence Center could be scaled up to support the Rainbow installation in addition to the Back office users.

The main challenges in the assessment were:

• Non-commonality of the two businesses
• Considerable differences in the scope and scale of the Back office and Rainbow projects
• Non-uniformity of SAP modules and skills required in these two projects
• The imminent hiving off of the Metering business from the parent company consequent to recent statutory regulations.

In case it was concluded that the existing SAP CC could be scaled up, our engagement also included drawing up a plan for the switchover of Rainbow support from the implementation team to the SAP Competence Center.

A team of SAP consultants studied the current processes of the SAP Competence Center and the details of the Back office and Rainbow SAP implementations. Inputs for the study came primarily from two sources, namely, review of available documentation and interviews with key personnel in the IS department, SAP CC and the Rainbow project.

The study focused on the following areas:

• Present support setup
• Proposed support model and organization structure
• Recommended support and call handling processes
• Service Level Agreement criteria
• Estimated support requirement for the next one year
• Project Plan for handover of support

Knowing what are the right quantity and type of resources required to staff a Competence Center on an ongoing basis could prove to be vital towards achieving highest service levels at the most optimum cost. Sensing this latent need, Zensar proactively developed a software tool and delivered it to the client. Taking call history data as input, this tool computes the number of support FTEs (Full-time Equivalents) required for the Competence Center.

The resultant ended up in the ability to ‘right-size’ the Competence Centre of an ongoing basis, thanks to the software tool developed and delivered proactively. It also Avoided the costs of setting up a second competence center.