New Horizon ..

I’m on the move again. This time, I’m venturing into palm oil industry, well not exactly, I’m still in SAP line. This time around, the challenges of business processes in this industry are very much different as compared to my previous project. More or less, it has a manufacturing background and thus it has to utilize couples of unfamiliar SAP modules such as Production Planning (PP) and Quality Maintenance (QM).

Let me brief on the background of the company first. IOI group is a well known palm oil player not just in Malaysia but internationally as well. From humble beginning, it has grown to be the third most powerful player in the palm oil industry just next to Sime Darby and Wilmar (Singapore). To be able to move up to a higher value chain in this industry, IOI has acquired Loders Croklaan from Unilever Group (Netherlands) in 2002 in which, the latter has the specialty in quality fats and oils in the food industry. In essence, rather than focusing on upstream activities alone, IOI has the ambition to champion in the downstream activities as well which is lucrative in the long term run but requires more innovations as compared to upstream activities. Thus, the acquisition was a strategic move in order to jumpstart the ambition right away. Today, Loders Croklaan is part of IOI group under IOI plantation and downstream segment. Worldwide, it has presence in all over continents and the main plants are located in Rotterdam (Netherlands), Pasir Gudang (Malaysia) and Chicago (USA).

This is where I came into the picture. Loders Croklaan is a very advanced organization I must say. I admire their innovation, efficiency and not to mention their work ethics. Based on the SAP system that they have currently, it simply shows how far and sophistication they are in executing their work daily. Almost all business processes have been incorporated into the SAP and yet, they still keen to improve with various SAP projects set in the horizon. I think one of the barometers for the SAP sophistication that they have is via utilizing SAP XI extensively in their system. Well, at the moment there are two important ongoing projects I’ve been involved so far, one is called 4G project for Pasir Gudang plant and another one is called AMRO project for Rotterdam plant. In general, both plants are utilizing the same SAP modules, SD,MM,FICO,PP and QM. However, due to different business requirements in each country, there will be two set of implementations need to be done as I mentioned earlier 4G and AMRO. Working with Dutch counterpart has been a worthwhile experience. I’m trying to be as efficient as they are and most importantly productive. I need to come at 9 and go home at 5 but the quality of work produced in the span of 7 hours must be at par or better yet more with what they can produce. This is efficient and productive. The great thing about this culture is how it could improve the family values in my life as I could spend more time with my beloved family. Over the years, I’ve learned one thing, money can’t buy you happiness. I think the core definition of happiness is when you are surrounded by your beloved ones all the time. Also, takes care of your health too. Nowadays, it’s not surprising to get a heart attack at a young age. Live your life because it’s worth it as the radio said.

So, I definitely will enjoy my career here at Loders Croklaan . The process of learning never stops, thus I intend to absorb as much as I could in my new horizon.

Business Model?Transformation?Process? Whatever the term, it's all about innovation..

It’s all too common now. In this harshest economic environment, people are forced to be innovative. Folks on the street are cutting unnecessary expenses, corporate folks are finding ways to reduce businesses cost and at the end of the day, almost all are directly or indirectly being affected. The good thing is, when we overcome this situation, we are actually exhibiting innovative trait which is surprisingly hidden when not facing any hardships. After all, innovation is simply interpreted as any sort of improvements, let it be our spending nature, public transportation woes, business processes or model.

Talk about business model, I am very surprised and to some extent a bit annoyed with investment banker or they say it the golden boy of wall street, Goldman Sachs. Yes, they were brilliant back then. Perhaps, one of the pioneers in investment banking. And yes, they were innovative. Why not, their business model provides them with high margin profit much higher than conventional banking. Their brilliance were lauded, again Wall Street did it again. But they became greedier, introducing highly complex financial instruments all with non-backed physical but dubious assets. This simply translates to a very high risk game. Turns out, it crumbled with no mercy which almost wiping out the existence of investment banks including this golden boy of Wall Street. Well, perhaps it was too big to fail, again taxpayer money was the saviour. Why I’m annoyed by this, I don’t really care how they make money but their gamble did really affect all of us here, normal folks on the street. But surprise surprise, last week they announced billions of profit again and millions of bonus to be distributed to these high ‘gambler’ executives. Come on, we know the same old tricks were being used again. Taxpayers were in no mood to celebrate but rather asking, how in the hell we are still poor and getting poorer? A valid question indeed. Well, they should just concede their business model innovation are just not that innovative anymore but rather we have to anxiously wait the next incoming financial disaster..sigh..

On a positive note, I'm a bit fortunate that still some companies are willing to spend on business process transformation or else, I'm out of work. Little bit history on current project, AEON (originally from Japan and affectionately known as Jusco right here) is one of top retailers in the world and has been expanding aggresively in Malaysia. To date, there are 21 shopping stores have been opened nationwide with the biggest shopping center located in Bukit Tinggi Klang. With billions of revenue and over 15,000 staffs in Malaysia alone, AEON is looking to transform their three core business processes, HR, Finance & Material Management. HR is very much complicated, some of the facts:

- 21 stores nationwide
- almost 10,000 contract and part-timer staffs and over 5000 permanent staffs
- Some of compensations are based on incentives, thus generating lots of variables
- Salary is based on shift plan and clock in/out data (more than 10 mins late, deduct 1 day salary, etc).

Well previously, many of HR operations were done manually or with the help of many island of applications with no integration. It's creating unnecessary workload which can be optimized if catered by integrated system. However, due to complex business processes, this implementation proved to be pain in the neck. Implementing is one thing, educating the users proved to be the hardest part in the project. In addition to next phase implementation, IBM will also provide the support for the whole SAP operation of AEON. Finance (or FICO as known in SAP) on the other hand is much simpler, as it's very much standardized from one project to another. The only concern is whether the implementation conforms with Malaysian audit requirements. Interestingly, AEON might be one of the handfuls of companies in the world that utilizes SAP Fund Management.

In the future, AEON will integrate the Financial/Controlling (SAP FICO) with Material Management (SAP MM). Once completed, the whole AEON business processes will be integrated seamlessly. That's what I call innovation. My experience so far has been fulfilling. Previously, I was mainly involved on technical part of the implementation. For this project however, I need to understand all business processes involved. It's challenging though but experience wise, it might be worthwhile.

Before I finish off mumbling, just found out my previous bill design for RPU is posted on their website. As I remembered, this was one of the most challenging project for me. Trying to get the bill's amount right was one thing, trying to figure out the whole type of charges in the bill were another. But I'm glad it was successful at the end...

source: http://www.rpu.org/your_home/ways_to_pay/online_payment_options/

till next time, ciao for now ...