Coca-Cola Case Study - IntelliCorp, Inc

THE COCA-COLA COMPANY REFRESHES SAP ALM WITH LIVECOMPARE
Objectives:
Improve SAP ALM
activities; streamline
testing; improve
support pack
installations; reduce
standard/custom
release efforts;
maximize new SAP
functionality; eliminate
risk and excessive
resource costs.
Strategies:
Leverage automated
impact analysis
software; reduce
change errors and
testing scope;
guarantee master data
integrity; synchronize
across multiple SAP
landscapes.
ROI:
Reduced testing effort
by 30-40%; validated
testing scope; audited
lifecycle activities to
eliminate missed
production defects;
achieved accurate
SAP system
information to improve
IT effectiveness and
efficiency .
CASE STUDY
“LiveCompare ensures we’re testing the right things
and spending resources in the right places. When
developing a regression test plan, the data received
from LiveCompare allows us to more accurately tailor
each plan to an individual release. Instead of testing
everything we test only what’s impacted. That has
translated into direct resource savings of 30-40%.”
Project Snapshot
SAP Lifecycle Stages Support Packs, Testing, Quality Control, Master
Data Management, Synchronization
SAP Environments 2 ECC 5.0 (ERP MDM); ECC 6.0 (HR); BI 7.0
Number of Users 30,000+
Modules CRM 5, SRM 5, XI 3, xApps, MII, GTS, XRPM
Project Leads SAP Platform Engineer, Process/Quality Manager,
Director of SAP Development, CIO, CDO
IntelliCorp Products LiveCompare TM
Project Timeframe Ongoing
The Coca-Cola Company Thirsts for Automated SAP Analysis
As the world‟s largest beverage company, The Coca-Cola Company maintains
the world‟s largest beverage distribution system. Relying heavily on SAP ERP,
the drink giant—much like other large SAP installations—was challenged by
SAP application lifecycle management (ALM), especially with testing, support
packs, master data management, synchronization and overall quality control.
In addition, The Coca-Cola Company aimed to benefit from new SAP technology,
thereby maximizing its investment, but had to do so while, simultaneously,
reducing risks.
“Our situation is unique: instead of just assessing SAP support pack transports,
we‟re also analyzing our own custom development transports,” explained
Ray Berry, application development lead for the SAP platform at The
Coca-Cola Company. “We have to scope-out testing for internal releases, as
well as for SAP support packs. Therefore, we needed to reduce the time,
money and resources necessary to handle such high volume, frequent, system
activity.”
In AMR‟s August 2009 ERP report, Squeeze Your SAP Lifecycle Costs with
the Right Impact Analysis Tool, Derek Prior comments on similar industry issues
faced by SAP customers. He explains, “Gaining consensus and budget
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THE COCA-COLA COMPANY REFRESHES SAP ALM WITH LIVECOMPARE
approval can be challenging, much like the job of executing these changes to existing, highly
complex SAP landscapes. Regression testing is a large part of this work.”
The Coca-Cola Company understands how difficult it can be to guarantee system stability during
functional and operational ALM activities. The beverage guru bundles internal development
into several planned releases per year. IT struggled with the overwhelming amount of manual
analysis necessary to identify every object and coinciding executable process change. The
scope exceeded the Testing Center/Quality Management Group‟s ability to do an SAP impact
analysis to see what would change from release to release.
“Gaining consensus and budget approval can be challenging,
much like the job of executing these changes to existing, highly
complex SAP landscapes. Regression testing is a large part of
this work.” - Derek Prior, AMR Research.
Too much time was being wasted: too many people were being utilized: too great of SAP system
risk was being taken. IT faced, daily, the struggle to balance project and time management
with efficiency and accuracy.
“It‟s essential to do a comprehensive SAP system analysis, but it‟s not practical to do it manually,”
said Berry. “We were burning resources and weren‟t guaranteeing data integrity, putting
general business operations at risk. We knew automation was the key to this process and we
began the search for a solution to empower IT to more effectively manage SAP ALM.”
LiveCompare Bubbles to the Surface
SAP is at the heart of The Coca-Cola Company‟s functional operations, so the quality of releases
gets very high internal visibility.
