Merger of accounting areas at GU Automatic

17th December 2018

The group of companies Gretsch-Unitas consists of more than 50 production and sales companies in 35 countries. GU Automatic is one of these companies and is based in Rietberg in East-Westphalia. Since its foundation in 1977 under the name “ats”, GU Automatic has been dealing with the topic door automation and can be proud of being one of the innovation leaders among the sector’s manufacturers. GU Automatic stands for worldwide innovative, secure and reliable solutions in the segments door automation, glass sliding panels and anti-tailgating made in Germany. GU Automatic develops and produces all of its products in Rietberg. Its more than 220 employees on site are supported by a nationwide net of sales employees and a worldwide net consisting of its own subsidiaries and partner companies.

On the IT side, GU is supported by SAP in the field of ERP. In this context, consenso has been commissioned to implement the merger of two companies, mapped as separate SAP accounting areas in the course of a fusion, in the systems of GU Automatic.

For this purpose and as a first step, the parameters for the merger were determined together with the customer. The challenge: a clean isolation of the data to be transferred on a defined key date in the middle of the business year without endangering ongoing operation. The deadline was very tight, as the project only started in July 2018, but had to be implemented by 1^st September.

It was an advantage that consenso could rely on self-developed programs for the transfer open items and balances which only needed to be adjusted to the customer-specific requirements. The assets could be taken over via SAP’s standard solution for asset transfers.

The revised programs were tested in three runs, whereas the last test was already performed independently by the customer – based on a documentation created by consenso during the first two test phases.

As a result, the customer was able to implement the productive takeover himself in the end – without external consulting support. Thus, on 09/01/2018 all relevant data were merged in due time – a smooth transition!