Ballance Agri-Nutrients has selected SAP to provide enterprise applications to replace its legacy system. The deal includes SAP ERP, Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Ballance’s existing legacy system had been customized over the years in order to meet increasing business requirements. When it came time to upgrade, the company decided that SAP’s packaged approach would be better able to achieve the desired business benefits when compared with competitors’ offerings.

“The functionality provided by SAP enables us to streamline and simplify our processes, in order to make Ballance easier to do business with,” says Elizabeth Harper, corporate services general manager at Ballance. “We are looking to future-proof our business with this implementation. SAP provides us with a comprehensive solution that allows us to operate in a best-practice environment throughout all aspects of our business. Our focus is on providing excellent service to our customers, and SAP will enable us to enhance our existing offering and improve our efficiencies. We have selected IBM as our implementation partner to help us to manage the business transformation and benefits realization.”

The deal includes a number of SAP NetWeaver licences as well as SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI) and SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe.

SAP NetWeaver is a web-based, open integration and application platform that serves as the foundation for enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) and allows the integration and alignment of people, information and business processes across business and technology boundaries. SAP NetWeaver PI is SAP’s implementation of SOA middleware.

“In a rapidly changing business environment, companies need to be equipped to compete and thrive,” says Ian Black, managing director, SAP New Zealand. “SAP’s technology enables collaboration across business networks.

Ballance joins a number of companies in the agricultural and rural services sector in New Zealand using SAP solutions. These include RD1, Gallagher Group, Livestock Improvement, Dexcel (DairyNZ) and Dupont New Zealand.

SAP CRM, SCM and SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe
Ballance will also implement SAP CRM to enable its employees to be more responsive to customers’ demands in the field and to assist with providing a superior customer experience. SAP CRM provides best-in-class functionality for marketing, sales and service. It supports customer-facing business processes across multiple interaction channels enabling organizations to focus on strategies for customer-driven growth.

SAP SCM will streamline Ballance’s supply chain, including improved demand planning and forecasting and optimized logistics and distribution. SAP SCM enables collaboration, planning, execution and coordination of the entire supply chain network. It provides broad functionality for enabling adaptive supply chain networks and integrates seamlessly with both SAP and non-SAP software.

SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe enables innovative processes, such as capturing off-line orders from customers, which helps to streamline cumbersome paper processes. SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe helps to bridge the paper-to-digital divide by helping organizations to leverage the versatility, consistency, and accessibility of electronic forms. SAP Interactive Forms can extend the reach of enterprise applications to a much broader set of users – internally and externally – while easily pulling data from SAP software.