“It‟s a top priority with the CDO and CIO,” remarked Berry. “There is strong emphasis on quality
management and stable releases.”
Berry and IT had to improve SAP ALM. IntelliCorp LiveCompare was the answer.
LiveCompare‟s unique system of intelligent impact analysis automatically generates answers
to key SAP ALM questions, eliminating risky manual efforts and providing an unmatched ability
to identify change, as well as its impact. Smart filters make LiveCompare intelligent, eradicating
changes that have no impact. The software is a powerful, easy to use analytical engine
that‟s quick to implement and inexpensive to run.
“LiveCompare ensures we‟re testing the right things and spending resources in the right
places,” said Berry. “When developing a regression test plan, the data received from LiveCompare
allows us to more accurately tailor each plan to an individual release. Instead of testing
everything we test only what‟s impacted. That has translated into a direct resource savings of
30-40%.”
For every release, The Coca-Cola Company runs LiveCompare to gain a sense for what will be
impacted with the next SAP version. Data generated is used for regression testing, test validation
and scope analysis, making IT more efficient and enabling Berry to focus on the more strategic
aspects of maximizing SAP.
“We use LiveCompare as a sanity check before and after the test cycle,” noted Berry. “Once
we‟ve made changes to address defects, we simply launch LiveCompare again as a total landscape
audit. Now, we catch everything and there are no surprises.”
Always LiveCompare: Optimizing Test Strategy for Support Packs
IT at The Coca-Cola Company is advanced in leveraging innovative technologies to improve
operations. It has made LiveCompare a standard practice in its SAP ALM strategy.
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THE COCA-COLA COMPANY REFRESHES SAP ALM WITH LIVECOMPARE
“Drilling into every object to find every process it touches would involve lots of manual analysis
if we didn‟t have LiveCompare,” said Berry. “It‟s just not cost-effective to do that. Automation is
critical.”
A key example of LiveCompare‟s usage at The Coca-Cola Company is around support packs.
In the past, IT would shut off the path to production, so any maintenance was conducted in a
separate “break-fix” environment, which was on the same release and SP level as production.
As for development, IT would have to redo it on the development system and ensure the
changes weren‟t lost when the normal path to production was turned back on. For The Coca-
Cola Company, that meant IT was doing double the maintenance work and exceeding budget,
as well as human resource efforts.
“Many clients tell us they need better tools not only to determine what to test, but to determine
what not to,” continued Prior in the AMR report. “In the absence of this insight, they have to err
on the side of caution. They do too much testing rather than too little.”
“Managing SAP support packs was a major challenge for us and our risk adverse approach
was to test all critical business processes,” explained Berry. “IT had to find a new methodology
for identifying and mitigating the impact of implementing support packs, as well as custom development
in The Coca-Cola Company‟s SAP environments.”
With LiveCompare‟s automated intelligent impact analysis capabilities, The Coca-Cola Company
can identify standard and custom reports/transactions that will be affected by a support
pack installation, dramatically reducing the testing effort while increasing test plan coverage.
LiveCompare tells IT whether or not a specific change is safe to make and that insight has increased
the business‟ confidence in maintenance, as well as the overall release process.
“The knowledge we gain from LiveCompare allows us to minimize the double work and test
only what needs testing,” said Berry. “That saves time, costs and risks, and also gives us more
SAP system flexibility.”
“We use LiveCompare as a sanity check before and after the test
cycle. Once we‟ve made changes to address defects, we simply
launch LiveCompare again as a total landscape audit. Now, we
catch everything and there are no surprises. ”
You Can’t Beat the Feeling…of Automation
As a part of IT‟s overarching SAP ALM strategy, Berry is always finding new uses for LiveCompare.
While it‟s used primarily in the ERP, BI and HCM systems, LiveCompare can be used
anywhere.
LiveCompare supports SAP versions 4.6 and above, including ECC 6.0 and all Industry Solutions,
on any SAP supported hardware and RDBMS platform. In addition to supporting SAP‟s
ABAP stack, LiveCompare is compatible with SAP Java-based products, and easily integrates
with third-party software including, Solution Manager, HP QualityCenter, Worksoft Certify and
many more.
