Papyrus, www.papyrus.com, with net sales of EUR 1817 million in 2009, is one of Europe’s leading merchants in paper, facility supplies and industrial packaging. It supplies about 1.8 million tonnes of paper annually. Papyrus currently has a presence in 22 European countries and employs 2800 people. Papyrus supports more than 65 000 customers by supplying a wide assortment of graphical paper, office paper, packaging products and consumables. All the things that contribute to an efficient and profitable business. The Papyrus head office is located in Göteborg, Sweden. Papyrus was formerly a part of the StoraEnso Group but is now owned by the Private Equity firms Altor and Triton.
The Challenge
For many years, Papyrus used in-house developed software packages for order handling, logistics, purchasing, deliveries and business intelligence. Like most companies (and many other large enterprises), Papyrus decided to replace this IT environment with an SAP-based package. The rationales were certainly OK: to quit being dependant on proprietary technology and to profit from economy-of-scale.
However, some problems became evident when the SAP roll-out reached the Nordic countries. In brief, the roll-out did not sufficiently observe some important differences in how the paper & consumables markets work in different countries. As a result, the perception of the new, SAP-based IT support was in some cases inferior to the old, in-house developed system.
The Solution
For starters, it must be stressed that the challenged described above did not originate from the choice of SAP, but was rather related to project-management. In particular, the involvement from the business, the demand side*, was in most countries not sufficient at all – the project became technology-oriented, driven mainly by the IT department.
Advince assisted Papyrus in establishing, educating and mentoring the demand side of the roll-out project, lead by a senior Scandinavian business representative and having all important business functions represented on a high enough level for a Swedish re-start.
The Benefits
In general, the re-start of the SAP rollout, changing to putting the business in the driver’s seat, resulted in an IT situation that much more supported the way business was carried out in Sweden.
“What Advince and we did together was really no rocket science”, says Peter Sandberg, Papyrus CEO. “Advince acted as mentors and helped Papyrus establish good project management principles and a well-founded roll out plan”.
Further Information:
From Papyrus: Available upon request
From Advince: Filip Ekstrand, filip.ekstrand@advince.se +46 70 262 25 57
* For good tutorials on IT Demand & Supply, see:
”Business / IT Fusion”, Peter Hinssen, Machmedia SA, Belgium, 2009
”Splitting Demand from Supply in IT”, McKinsey Quarterly, September 2006