Langenfeld, June 18, 2018: Raiffeisen Waren-Zentrale Rhein-Main eG (RWZ) must manage approximately 2000 user applications in SAP each year due to employee hiring, departures, and position and department changes. The individual requirements of its 13 areas of operations, multiple people involved in the application process, and processes that evolved over time made hiring new employees time-consuming. By using the apm identifier from valantic ERP Services AG (formerly realtime AG) for user applications in SAP, the cooperative significantly simplified and speeded up the onboarding process. Rights assignment in SAP and the process of equipping employees with tools have now been integrated into a transparent workflow.
RWZ is the third-largest of the main cooperatives engaged in agricultural trade in Germany. Approximately 3300 employees across Germany work in more than 200 locations. It represents more than 150 member cooperatives, 70,000 farmers, vintners, and horticulturists, as well as thousands of commercial and hundreds of thousands of private customers.
“We were already using valantic’s GRC solution apm atlantis successfully in our SAP ERP and in SAP CRM. Over time, the process of user applications evolved, but it was never standardized,” explains Nils Meißner, Group Manager for Application Consulting at RWZ. The 13 areas of operations with very different requirements and a correspondingly broad selection of roles and rights also posed challenges for the people making the applications and made phasing employees in and out very time-consuming. Complex and cost-intensive identity management software was out of the question for RWZ. The cooperative wanted a slim solution that could make the existing process less error-prone, speed it up, and ensure transparency throughout. Since RWZ was already using valantic’s GRC solution apm atlantis successfully in both SAP ERP and SAP CRM, the new add-on apm identifier for user applications in SAP was a logical choice.
“With the opportunity to assign SAP roles and tools with a workflow and to greatly simplify onboarding with pre-configured user groups, the apm identifier offered us precisely the optimization potential that we wanted,” explains Nils Meißner, Group Manager for Application Consulting at RWZ.
The roll-out began with the sales groups, each of which supports between 100 and 150 employees. By defining two key users who handle the employee’s user application and two approvers, the number of people involved in the process was reduced considerably. The key users are now assigned to a user group, which sets the filter that determines which rights and tools are relevant for the area of operation in question. Thanks to this simplification, the process is less error-prone and incorrect selections are nearly impossible to make. The user application can now be automated completely thanks to the transfer to a workflow. Process progress and the processing status can now be viewed at any time; no more tedious follow-up inquires are necessary. Even function separation conflicts and critical rights in SAP can be avoided in advance.
“The transparency ensures a more sensible consideration and maintenance of user accounts by the area of operations. In addition, the data quality is higher, for, thanks to easy, comfortable handling of user applications, updates are applied and implemented more quickly,” summarizes Meißner.
Based on the sales groups’ positive experiences, the roll-out will be continued successively in the other business divisions.
