Optimisation of master data management at AGRAVIS

Introduction business partners based on SAP MDG (Master Data Governance) in only 9 months

31th January 2023

As one of five main agricultural cooperatives in Germany, AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG, headquartered in Münster, generates a turnover of approx. € 7.3 billion and employs almost 6,400 people in the sectors agricultural wholesale, markets/stores and energy.

In wholesale, AGRAVIS supplies around 1,000 Raiffeisen stores in various regions with a comprehensive range of services and a broad assortment of products including well-positioned own-brands.

The DOCK program, initiated by AGRAVIS in 2019, has set itself the task of introducing SAP S/4HANA across the group to support the company's core merchandise management processes - with consenso as the implementation partner.

In the course of the program, the previous system for recording and maintaining "business partners" was converted to the new SAP tool Master Data Governance (MDG) under S/4HANA. MDG enables efficient master data management and represents an important step towards standardised and clear processes at AGRAVIS on the basis of SAP.

MDG is used to enter master data in an application form to create new business partner data or to change it. Business partner (BP) objects under S/4HANA define the business relationships that the company has with a person or organisation. For this purpose, business partner roles such as debitor, creditor, sold-to or ship-to party are assigned to a BP - information previously kept separate and thus multiple in other ERP systems or in SAP ECC, resulting in data redundancy, low transparency and increased maintenance effort.

So far, master data maintenance at AGRAVIS has been carried out under IRIS, an in-house development for master data and merchandise management processes, which will be completely replaced by SAP in the future via the DOCK program. The so-called OSS ("Online Stammdaten Service", Online Master Data Service) has been used to enter, check and release master data based on a two-stage process.

There are numerous advantages to replacing the syste, with SAP MDG:

• The implementation has significantly streamlined the process of master data maintenance, which is now only 1-step.
• The maintenance UIs in the form of various SAP Fiori tiles are designed to be clear, modern and user-friendly.
• The first of two duplicate checks is carried out as soon as the application is entered, thus having a significant impact on data quality and maintenance effort.
• Compliance screening in the context of anti-terror prevention (necessary at AGRAVIS because, among other things, fuels and fertilisers are sold) is now carried out - still via the same service provider - in real time upon creation of the data and no longer in a night run as in OSS.
• While the old system had no archiving function, GTCs are now attached directly to the application and archived in MDG.

The introduction of the new master data management was well prepared during the project. Already on the basis of the new MDG, the existing data was checked for duplicates and cleansed. After a project time of only 9 months, the go-live "MDG - Business Partner" could take place. The initially increased maintenance effort following the changeover to the new system has meanwhile been compensated and will continue to decrease, especially with the replacement of the old systems currently still in use.

In other areas, the management of business partner master data via SAP MDG results in significant advantages already.

With well over 6,500 applications per month for business partner creation or changes, AGRAVIS benefits from the new, central solution - the process is transparent, maintenance is simplified, and data redundancy has been significantly reduced.

The integration of new companies into the AGRAVIS structures has also become easier. For example, more than 2,000 customers of a company acquired by AGRAVIS were recently consolidated and integrated into the central master data management system in a very short time.

The introduction of SAP MDG at AGRAVIS - a project success that makes us proud and which was only possible thanks to the excellent cooperation with the highly motivated AGRAVIS business department. Many thanks for this!

We are looking forward to the further exciting challenges in the DOCK program!