SAP UKI recognises customers for quality excellence

SAP UKI last week announced the winners of the UK and Ireland Quality Awards 2010 at an exclusive ceremony held at the Audi Centre, west of London.  An integral part of SAPs quality programme, the Quality Awards were created to reward and recognise customers that have used SAPs quality principles in achieving smooth implementations that successfully realised business requirements to deliver anticipated benefits.  

The 11 winners, who were awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze accolades, all demonstrated that quality processes had been fundamental to their software planning and implementation, that they had excelled in execution and delivered significant benefits to their business.  The Gold winners will now also be eligible to go on to the EMEA Quality Awards competition, the winners of which will be announced at SAPPHIRE NOW in Frankfurt on May 17.  With only three categories, New Business Application, Large Enterprise Implementation and Small and Midsize Enterprise Implementation, the judges faced a difficult decision selecting the winners.  The Gold winners were as follows:

Small and Midsize Enterprise Implementation: G3 Global
New Business Application: Vodafone
Large Enterprise Implementation: Asda Stores Ltd

The Silver winners were SSL International for the New Business Application, BP Lubricants and Unilever PLC for the Large Enterprise Implementation and MarkIT Group Ltd for the Small and Midsize Enterprise Implementation category.  The Bronze winners were NSG Group for the New Business Application, Barclays and Wiltshire Council for the Large Enterprise Implementation and Presspart Manufacturing Ltd for the Small and Midsize Enterprise Implementation category.

The Gold, Silver and Bronze winners were chosen by a specially selected judging panel made up of representatives from SAP including Board members and executives from the Active Quality Management team.  The awards recognised the customers ability to deliver against strict quality guidelines.  The key judging criteria included:

Adherence to SAPs Ten Quality Principles 

Demonstration of rapid time to value and low total cost of implementation

Focus on how quality excellence was achieved in each area of the implementation  

Quality is at the heart of everything we do with our customers, and these awards absolutely recognise the outstanding achievements accomplished by all of the winners, said Tim Noble, UK MD, SAP UKI.  The 11 winners have not only demonstrated successful implementations, a feat which requires focus and dedication in itself, but they have also gone the extra mile to ensure quality through a formal process.

New Business Application: Vodafone
As part of a wider internal business transformation project Vodafone needed new technology to support finance, HR and supply chain processes.  Vodafone worked with SAP and partners Accenture, Axon and IBM to implement the latest version of SAP ERP, with Master Data Management, Process Integration and Portal, the solution also encompassed Supply Chain Management, Business Intelligence, Governance Risk and Compliance and eRecruiting amongst other things.  Vodafone had a strong focus on benefits realisation from the start and the judges were impressed by the quality measures that guided the overall implementation, the fact that the measures were continuously reviewed throughout the project and the exceptional end results produced by the implementation including the synchronisation of all of Vodafones SAP systems globally.

Large Enterprise Implementation: Asda Stores Ltd
Asda Stores Ltd wanted to achieve one version of the truth for its financial information, improve automation and reduce the complexities around Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.  Using SAP ERP for Financials and SAP Business Intelligence, with partner Deloitte, Asda Stores Ltd reduced year end close time to only four days, streamlined payment processes and improved reporting capability to the group head office.  Strong quality project planning pervaded the entire process and throughout the implementation the plan was matched to actual activity every step of the way.  Asda Stores Ltd also agreed pre-defined success measures with all parties involved to ensure that everyone was working towards a common goal.  These success measures were met and the judges considered the overall quality planning processes exemplary.  

Small and Midsize Enterprise Implementation: G3 Global  
As an SAP Value Added Reseller (VAR), G3 Global implemented wall-to-wall SAP All-in-One within a tight six week timeframe and have already been able to reduce month end close from 14 days to only six hours. Through the implementation of SAP All-in-One, G3 Global was able to set a solid foundation for cost effective future business performance by increasing visibility to real time information and aligning its operations with industry best practice processes.  Adhering to tight deadlines, achieving target deliverables and using quality processes throughout has resulted in a model implementation; one that is a true recommendation to G3 Globals own customers of how the implementation of SAP technology can transform a business.