Since 1928, spectators at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade have marveled at the iconic, giant balloons that drift through the streets of mid-town Manhattan. No party-store helium canister will do for these towering balloons, which often measure several stories high. Those gargantuan renditions of our favorite characters are all sent flying by Messer, a leader in the safe and reliable production and delivery of industrial and medical gases for more than 120 years.

Those gases also include oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, neon, xenon, and krypton—all critical to supporting processes and products in electronics, food and beverage, metals, biopharmaceuticals, and other industries.

Business demands and market realities in the dynamic gas sector are constantly in flux, so Messer relies on real-time data intelligence to stay agile and flexible in their decision-making. Increasingly hampered by siloed data and a patchwork of third-party visualization tools, Messer embarked on a digital transformation to create a next-generation data management solution worthy of the company’s high-tech, high-flying operations.

Data with a Purpose

Messer knows critical and often lifesaving business decisions require accurate, real-time intelligence and insights. CIO David Johnston explained: “The stakes in many of the sectors that we provide gases for are really very high.”

From steel plants to the semiconductor industry to intensive care units, “it is critical that our distribution processes are operating at a level that ensures our customers are getting what they need when they need it.” 

Messer was able to rise to the moment and meet the urgent needs of its customers when the COVID-19 pandemic delivered unprecedented demand for oxygen coupled with massive logistical challenges. That global crisis revealed that Messer’s legacy IT system needed an overhaul.

Messer’s siloed data was in several different databases, which meant it was time-consuming to access, and a single source of the truth was elusive. Various visualization tools also required different data formats, which slowed reporting time and bogged the IT department as it tried to manage a complex, disparate landscape, creating, as Johnston explained, “a huge amount of complexity and a huge amount of inefficiency.”

Messer CIO David Johnston sought a solution that would provide a unified source of truth and the powerful analytics tools Messer needed to give an elevated purpose to the company’s data—a new, cloud-based data management and analytics foundation for an actual data-driven enterprise. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) was the company’s choice.

The Modern Data Landscape Delivers

SAP BTP, with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, and the next-generation SAP Datasphere, provided a modern data architecture to establish a single, trusted source of truth, combining 12 data sources in one solution for mission-critical business insights.

Messer has been reaping benefits across the board, from IT and supply chain cost savings to improved customer service, inventory management, and data security. “We started with five specific use cases that we went after,” Johnston shared. “As I sit here today, we’re at well over 200.”

Messer’s new, simplified IT landscape has empowered business users, who benefit from intuitive, self-service dashboards and quick access to relevant, actionable, real-time data, as well as IT personnel, to now focus on higher-value, strategic tasks. This amounts to accelerated time-to-insight and more energy and resources available to focus on future innovation.

“With a data fabric that allows us to see our business in a consistent, fast, reliable, and highly trustworthy way,” Johnston said, “what we can do is really almost unlimited.”

Next for Messer and Wise Advice with an Eye on AI

With Messer’s new, streamlined data management foundation, the sky is no longer the limit.

“Our objective isn’t just to deliver a suite of great dashboards and great analytics stories,” Johnston explained. “Our goal is to build out a strong, coherent, strategic data fabric that will allow us to unlock the power of AI and drive the next level of business transformation.”

For other organizations hoping to build the data foundation that will send them soaring into the future, ready to capitalize on artificial intelligence technologies and whatever else awaits, Johnston’s advice is to frame your technology transformation as a business transformation, and a business imperative.

“Bring the business community together around data,” he said. “All the key stakeholders, the influencers, and the owners of data from across the organization: bring them to the table.”

The Full Episode

Messer CIO David Johnston joined SAP BTP Better Together: Customer Conversations to discuss the medical and industrial gasses industry and Messer’s digital transformation.

• Thought Leadership Podcast: Johnston sat down with Thulium’s CEO Tamara McCleary to discuss why end-to-end data-driven insights are necessary, what technology solutions were required for the world’s largest privately owned industrial gases company to transform, and why Messer leveraged SAP BTP to drive a complete business transformation.
• Practitioners’ Video: Johnston and I discuss why and how Messer, one of the biggest suppliers of medical oxygen and other industrial mission-critical gases, built a new, cloud-based data management and analytics foundation because the future belongs to data-driven organizations, and thriving in the dynamic industrial gases sector means responding quickly to changing market conditions.

