Engie Electrabel
For many years, the firm has used OpenText™ Archiving and Document Access for SAP® Solutions on-premises to improve the access, performance and lifecycle management of customer-related documentation for its critical SAP environment.
Joris Verberckmoes, head of Delivery and Operations at Engie Electrabel, explained further. “The archival of content from SAP, both data and documents, whilst critical for record keeping and the provision of customer service, is not a core part of our business. So, when looking at which of our applications could be moved to the cloud to reduce cost and the support overhead, this was an ideal candidate.”
A move to the cloud would ensure that the solution is always up to date, eliminating the need to make costly investments to remain compliant. This would enable the IT landscape to be improved and simplified by decommissioning current solutions, reducing storage use, database overhead and internal support and maintenance.
Having evaluated a number of potential solutions to replace the on-premises implementation and migrate content to the cloud, one solution stood out.
“We took the decision to remain with OpenText, after many years of successful collaboration. As well as providing the operational capabilities we sought, OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP Solutions was highly regarded by top analyst companies, including Gartner and Forrester,” said Verberckmoes. “A key area for us was the migration of our existing content, around 27 TB. OpenText was able to clearly show us how the migration could be achieved, with no negative impact on our day-to-day business activities.”
Among the many factors that influenced the choice was the seamless integration between OpenText and SAP. Users do not have to learn a new interface, they simply continue to use SAP in the way they are used to and OpenText provides the content needed to carry out the task at hand.
“The OpenText solution enables us to deliver customer-related content directly to the customer too, through our MyEngie customer portal over the internet,” stated Verberckmoes. “Delivering customer service digitally is key to our future strategy and with a variety of prebuilt OpenText adaptors and its adherence to standards such as CMIS [Content Management Interoperability Services] we can provide content quickly and easily through any number of applications or services, adding value to our customers.”
The majority of archived documents are customer bills, produced by Engie Electrabel’s output management solution. They are then available to view via SAP and the MyEngie customer portal. Other customer-related documents, such as invoices, contracts and uploads from other parties, e.g. distributors, are also archived from multiple channels, including email and scan capture, automating the entire process.
“OpenText worked with us to deliver the solution and achieve quality certification to ISO 27001 and also SOC 2, assuring security, availability, integrity and customer data privacy,” added Verberckmoes. “The solution is meeting our objectives to help us lower and stabilize our operational costs [and] provide access for our customers, improving security, monitoring and administration. The new reporting and administration console is a great improvement and we are saving time thanks to OpenText.”
Since implementing the solution, Engie Electrabel has moved its subsidiary, Engie Fabricom, which specializes in the design, implementation and maintenance of multi-technical installations and services, to the OpenText Cloud. This was significantly more cost effective than Fabricom establishing its own cloud archive.
“OpenText has effectively become the standard for SAP data and document archiving at Engie Electrabel, allowing us to leverage our knowledge and the investments we have made,” said Verberckmoes. “Future plans include greater use of OpenText solutions in the areas of optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP) and integration to our robotic process automation (RPA) solution. We also plan to integrate with our customer relationship management (CRM) platform, Salesforce.com, in the near future, which will drive even greater benefits for our customers.”