“We ran across an unauthorized modification to a table, which created quite a stir, and once
we restored it we needed to be sure it worked and everything else ran as expected,” recalled
Berry. “IT used LiveCompare to assess the transport and table change, and determine the
scope of impacted processes, which allowed for efficient, effective validation. The software is
like a security blanket.”
Berry also spoke of an ad hoc Unicode remediation that had to be tackled for a system conversion.
There were three transports IT wanted to evaluate to get a sense for the scope of all included
objects and the effort to test them. LiveCompare was used to quickly assess the situa-
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THE COCA-COLA COMPANY REFRESHES SAP ALM WITH LIVECOMPARE
About The Coca-Cola
Company
The Coca-Cola Company
(NYSE: KO) is the world‟s
largest beverage company,
refreshing consumers with
nearly 500 sparkling and
still brands. Along with Coca
-Cola ® , recognized as the
world‟s most valuable
brand, the Company‟s
portfolio includes 12 other
billion dollar brands,
including Diet Coke ® ,
Fanta ® , Sprite ® , Coca-Cola
Zero ® , vitaminwater,
POWERADE ® , Minute
Maid ® and Georgia ® Coffee.
Globally, the Company is
the No. 1 provider of
sparkling beverages, juices
and juice drinks, and readyto-drink
teas and coffees.
Consumers in more than
200 countries enjoy the
Company‟s beverages at a
rate of nearly 1.6 billion
servings a day.
www.thecoca-colacompany.com
About IntelliCorp
IntelliCorp provides SAP
application lifecycle
management, business
process management and
data management solutions
for SAP customers and
partners. IntelliCorp‟s
LiveCompare, LiveModel
and LiveInterface products
automate the analysis of
SAP systems and are SAP
Integration Certified.
IntelliCorp reduces the time,
costs and risks associated
with all SAP lifecycle
events. For information,
email
sales-info@intellicorp.com,
or call 508-621-1600 in the
US and
+44 (0) 1454 454 100 in
EMEA.
www.intellicorp.com
tion and more quickly identify the impact of changes to thousands of objects
than could be done if analysis was manually conducted.
“LiveCompare is great for simple „bread and butter‟ operational usage, as well
as for strategic SAP ALM,” said Berry. “LiveCompare helped us see the impact
of those objects and run them against the usage statistics in the production
system, and then call out what would have been affected. It reduced both
our remediation workload as well as testing.”
The Coca-Cola Company, like many IntelliCorp customers, finds valuable the
200+ templates producing reports that support the full spectrum of SAP lifecycle
activities. IT frequently uses one such feature IntelliCorp has named,
Quick Compare Wizard.
Deep within SAP at The Coca-Cola Company lives a list of tables that are
maintained centrally and distributed to other areas. Data across those tables
must be consistent and IT doesn‟t want to rely solely on risky manual entry
when changes are made. Berry has been using the Quick Compare Wizard as
a safety net. IT selects only what needs to be compared, as the software has
no comparison limit, and chooses tables across multiple systems to check that
master data is synchronized.
“With LiveCompare we can maintain high data quality in our development systems
and confirm that we don‟t miss anything from a distribution perspective,”
said Berry. “It‟s a very straightforward tool that just needs the input to „do its
thing‟ and that takes a lot of pressure off of my staff.”
As LiveCompare is the only intelligent impact analysis software for SAP, The
Coca-Cola Company continues to extend its usage throughout the SAP landscape.
“LiveCompare automatically identifies what is changing and what‟s the impact
of each change across SAP lifecycle activities in multiple environments,” said
Berry. “For The Coca-Cola Company, quality has improved in our last three
SAP releases and LiveCompare is definitely a part of the reason.”
Copyright © 2009 IntelliCorp, Inc. All rights reserved. IntelliCorp is a registered trademark of IntelliCorp, Inc. LiveCompare, LiveModel and LiveInterface are trademarks of IntelliCorp, Inc.
All other names may be trademarks or registered marks of their respective owners.
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