Copyright West Trax International Ltd January 2014 Page 1 of 2

Checking System Health Before Implementing SAP HANA Establishing the current situation The challenges that CIO’s are facing nowadays are as complex as the entire economic system. They must aim to run high-performance ERP systems efficiently whilst not losing track of the complex SAP environment that require frequent changes. The main focus is always on “doing more, faster and better“. SAP HANA is expected to support these efforts. The in-memory platform is supposed to analyse more data, produce reports faster, accelerate processes and therefore make ERP systems “better“. But better in comparison to what? Which company really knows how well its SAP system compares to that of its competitors? Who is able to confidently answer questions such as are the company`s processes optimally standardised, automated and efficient? Or are they mostly manual and inefficient having evolved historically? Before introducing a new tool such as SAP HANA a system health check is advised..

One step back = two steps forward “Not all business processes will benefit similarly from an in-memory database. Therefore it important to identify and optimise appropriate business processes before introducing SAP HANA,” is Diana Bohr`s advice to CIO’s. Mrs Bohr is CTO of West Trax, the organisation that for many years has been solely focused on analysing SAP systems and providing companies with answers to previously unanswered questions. In Bohr’s experience, “You are able to take your decisions on a much more flexible, and reliable basis when the necessary data is available quickly and is more resilient and comprehensive“. Facts are essential prior to making decisions. To begin with a critical look in the mirror is essential. Only then can a company know how well it uses “core SAP“ or how much it is relying on in-house solutions. In its analysis West Trax looks at business processes and filters important key performance indicators (KPIs) from the systems. The results are presented to the clients so that they can then start to clean up their systems.

Measuring business processes and SAP performance How can the performance of business processes be measured with respect to an entire SAP system? West Trax has developed algorithms which it uses to analyse issues within SAP systems. For example how many custom code programs exist in a system and how many are very rarely or never needed.

Copyright West Trax International Ltd January 2014 Page 2 of 2

Completing more than 1,400 analyses within 15 different industries to date has enabled West Trax to build a broad benchmark database of the results. These are used to provide every client with comparisons against other organisations. These are not available from other sources

Don’t just rely on gut feeling “Gut feeling is not adequate when deciding whether current processes will profit from HANA”, Bohr goes on. “Neutral automated assessments can rapidly create reliable facts on which to base the calculation of a business case”. With regard to reporting systems Diana Bohr argues that the speedy production of reports is of little value if no one reads them or if they cannot be processed due to a shortage of resources and time. Efficiency is also essential. “Fewer high-level qualitative reports are definitely worth more than a flood of reports that do not bring any added-value to the company. Standardisation of reporting could be the key to success; automation should already be a matter of course”.

Clean up SAP systems regularly So the key point is to first take a look backwards and check on the optimisation and automation situation in a system. Ideally this should be done at regular intervals. “The KPI’s can be measured repeatedly“, says Diana Bohr. For example European automotive supplier Modine has already decided to do this. At approximately five year intervals CIO Kurt Trillsam engages West Trax to check the company’s system. “That way we test whether our own perception is still correct“, he says. The company knows exactly where it stands against the competition in the industry. Only this year West Trax confirmed to Modine that the company’s degree of standardisation degree is the highest within the automotive sector.