Leading US-based medical technology and services company leverages Patni's expertise in executing large-scale, multi-geography application management services (AMS) projects to consolidate and standardize its IT landscape and thereby speedily and cost-effectively respond to its stakeholders.

The Client
With US $4 billion in revenue and products sold in more than 100 countries, the client is a leading medical devices company with operations & manufacturing facilities in more than 20 locations worldwide. Its four focus areas include cardiac rhythmic management, atrial fibrillation, cardiovascular and neuromodulation.

The Challenge
The client's business model depends on timely delivery of highly critical and sensitive devices to hospitals and patients, around the world. This made a smooth running and well organized supply chain a critical business imperative for supporting and sustaining high efficiency levels. The client's application landscape comprised a mix of SAP as well as dedicated legacy ERP systems such as Siebel, MfgPro, and Great Plains among others. These systems ran a multitude of sales and manufacturing processes. In order to consolidate and standardize its IT landscape in a phased manner, the client expanded its SAP footprint across various divisions. The client's inhouse IT team was already burdened with existing tasks. Consequently, it faced numerous challenges in rendering support services for the expanded SAP applications landscape. In addition to this, the following challenges further compelled the client to partner with an external IT services provider for its SAP AMS (application management services) requirements:

• Criticality of SAP ECC application as it supported business processes for the four major divisions including key 24x7 operations
• High administration and supports costs due to multi-location and multiinstallation nature of the business
• High volatility of enterprise solution market resulting in difficulty in recruiting and retaining IT talent
• Lack of well defined processes for handling development and production support as well as lack of quality procedure or performance metrics for production support
• Need for streamlining processes and procedures across different locations
• Limited bandwidth for support and maintenance due to focus on expanding the SAP footprint.

To address these challenges and manage its expanding SAP landscape, the client needed a partner with proven track record in executing large-scale, multigeography projects in a narrow time span. This would enable the client to focus and synergize its efforts on its core competencies. The vendor also wanted to design an application support structure, which would enable it to absorb the impact of ongoing implementations and at the same time speedily and cost-effectively respond to its stakeholders.

The Solution
The client enlisted the services of Patni as it offered a viable support model for its SAP AMS requirements. Patni's leveraged its efficient processes and rich experience in managing support activities in similar environments to address and reduce risks to the business. The solution also included support coverage for the diverse applications that constitute the client's IT landscape. Key aspects of the solution provided by Patni include:

• Management of SAP and non-SAP applications with 24x5 dedicated support extending to 24x7 using a "support on-call" model covering 2000+ users
• Absorption of the impact of new users/divisions/geographies going live and scaling up the support team in a flexible manner
• Provisioning a networked delivery service with teams located at various locations to provide optimum level of support and effective cost leverage
• Building processes and metrics to track the performance and defining service levels for measurement of delivery
• Providing consultancy and templates for creating a repeatable hypercare process to manage each go-live efficiently and in a standardized manner thereby reducing risks and costs.

The Benefits
By partnering with Patni for its SAP AMS requirement, the client was able to improve its operational efficiency in a sustained and costeffective way. Patni's global delivery model offered the client 24x7 support platform to quickly and effectively respond to business dynamics. With flexible support options, SLA-driven framework, and metrics for effective monitoring and client reporting, Patni's solution helped the client to significantly maximize returns on its SAP investments. Other significant benefits to the client include:

• Effective management of overall maintenance costs during four consecutive SAP rollouts across various divisions in the US
• Mitigated business risks
• Improved focus on SAP programs and utilization of resources for SAP footprint expansion
• Optimized application maintenance and SAP program costs
• Repeatable hypercare process to support post go-live of multi-country rollouts and integration of these regions into a global support model.