COPROB harvests new business opportunities with SAP and IBM
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- Europe
Country
- Italy
Product
- SAP Business Planning and Consolidation
- SAP ERP
- SAP Customer Relationship Manager
- SAP Enterprise Portal
- SAP Mobile Platform
Tech Stack
- IBM iLOG Transportation Analyst
- SAP Software
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Customer Satisfaction
Technology Category
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Agriculture
- Renewable Energy
Applicable Functions
- Logistics & Transportation
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Supply Chain Visibility
- Inventory Management
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
COPROB is one of Italy’s largest sugar beet processors, producing around of 284,000 tons of sugar (approximately 56 percent of the nation’s output). The company employs 310 people who work with 5,700 partner farms in northern Italy, generating sales of some EUR 335 million. As well as sugar processing, COPROB has recently expanded into renewable energy, using the beet biomass – a by-product of sugar production – as source fuel, and has won supply contracts with Enel Green Power. These contracts commit COPROB to supply specific quantities of biomass (energy crops and agricultural residues), which in turn means that COPROB needs to be able to predict future sugar processing operations and the quantities of biomass these are likely to produce.
The Challenge
COPROB, one of Italy’s largest sugar beet processors, wanted to boost efficiency, tighten finances and build out its new biomass energy business. With 5,700 partner farms to manage, the company faced the challenge of managing growth effectively. The company's existing systems were largely untouched by technology, with many processes being manual or relying on a combination of spreadsheets, local technology solutions, and department-specific expertise. The company needed to produce data of sufficient quality to enable the predictive analytics capabilities required to support the new biomass business, and to ensure continued success in the core business. Managing the 5,700 partner farms was critical, since knowing the quantity of beet each farmer had planted and crop expectations has a direct impact on sugar beet and biomass availability.
The Solution
COPROB engaged IBM Global Business Services to implement an enterprise process management solution based on SAP software, providing agile, integrated and centralized process management solutions. The IBM team designed and deployed SAP solutions that met COPROB’s unique and demanding business requirements. The solution was delivered through IBM Ascendant project methodology and supported by IBM Global Financing. The solution supports improved hierarchical master data management for fields, farms, farmers and supply chain partners, better visibility of budgets and constraints on production, tighter control over agricultural activities based on changing production needs and capacity constraints, and optimized management of transport logistics during harvesting. The scheduling of trucks is handled using IBM ILOG Transportation Analyst, an optimization engine for vehicle routing problems based on route, capacity and time constraints.
Operational Impact
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