Post-merger integration with large-scale SAP migration

GETEC PARK.SWISS – an industrial park for the chemical and life science industries – is located near Basel, Switzerland, directly on the Rhine and the border with Germany. Major companies such as Clariant, Novartis, Bayer, and BASF are based on around 51 hectares in Muttenz. Others, such as Syngenta, will arrive starting in 2020. A total of 25 companies have moved in so far, ranging from specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals to medical gas production and laboratory automation.

Until the end of 2018, the present GETEC PARK.SWISS still consisted of two separate but directly adjacent parks: Infrapark Baselland with the operating company Infrapark Baselland AG and the Schweizerhalle plant. Infrapark Baselland AG was owned by Clariant Plastics & Coatings AG (as a subsidiary of Clariant AG) and the Schweizerhalle plant was part of Novartis Pharma Schweizerhalle AG.

At the end of 2018, the two companies divested their infrastructure units and sold their activities and asset shares to G+E GETEC Holding GmbH from Magdeburg. With the acquisition of Infrapark Baselland AG and its activities as well as the production and infrastructure facilities of Novartis, the two parks were merged on January 1, 2019. Since January 1, 2020 they have been trading under the name GETEC PARK.SWISS AG.

With the acquisition and consolidation of the two parks, GETEC continued on its internationalization course and expanded its service portfolio. G+E GETEC Holding GmbH is an energy provider with around 1,400 employees in Saxony-Anhalt that primarily offers “green” energy solutions. GETEC is active in eleven countries and recently generated sales of around 600 million euros.

With GETEC PARK.SWISS AG, the GETEC Group now also provides all services for the companies based in Muttenz. These include facility management and energy supply for the companies, site logistics and technical services as well as waste disposal and wastewater pretreatment.

However, the takeover and consolidation of the two industrial parks also meant that GETEC had to take over the corresponding IT processes and data of the acquired companies and facilities – starting with Clariant’s operating company, Infrapark Baselland AG. The procedure was followed in this order due to the need to take over full operation of the Schweizerhalle plant exactly one year after signing the contract. This required a prepared IT structure separate from Clariant AG – including a functional SAP system.

GETEC therefore planned to extract the processes, settings, and data of Infrapark Baselland AG from Clariant AG’s SAP system and transfer them to a company-owned existing SAP system – as a separate company code and controlling area in this existing system. The SAP system belongs to a subsidiary of GETEC, EMMTEC in Emmen, the Netherlands – the operating company for the second largest industrial park in the Netherlands.

Detailed process with six project phases

GETEC commissioned the experts from GAMBIT Consulting with the PMI integration and SAP migration and they implemented the project together with GETEC and Clariant in a total of seven months. Initially, a total duration of six months had been planned for the project. However, the go-live date had to be postponed by one month, at the customer’s request, during the course of the project, due to necessary adjustments in the logistics area.

The SAP specialists at GAMBIT started by developing a detailed process plan with six project phases: project preparation and implementation, two consecutive functional and integration tests, cutover preparation, and final go-live. Based on this plan, the processes and interfaces in the modules FI, CO, PM, CS, PS, MM, and WM as well as master data, inventory values, and open transactions – having been prepared accordingly – were extracted from Clariant AG’s legacy system and transferred to EMMTEC’s existing SAP system.

The experts used various migration tools to do this: the tried and tested SAP Legacy System Migration Workbench (SAP LSMW) as well as additional and partly custom developed migration tools for the migration of particularly complex structures. During the project, the GAMBIT specialists also supported their customer with the network definition under development and with setting up the necessary interfaces.

At the end of the project, the customer was satisfied, because its goal of a smooth transfer of the Infrapark Baselland business processes as well as the necessary data from the Clariant systems and applications had been fully achieved. GETEC PARK.SWISS AG can now concentrate on further improving the range of services offered at the industrial park and providing the companies on site with further growth opportunities.