Orica moves into third release of 4S SAP transformation

ASX-listed explosives maker Orica is “well into” the third release of a large-scale SAP transformation, with recent works focused on standardising and simplifying documentation used by maintenance crews.

As reported by iTnews back in late 2018, Orica’s 4S program - ‘Simple, Standard, Single SAP’ - covers eight end-to-end business processes and aims to consolidate Orica’s entire business on an S/4 HANA core, supported by SAP cloud add-ons.

The project will take “over three years” to implement, with works this year encompassing training for internal subject matter experts along with the management of documentation.

In a statement late yesterday, Orica said the 4S program would ultimately impact “more than 3290 documented business processes.”

The company has implemented OpenText’s Extended Enterprise Content Management (XECM) with assistance from Chrome Consulting to make the “latest and correct documentation, including procedures and instructions, easily accessible to maintenance crews”.

Chrome Consulting has been working with Orica since 2015 and is now moving to a support role on the 4S Program.

“Chrome has been working on 4S since the beginning of the project to help integrate enterprise content management into the maintenance-based processes using Open Text solutions,” Chrome Consulting said.

“The XECM solution will support Orica’s business through the provision of accurate and up-to-date documents while staff are conducting complex maintenance activities. 

“This will reduce risk and support Orica’s commitment to the safety, health and wellbeing of its employees and customers. 

“The approach is complemented by the XECM for Success Factors Solution, implemented as part of a previous release of the 4S program.”

Chrome said the scope, “immense geographical coverage and multiple time zones” had made the 4S Program “unique”.

The consultancy said that over the years it had been “heavily involved in end-to-end business processes including, ‘recruit to hire to terminate’, ‘source to pay’ and the complete asset lifecycle”.

“In the source to pay process, Chrome helped Orica to … automate invoice processing across 25 countries,” the company said.

“As a global template, it standardises the capture and approval of invoices in a global context. 

“This will see considerable cost savings through a reduction in the time to process invoices, full visibility of bottlenecks in the invoice processing streams, as well as the ability to reduce these bottlenecks in the coming months.”

Orica CTO Gabriela Azzali said the 4S program had required “a very tight collaboration between many vendors, and between the vendors and Orica”. 

Chrome Consulting’s CEO Mark Frear said his organisation supplied “a project team based in Australia, supporting the large Orica project team in Singapore”, and that the project had hit key dates, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.