Apollo Tyres Ltd : SAP Version Upgrade

Despite being such a complext implementation, it was the fastest version upgrade ever done by any company

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

This fast growing Indian MNC recently acquired Dunlop International, South Africa and was keen on expanding its SAP implantation to all of its global locations. Before expanding the application company came across the need to upgrade SAP version. The challenge for Apollo tyres was to complete upgradation at present locations before starting implementation at any of its global locations and as it may lead to delays in starting any of its global SAP rollout. Earlier Apollo Tyres was using SAP version 4.7 Enterprise and upgraded it to ECC6 version which is an entirely new platform as it runs on Netweaver. Biggest challenge Apollo tyres faced was in terms of user comfort, downtime requirement of business transactions. Project was started in November and downtime requirement for version upgrade was 48 Hours. Suitable timeframe available for this was only on 26th Jan-27th jan 2008 and if this timeframe was missed, the next available timeframe was in August. Despite all these challenges and various complexities involved, Apollo tyres managed to finish the project within the deadlines. As per bench marking and SAP, this is fastest version upgrade they have ever encountered.

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