New Zealand farmer-owned cooperative Ballance Agri-Nutrients has become the first organisation in New Zealand to go live on the SAP S/4HANA platform.
Headquartered in Tauranga, Ballance Agri-Nutrients provides soil and animal nutrient products and services, as well as farm system software.
With an objective of creating a great digital experience for customers across every company touchpoint, Ballance is executing a technology roadmap based on the principles of simplification and real-time, with S/4HANA at its centre.
Ballance has worked with SAP partner Soltius on the project, with S/4HANA going live in early June 2016. Since then, Ballance has increased the productivity of its sales team and simplified the reporting requirements for its finance team.
Management sales reporting has decreased from two hours to 30 minutes, while key business processes have become 75 per cent quicker. In some cases, delivering reports on a year’s worth of data is taking less than a second.
“We understood the power of real-time data, and the need to get this into the hands of our employees,” said Richard Hopkins, CFO, Ballance Agri-Nutrients. “With SAP S/4HANA our people are more productive. They have access to the right tools and information at the right time, enabling them to serve our customers with confidence.
“The speed at which we are now able to extract insights from our data has advanced our reporting capabilities significantly. The team now has more time to focus on the job at hand, and already our month end is easier and quicker to complete thanks to the SAP S/4HANA Finance solution. There is no longer even time to go and get a coffee when waiting for a report to process,” said Hopkins.
David Scullin, Ballance’s CIO, said that the company has not only realised significant efficiencies from the implementation, but it has provided the “base on which to build our digital future”.
“You can’t be smart going forward without this technology in place – and the journey we are now on will allow us to connect our employees, suppliers, customers and networks to our digital core. With SAP S/4HANA at the centre, we are designing and building solutions that are mobile, intuitive, robust and valuable, enabling our customers to be more autonomous, productive and to do business with us with ease,” Scullin said.
Following the initial implementation of S/4HANA, Ballance now plans to focus on enhanced customer engagement and service through connecting SAP Hybris and its CRM to its digital core. It will also continue to simplify its business processes through further SAP application deployments.
Soltius CEO Nick Mulcahy said Balance should continue to see its productivity and profitability benefits grow as the solution becomes more embedded.
Importantly for the farmers it works with, Mark Wynne, Ballance CEO, said preparing the foundation for the digital future will help the company to deliver sustainable, viable New Zealand businesses.
“Our leadership team values data and simplicity, and by providing solutions for our employees, suppliers and customers to transform data into accessible, valuable information enables greater knowledge sharing and more powerful decision-making. With SAP S/4HANA we are readying Ballance for the digital revolution; digital connects our communities; digital delights our stakeholders,” Wynne said.
