The global manufacturer of basic materials with more than 90.000 employees and 18 bn € in revenue, pursues a common business model strategy across 22 countries in Europe, Middle East and North Africa. This common business model did require one consolidated SAP system and service across EMEA. Therefore, in a first step, the company had only established a central SAP project group, while the other IT operations remained locally within the countries with only minor coordination.

At the end of 2006, this situation was perceived unsuitable for the future support of the business system strategy in EMEA. dprp was assigned by the client to determine, together with the internal management team, the maturity of the current organization and inherent skills. Based on these insights, dprp should develop and recommend a transformation program: First to a 'Qualified Business Partner' and then with the extension to a 'Business Engineering Position' to the European Business Model.

dprp supported the 18-months transformation program was to a 'Qualified Business Partner'. The teams of 10 different projects had to deliver results with validated evidences at around 120 milestones, as for example:

• Business/IT and IT/IT Governance was strategically updated and roles & responsibilities of IT within the customer's business were clearly defined
• The IT organization in EMEA was integrated and optimized, documented within an Organizational Handbook
• European IT Service Management processes have been modeled. implemented and finally internally audited to increase the service quality. Continuous improvement process is implemented for increasing performance.
• European IT Service Catalog has been captured as the basis for future improvement
• Operating Level Agreements (OLA’s) are developed as the basis to improve efficiency of operational service management
• Strategy formulation process is defined and tested in long-term decision making
• New IT Project Approval Process to enable sound investment decisions, based on robust cost/benefit projections and risk assessments was developed and implemented
• A new Customer Management Organization is set up with improved customer proximity to increase customer satisfaction on a jointly defined level
• In-souring of user help desk was conducted to improve customer proximity
• The RFP for SAP Hosting, contract negotiation and contract closing was performed
• Supplier- & contract management is implemented to improve the relationships with selected suppliers
• The transformation to a 'Qualified Business Partner' was successfully completed after 18 months with completion of 90% of originally planed deliverables. The client is ready to enter the next phase.