Timo Elliott is vice president and global innovation advocate for SAP BTP at SAP.

A new independent study reveals that SAP Integration Suite significantly enhances integration developer efficiency and delivers substantial return on investment (ROI) for businesses.

The study, The Total Economic Impact™ of SAP Integration Suite, conducted by Forrester Research, found that SAP Integration Suite customers achieved a considerable 345% ROI over three years and experienced a 30% increase in integration developer efficiency, with the solution paying for itself in less than six months.  

Commissioned by SAP, the study surveyed six decision-makers responsible for application integration at the enterprise-level at their organizations.  Each participant had extensive experience deploying and utilizing SAP Integration Suite. The results demonstrate the suite’s power to accelerate innovation and integrate without obstacles, speed up connectivity across heterogenous application landscapes, and connect customers and workers to automated processes that drive significant business value. 

Key findings from the study include:

• 345% ROI and less than six-month payback: The study revealed an ROI of 345% over three years for the composite organization representative of the six companies interviewed using SAP Integration Suite. This return, coupled with a payback period of less than six months, made SAP Integration Suite a financially sound investment for the organizations looking to optimize their integration strategies. 
• 30% increase in integration developer efficiency for integration requests: SAP Integration Suite empowered developers to work faster and smarter, freeing up valuable time and resources for other strategic initiatives. This increased efficiency can be attributed to the platform’s user-friendly interface, pre-built connectors, and robust automation capabilities. 
• $984,000 in incremental profit: The research found that the organizations in the study leveraged SAP Integration Suite to generate US$984,000 in additional profit over three years. This significant financial gain demonstrates the platform’s ability to unlock faster time-to-market for new products and services, improve operational efficiency, and enhance customer experiences. 

The study’s findings show that “organizations adopt cloud services and SaaS applications to leverage real-time interactions for increased business velocity and agile collaboration with customers, suppliers, and partners. But integration development teams are challenged to integrate business-critical applications with business processes in heterogeneous cloud and hybrid IT landscapes.”

Interviewees noted several key features and benefits of SAP Integration Suite that contributed to their success, including:

• Integration advisor: A global CIO for an apparel maker stated: “By having integration advisor that automatically provides you with that information, which is very pertinent for that particular trading partner, the onboarding of interfaces becomes a breeze. It cuts down dramatically from weeks to a matter of days. We look forward to more AI capabilities to come.” 
• Pre-built connectors: The head of Applications Integration in instrumentation manufacturing stated: “For application integration projects, the prebuilt connectors can provide a speed up of 10 times. When we were building the interfaces from scratch, it was just our own developers doing the work manually.” 
• Methodology: Interviewees noted that by leveraging SAP Integration Suite’s overall methodology, their organizations benefited from systematic approaches and best practices for several enterprise-wide integration scenarios.  

Beyond the financial benefits, the study also revealed that SAP Integration Suite fosters a more rewarding and fulfilling work environment for integration developers and self-service users. Interviewees reported improved communication with business partners, enhanced customer satisfaction, and greater agility in responding to changing business requirements.  

 “Lowering the total cost of ownership, the reusability component, the ability to use AI or out-of-the box connectors, [and having] the power of integration advisor condenses your overall timeline for development, testing, and implementation.” said an interviewee who is the global CIO in the apparel industry. 

We believe the study backs up our view that integration is a critical key to unlocking business growth. To see how you can build a business case for how SAP Integration Suite and the integration technology of SAP BTP can drive cost savings and business benefits for your business, read the full Forrester Consulting study here.

Bharat Sandhu is senior vice president of AI and Cloud Platform at SAP.

Present in 30 countries and the largest energy company in Norway, Equinor provides energy for 170 million people daily and operates the world’s largest integrated offshore pipeline system. It is the No. 1 pipeline gas supplier in Europe and the third-largest net seller of crude oil in the world. In 2022, the company celebrated 50 years of turning natural resources into energy for people and progress for society.

From Manual to Machine-Driven Processes

In the past, Equinor had relied on manual processes for decision-making in asset management, but as the company expanded, it began embracing a data-driven approach, using automated dashboards. However, its decision-makers recognized the need for further advancements and envisioned adopting condition-based maintenance (CBM).

This transformation would allow for a more autonomous, machine-led, and data-driven approach to asset management, freeing up valuable internal resources and enabling team members to handle multiple cases simultaneously.

