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DIS-CHEM IMPROVES SYSTEM HEALTH WITH A COST-EFFECTIVE MIGRATION TO HANA

Dis-Chem improves system health: seamless migration to HANA and SAP RISE, ongoing Managed Services

Migration of Dis-Chem Pharmacies’ SAP landscape to newly acquired on-premise hardware, then SAP RISE, and ongoing Managed Services

DIS-CHEM: AN OVERVIEW

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Dis-Chem Pharmacies is a large retail pharmaceutical chain in South Africa with an aggressive growth path. Dis-Chem has been South Africa’s first choice in pharmacies since 1978, with their linked dispensaries, family clinics, wound-care clinics and comprehensive self-medication centres. As a leading specialist in beauty, sport supplements, health and well-being, they offer expert advice and a wide range of products in these categories.

  DOWNLOAD SUCCESS STORY
  • Founded in 1978 by pharmacists Ivan and Lynette Saltzman
  • Over 150 stores in Africa and more than 18,000 employees
  • Listed 27.5% of its issued share capital on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in November 2016
  • The Dis-Chem Foundation provides care and support to improve the lives of individuals while relieving the burden on communities, families and friends.

Requirement: New infrastructure and move to HANA and SAP RISE

In 2018 Dis-Chem decided to invest in new infrastructure and align their choice of platform with the SAP roadmap. The outcome was to migrate all non-HANA databases to HANA. Dis-Chem considered this an attractive commercial opportunity as a result of previous HANA migration projects, as well as having a positive commercial impact through the elimination of DB2 licence costs on all SAP instances.

The EPI-USE Labs and First Technology teams delivered the project in record time with flying colours. The migration was seamless, and they overcame all the technical barriers with ease. Their communication was very good throughout; they kept our stakeholders well-informed, and aligned expectations. And they’ve continued to provide us with excellent support.

Kim Sim, Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Dis-Chem Pharmacies

Dis-chem project duration

Solution: Migration to HANA on-premise, SAP RISE
and Managed Services


Dis-Chem considered both cloud and on-premise options, selecting on-premise with new hardware. They selected EPI-USE Labs and First Technology, using Hitachi equipment. This decision was influenced by a successful BI HANA migration, as well as the hyperconverged solution which EPI-USE Labs implemented in 2016.

The EPI-USE Labs Managed Services team undertook this project by migrating each SAP system landscape separately, as planned in collaboration with Dis-Chem. The following system landscapes were migrated to newly acquired infrastructure, in this order:

  • Re-platforming of the SAP Business Warehouse (BW) landscape
  • SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) landscape (DMO Migration DB2 -> HANA)
  • SAP ECC HR landscape (DMO migration DB2 -> HANA)
  • SAP PI migration landscape (DB2 -> HANA)
  • SAP ECC FILO landscape (DMO migration, combining a Unicode conversion and DB2 -> HANA)

Aside from the above, the Fiori Gateway and Solution Manager systems were also migrated to HANA DB.

Critical business applications were then seamlessly moved to SAP RISE, ensuring optimal performance and scalability.

EPI-USE Labs provides ongoing SAP technical Managed Services including RISE BRIDGE through a combination of expert engineers and trusted processes, proactive monitoring and preventative maintenance, automation of repetitive tasks and modernization. Integrated innovative solutions include automated solutions to monitor, automate and orchestrate this complex landscape; Data Sync Manager™ to aid in maintaining refreshed non-productive systems; and Client Central™ as an incident and change management tracking facility.

Included as part of the Managed Services are SAP monitoring and housekeeping, break fixes and ticket resolution against an SLA, support pack and SAP note technical upgrades, proactive Basis processes, SAP Platform and Basis advisory and a regular set of non-productive client refreshes.

  SAP RISE: BRIDGE THE GAP 

Benefits to Dis-Chem:
reduction of 8TB of space

Dis-Chem_Icon-01      Cost savings thanks to huge reduction in space (8TB) and licence costs

Dis-Chem_Icon-03      Leveraging of new, more efficient technology

Dis-Chem_Icon-05      Considerable improvements in performance across all landscapes      

Dis-Chem_Icon-04      Stores can place category orders within an hour; this used to take all morning

Dis-Chem_Icon-02      Real-time reporting instead of relying on batch data loads

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BENEFITS OF QUERY MANAGER

Huge time savings
Flexibility when generating reports
Custom ABAP reports no longer necessary
Self-service reports for HR Manager
Less pressure on IT, e.g. Infoset customising eliminated
Central management of reports
Rapid implementation – less than a day
SAP authorisations are transferred
Only two days training necessary


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