Як Метінвест Діджитал реалізовує важливі проєкти під час війни: впровадження SAP в компанії Метінвест-Шіппінг

Despite the unstable year 2022, Metinvest Digital worked on important projects and is successful in this activity. One of the most complex projects from an architectural point of view in 2022 – "Implementation of SAP in the company Metinvest-Shipping". Metinvest-Shipping – is a leading national transport and forwarding company of Ukraine, part of the Metinvest Group, which organizes rail and road transportation in Ukraine and beyond, as well as handles cargo in the largest ports of Ukraine. Today, Metinvest Group has one of the largest and most complex SAP landscapes not only in Ukraine, but also in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

What is the project about?

The project was created for the most convenient platform, which integrates the business processes of Metinvest-Shipping with the Assets that use its services, into a single SAP landscape. The purpose of the project – creation of an end-to-end chain of automation and control of logistics services in the Group. Currently, 16 enterprises of the Metinvest Group keep records in SAP.

How was the project implemented?

When they decided to implement the project, most specialists were confident that there would be no difficulties, since Metinvest Digital already has certain corporate working templates that could be applied with minimal adaptation and quickly implemented in the Metinvest-Shipping company. However, this company turned out to be special because, unlike production units that produce metal or ore, Metinvest-Shipping – a transport and forwarding company with a wide portfolio of services. It provides transport and forwarding services for railway and road transport, provides sea and river agent services, brokerage services and inspection services in the ports of Ukraine. At the same time, the company's business model provides for the provision of services both in its own park and in the rented one, and there is also the option of purchasing logistics services on the market on behalf of customers. An additional challenge was the task of integrating the accompanying tender platform for the purchase of auto services and proposing a solution for the integration of the data of the software complex of the information and dispatch service used by production Assets.

The list of such services could not be covered by template solutions in the project, and there were no ready solutions. This required much more time to study similar processes of designing solutions in the industry, because at the initial stage, a similar level of complexity of the project did not exist on the market. Of the entire scope of the project, about half of the solutions were corporate, the rest were either very deeply adapted to the needs and specifics of Metinvest-Shipping, or completely made "from scratch". The project was the development of a unique solution for the logistics assets of the Metinvest Group.

What difficulties were faced during the implementation of the project and how did the war affect it?

The key challenge was the unique development of a system that would take into account a wide range of services and a developed business model, which would allow managing own and leased transport for logistics services, ensuring the purchase and sale of Metinvest-Shipping services in Ukraine and abroad, and providing services by own subdivisions.

Before the war, about a hundred performers worked on the project, two-thirds of them – these are employees of Metinvest Digital, and another third – external workers are involved. With the beginning of the war, we were forced to abandon the services of a contractor. We broke off absolutely all relations with foreign colleagues, as there were Russians and Belarusians among them. And they also refused the services of Ukrainian contractors and redistributed the resource to our employees in order to optimize the financial burden. These resources were much less than needed, and this was a certain difficulty. But the specialists of Metinvest Digital managed to adopt all the knowledge and experience that was available on external resources, completely re-plan the work on the project and complete all the work with internal expertise.

Also, the war, in addition to the unavailability and asynchronous presence of project participants Metinvest Digital and Metinvest-Shipping at the stage of development and integration testing due to active hostilities in the cities of presence (Mariupol, Odesa, Kyiv), power outages and Internet, radically affected the change logistics chains.

What is the value of the project?

The value of the project is that we now have reliable, up-to-date and fully harmonized data accounting from the point of view of corporate reporting. The project provided a basis for further integration of many vectors of its development: integration with Assets – by consumers of services, integration with financial services of buyers of foreign Assets. Now we have concrete ideas and know how they can be technically implemented to make life easier on Assets, reducing the amount of routine.

Are additional additions or changes in the project planned?

There are two areas that we plan to develop. Firstly, to implement the automation of the display process for any Metinvest Group enterprises to purchase services from Metinvest-Shipping – the so-called intercompany. Since, if we are talking about the sale of goods between enterprises, then this service is implemented in the usual way for us, but if we are talking about the sale of services, and Metinvest-Shipping sells services itself, then there is no such solution at the moment, but it would be useful for Assets. That is why specialists of Metinvest Digital are thinking about this revision.

The second direction we want to do – it is to develop the freight forwarder's ARM so that it can work both within our country and at foreign ports. Unfortunately, the war interfered with our plans and the logistics chain changed. But, since Metinvest Digital created the product "from scratch", we have already seen how it can be integrated into the material accounting of foreign Assets. For example, it is possible to organize the creation of accounting documents based on events that are registered in the forwarder's APM. It is quite realistic to implement from the technical side and will help, conditionally, instead of two dozen different reports, each of which travels its own route between managers and may have discrepancies in the data, to have up-to-date and verified information in a single instance and in one system.

The war made adjustments to the business and it became more difficult to follow the project implementation methodology that was previously planned, so Metinvest Digital undertook additional training and support in order to be able to fully support the customer in this project. And since this project is fully implemented, Metinvest Digital specialists actively participated not only in technical aspects, but also in the development of new business processes and changes in certain processes. Also took part in the agreement with other Assets of the new system and terms of cooperation with Metinvest-Shipping in order to determine and implement the optimal ways of current cooperation together with them. Therefore, it is safe to say that this project was implemented «turnkey».