“Equinor wanted to progress from condition monitoring to condition-based maintenance,” Tom Naastad Svennevig, lead engineer at Equinor, explained. “For the past eight or nine years, we have operated a monitoring center where a few equipment groups are being monitored by use of home-grown dashboards as well as third-party expert systems. However, as the number of plants onboarded to the center increased, it required more and more resources. We believe that applying condition-based maintenance on equipment where it is possible to connect a remedial action to a degradation mechanism will relieve the resources working in the monitoring center.”

CBM is paradigm shift in asset management, allowing companies to move from traditional calendar-based maintenance schedules to a proactive approach powered by data-driven insights. While traditional maintenance strategies often lead to unplanned downtime, CBM empowers operators make informed decisions based on real-time equipment condition, mitigating disruptions and maximizing asset reliability.

“The primary purpose of condition-based maintenance for us is to provide confidence for continued safe operation and avoid disruption,” Svennevig added. “We believe that several degradation mechanisms we had in the past can be detected automatically, and actions being taken without human intervention.”

Benefits of an Integrated Solution

For Equinor, SAP Asset Performance Management stood out as a superior choice, offering a range of tangible benefits, particularly, according the Equinor manager: “In contrast to third-party solutions that require data migration, SAP Asset Performance Management seamlessly integrates with existing SAP systems, eliminating the need for redundant data entry and ensuring data accuracy across all platforms.”

Other benefits that Equinor perceives include:

• Reduced administrative burdens and increased overall efficiency
• Automatic updating of asset information across all relevant components
• Importing equipment condition status from third-party expert systems
• Storing evidence for safe operation and triggering actions for degraded conditions
• Generating notifications based on condition monitoring rules for prompt responses to potential equipment issues
• Seamless ingestion of sensor data from field systems into SAP Asset Performance Management
• Pre-assigning tasks to maintenance notifications based on asset strategies and failure modes
• Empowering maintenance teams to act swiftly and effectively, minimizing downtime and preventing potential equipment failures Seamless scaling to accommodate additional equipment and assets

Optimizing Asset Status Visualization with SAP Asset Performance Management

Effectively visualizing asset status is crucial for making timely and well-informed decisions, which is why SAP Asset Performance Management offers comprehensive dashboarding capabilities through embedded SAP Analytics Cloud. This allows users to select specific assets or entire fleets for a detailed overview in a centralized view, which enables quick identification of potential issues and facilitates proactive maintenance interventions.

The dashboard utilizes clear, intuitive labels to indicate asset health status, ranging from “excellent” to “unacceptable,” which streamlines decision-making. Critical alerts are prominently displayed in orange, immediately grabbing the attention of maintenance personnel, and providing necessary context and guidance, ensuring that timely and appropriate actions are taken.

Additionally, the dashboard seamlessly integrates with Equinor’s wider SAP ecosystem, enabling real-time data exchange and integration with existing maintenance processes.

Effective Change Management: Important for CBM Implementation

Equinor has implemented a CBM-driven maintenance approach. CBM is running in production. The job to roll out the solution has started. The process of change management is main focus going forward.

“We will achieve this through clear leadership commitment, comprehensive communication, a pilot project for proof of concept, streamlined data smoothing for accurate monitoring, role redefinition for CBM management, establishment of KPIs for continuous improvement, and employee empowerment through involvement,” the Equinor manager explained. “Our objective is that this will result in transitioning to a proactive maintenance approach for 40% of our equipment and significant reductions in maintenance costs and asset downtime.”

“SAP Asset Performance Management helps us streamlining maintenance processes and facilitating proactive preventive maintenance,” Svennevig concluded.

Karin Fent is senior director of Global Customer Success Digital Supply Chain at SAP.

Top image courtesy of Equinor | Ole Jørgen Bratland © Equinor

NTT DATA Business Solutions A/S manages its HR and Finance operations from a single cloud platform with the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. By leveraging a common data model to power end-to-end processes, NTT DATA Business Solutions is improving business performance while reducing risk, complexity, and cost.

Based in Germany, NTT DATA Business Solutions helps companies transform, grow, and become successful with SAP solutions. The organization, part of NTT DATA Group and a global strategic partner of SAP, recently received the SAP MEE Award for Partner Excellence 2024 for Cloud Performance, and additional SAP partner awards for customer success management and intelligent enterprise value realization.

