United Brewries Integration Challenges
How IT Smoothened UB's Integration Challenges
A case study on Infrastructure in Manufacturing
Executive summary
The acquisition of Shaw Wallace posed a new challenge to the T. K. Subramanian, divisional vice-president of United Spirits group. The IT integration a tricky exercise, but this would be a cultural integration. The challenges involved reining in a new set of users, 10 new manufacturing units and offices. The different IT structures at Shaw Wallace brought in process differences and integrating the two entities on SAP, would need all of the team's skills, and some more. Reader ROI * Change management in a new entity * Value of fine-tuning existing business processes * User management
"There are processes at United Spirits that have been automated to such a degree that IT may not be very visible, but in the absence of IT, will become visible," Subramanian says. In March 2005, the structure would get a huge organizationwide fillip, throwing up a new challenge for Subramanian's team. The challenge stemmed from the group's Rs 1,300-crore acquisition of its closest domestic competitor, Shaw Wallace. For Subramanian's team, though, it was yesterday once more. Case Study Highlights * The setup in the Rs 3,600-crore liquor company has been segregated by geography: into five regional profit centres * There were 782 mergers and acquisitions in 2006 * IT assesses usage and creates an intranet portal for information users at senior levels who don’t utilize the ERP functionality — saving 120 SAP licenses.
Two years prior to the Shaw Wallace acquisition, the IT organization of the UB Group's spirits division had put the finishing touches to its SAP implementation - the largest change management exercise in its history until then. In doing so, all the units of company - which encompassed 111 servers - were, for the first time, on one unified IT system. Even in the midst of UB Group's own consolidation, Subramanian's immediate
A case study on Infrastructure in Manufacturing
Executive summary
The acquisition of Shaw Wallace posed a new challenge to the T. K. Subramanian, divisional vice-president of United Spirits group. The IT integration a tricky exercise, but this would be a cultural integration. The challenges involved reining in a new set of users, 10 new manufacturing units and offices. The different IT structures at Shaw Wallace brought in process differences and integrating the two entities on SAP, would need all of the team's skills, and some more. Reader ROI * Change management in a new entity * Value of fine-tuning existing business processes * User management
"There are processes at United Spirits that have been automated to such a degree that IT may not be very visible, but in the absence of IT, will become visible," Subramanian says. In March 2005, the structure would get a huge organizationwide fillip, throwing up a new challenge for Subramanian's team. The challenge stemmed from the group's Rs 1,300-crore acquisition of its closest domestic competitor, Shaw Wallace. For Subramanian's team, though, it was yesterday once more. Case Study Highlights * The setup in the Rs 3,600-crore liquor company has been segregated by geography: into five regional profit centres * There were 782 mergers and acquisitions in 2006 * IT assesses usage and creates an intranet portal for information users at senior levels who don’t utilize the ERP functionality — saving 120 SAP licenses.
Two years prior to the Shaw Wallace acquisition, the IT organization of the UB Group's spirits division had put the finishing touches to its SAP implementation - the largest change management exercise in its history until then. In doing so, all the units of company - which encompassed 111 servers - were, for the first time, on one unified IT system. Even in the midst of UB Group's own consolidation, Subramanian's immediate