GIS/Sterling Integrator-SAP Migration at SanDisk
A GIS/Sterling Integrator Success Story

THE COMPANY:

Founded in 1988, and publicly traded since 1995, SanDisk’s revenues grew to $3.9 billion in 2007 with more than 3000 employees worldwide. Serving both consumers and OEMs, SanDisk designs, develops, manufactures and markets flash storage card products for electronic systems and digital devices.

THE CHALLENGE :

SanDisk exchanges a total of 6,000 B2B transactions daily, spread across 50 trading partners. As a critical component in migrating from their legacy ERP application to SAP, SanDisk needed to convert hundreds of trading partner maps in a timely and cost-effective manner. Deciding on a strategy of using a Canonical, or Common, Data Model (CDM) for the mapping migration demanded targeted expertise. SanDisk runs a lean IT department, focusing on hiring best-of-breed vendors for major projects, said SanDisk’s Charles Webber, Senior Applications Developer. “Changing all our maps was a big undertaking. We simply didn’t have the bandwidth for that additional work and knew we needed to turn to outside consulting support.”

THE SOLUTION:

With past experience of Oxford Consulting Group’s EDI and B2B expertise, SanDisk greenlighted the Oxford team to provide both onsite and remote consultants to migrate the existing Gentran Integration Suite (GIS)/Sterling Integrator maps. “Oxford had repeatedly proven that they know exactly what needs to be done to make our projects successful,” said Webber. “[We] obviously wanted to keep costs as low as possible [and] we knew that Oxford could take on the task and do it—providing the quality we needed with the budget we could afford.”

THE PROCESS:

While the CDM has major advantages in buffering and limiting the scope of future changes, it added “considerable complexity” to the migration project. Inbound trading partner data is now converted from the sent form (X12, XML, RosettaNet etc.) to the OAG XML format of the CDM. In turn, the CDM is mapped to the IDOC model for loading into SAP. (Outbound data mirrors this flow.) Challenges included a change in mindset, which the Oxford team—building on their extensive experience with both SAP and mapping EDI data—responded to well.

SanDisk capitalized on the Oxford team’s flexibility, increasing efficiency by reorganizing the team to work onsite as the project progressed. Effective communication between SanDisk and Oxford proved invaluable when all parties —SAP implementers, writers of the CDM, plus the Oxford team—were brought together, said Webber. Throughout this challenging project, “the experience as a whole has been really good with Oxford.”

THE RESULTS:

Oxford’s timely delivery of the migration maps according to prescribed specifications, combined with a high degree of quality, resulted in a low rate of rework or budget overruns. “I would absolutely recommend Oxford to other companies,” said SanDisk’s Webber. “Their expertise is far superior to that of other consulting companies and we consider them a true partner, not just a vendor. We relied on Oxford’s expertise in many areas, and they delivered.” The ability to consistently deliver on projects is underlined by the Oxford team’s status as both SAP and Sterling Commerce Alliance Partners.

Aligning capacity and demand was always a key objective of the project as Chris Halvorson, Oxford Consulting Group’s Director of Business Integration Services explained. “We handled the needs of SanDisk by ramping up and down as needed to cost-effectively staff the project without compromising quality standards,” said Halvorson. The Oxford team’s strict adherence to monthly reporting metrics also made for accurate and efficient billing, allowing SanDisk to easily monitor their project costs versus budget, added Halvorson.

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