Integral to its success is a workplace culture built around advancing the skills and capabilities of its 15,000 employees. Enabling its people strategy to create value for its clients was a motivating factor in its decision to move to the cloud by implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

“It’s all about having the right people with the right skills and the right availability,” says Marianne Mia Jensen, senior director and head of Operations Region North and Eastern Europe for NTT DATA Business Solutions. “In our company, our employees are our most valuable asset. We need to make sure that they have the right skills and the right competencies to create the most value for our clients.”

Modernizing for the Future of Skills and Innovation

Founded in 1989 as S&P Consult, NTT DATA Business Solutions became one of the first SAP partners and went on to expand rapidly through both organic growth and acquisition. Over time, the organization accumulated a great deal of legacy technology, which created information silos and impeded business processes for staffing client projects.

Lacking visibility into its global HR processes and data, it needed to modernize its digital technology to deliver more centralization and harmonized processes, as well as sustain a lean administration to support the business. Also, as an exemplar for its clients, it wanted to have a robust, flexible platform for future innovation and technologies.

For its cloud journey, NTT DATA Business Solutions chose SAP as its technology partner. In October 2019, shortly before the pandemic, the organization launched SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for its global workforce. When the pandemic began in 2020, NTT DATA Business Solutions was well positioned to manage its workforce through the crisis. Jensen recalls, “That implementation, plus a couple of other apps, gave us a good foundation [during the pandemic] because we were very digitalized.”

To modernize its ERP, NTT DATA Business Solutions chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, launching the solution in the Nordic countries in April 2023.

Jensen summarizes how the technology supports the business strategy, referring to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP SuccessFactors HCM, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), and SAP Concur solutions as she says, “That is our foundation for finding the right person for the right job.” She notes, “We also look at the trends in the market. What are the needs of tomorrow? And map the skills gaps, while also looking at what the preferences of our consultants are when it comes to professional and personal development and growth. SAP SuccessFactors is key for us.”

Finding the Right Person for the Job – with Data

Now when a project staffing request comes through, NTT DATA Business Solutions has a data-driven process in place to find the right person with the right skills and availability to staff client projects. It starts with an analysis of the data in NTT DATA’s own resource management app, built on SAP BTP, to check the consultants’ availability and an analysis of the skills database in SAP SuccessFactors solutions. The project is set up in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Once the actual work begins, the consultants record their time in the SAP BTP time registration app and expenses in the SAP Concur solution. Financial processes are performed in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, where the data synchronization is facilitated by SAP’s common data model. As a final step, reporting is performed in SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Analytics Cloud.

Power of a Common Data Model

Together, these two SAP solutions – SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition – can be a powerful basis for improved efficiency and business agility because they leverage a common data model. As a result, organizations can benefit from streamlined HR processes; end-to-end integration with seamless connectivity between HR and finance functions for accurate and up-to-date employee data across the organization; greater transparency of data for analytics and reporting on workforce trends, costs, and profitability to enable better strategic planning and resource allocation; and compliance with regulatory requirements and data security.

The seamless synchronization of data by using a common data model for SAP business applications helps reduce the need for manual data entry and redundant processes. This means, for example, employee data that is maintained in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is available in real time in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition while master data, like cost center data, flows seamlessly from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. Eliminating data silos enables the HR and finance teams to work with consistent, accurate data for important employment decisions and legal reporting obligations.

Visibility Advances People Strategy and Client Projects

With SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, NTT DATA Business Solutions benefits from having a single source of truth. “We have all our consultants and contractors [visible to us] from SAP SuccessFactors all the way to the billing. That provides us with a very detailed view of all the things that are going on in the system,” Jensen says.

It now has global HR processes in place and visibility across different skills and capabilities within the organization, independent of where people work – whether finance, supply chain, or sales. Additionally, a new financial model for activity-based revenue recognition provides detailed financial insight into projects and client engagements.

Each updated release of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, delivered biannually in the cloud, introduces the latest innovations for the organization. Reflecting on NTT DATA’s journey to the cloud, Jensen says the key to integrating innovation is to focus on processes rather than technology.

“There are a lot of technology and systems that need to be set up, but it is important to focus on the processes that you are implementing, to have a focus on the data – make sure you understand how it works – in the new process with the new system. And finally, change management is critical.”

She adds, “You need to understand how to work with the new technology, not just today, but also tomorrow.”