Customer: GRANOVIT SA

In November 2017, the AURELIUS GROUP acquired the animal feed division of the Cargill Animal Nutrition Group. This spin-off from the Cargill Group resulted in the new GRANOVIT SA, a merger of the well-known Provimi Kliba and Protector brands. With over 50 years of experience in the Swiss animal nutrition market, the company offers solutions for livestock as well as zoo, leisure, and pet animals. GRANOVIT SA is represented by around 250 employees at a total of three Swiss locations, in Lucens, Kaiseraugst and Gossau.

Initial situation and challenge

In the course of the spin-off, all employees of the company were taken over with their existing contracts. This meant that around 250 users at three locations had to be migrated to a new IT landscape. Due to the high level of complexity resulting from the strong dependency of the production systems (Manufacturing Execution Systems – MES) on the SAP system used, the only option for migration from the existing environment was a procedure based on the so-called Big Bang method. Accordingly, the complete changeover to the new systems took place at a clearly defined point in time and without a transition phase in parallel operation. Day-to-day business was to continue as unaffected and uninterrupted as possible. The extremely strict regulations of the seller caused a further challenge. For example, existing hardware and services could only be transferred after being wiped, which meant that all PCs had to be set up from scratch.

“Through professional project management throughout the carve-out, digatus enabled our operational capability as a stand-alone organization from day one.” Matthias Täubl – CEO AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KgaA

Solution

Within the scope of the carve-out project, digatus coordinated the separation of the IT infrastructure from the seller with the target to make GRANOVIT SA independent. This included the rebuilding of the entire IT infrastructure, including the SAP system. The migration of the non-SAP applications was also part of this task, such as MES, Nutrition Systems, Laboratory Systems as well as the reporting software. Furthermore, the selection of the future service providers was accompanied via tenders. digatus also supported the subsequent drafting of contracts with the selected parties.

Customer benefits

During the implemented separation of the IT infrastructure, GRANOVIT SA benefited from consistently clear project management with full cost transparency. With the successful completion of the IT carve-out project, the newly created unit experienced a reduction in staff workload due to the uniform and lean design of processes and systems. By selecting a Swiss IT service provider, it was also possible to regain employees’ trust in IT and increase productivity through shorter response times. Furthermore, a cost saving of almost 25% was achieved compared to the previous operating costs. Now GRANOVIT can continue to focus on the successful realignment, with increased stability and productivity of the systems.