Vaillant Group Shows Vibrant Success Using SAP HANA

[Former Member]

The Vaillant Group, headquartered in Remscheid, Germany, is an internationally operating, family-owned company in the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning industry. The company employs a staff of more than 12,000 and is posting an annual turnover of about €2.5 billion.

The Vaillant Group runs SAP.

The company’s journey began in 2002 when they invested in the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Application. As the company grew, their technology needs advanced and they know they needed an upgrade. The Vaillant Group looked to SAP HANA to convert to in-memory computing and gain deeper customer insight, increase efficiency, and to save money.

When embarking on the business transformation with SAP, Vaillant Group identified their key objectives of accessing and analyzing data in real-time and do this using less server space. They also wanted access to up-to-date information on payment status.

Through a hardware partnership with HP and working with SAP Ramp-Up coach for SAP HANA database migration, The Valliant Group transformed their technology to achieve their main objectives.

Marc Stover, Head of Group IT Consulting at Vaillant Group said, “We are getting to know our customers better with SAP HANA. The software allows us to store and quickly report on massive amounts of customer history data. We can use that information to develop new services in the fields of maintenance, energy efficiency, and more.”

Overall, these changes resulted in data processing that is five times faster. There were roughly €660,000 in saving for SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse application development and administration, due to a 22 percent increase in operational efficiency.

From 2011, Vaillant group noted at 33 percent increase in savings in hardware, and experienced lower warranty costs and a shorter period for sales outstanding. Overall, customers were more satisfied, there were more wins, and overall higher profits. The forecast plan validation went from five minutes to 30 seconds, which is 90 percent faster.

By the numbers, the migration and transformation resulted in these top benefits:

• 2500 workdays saved for business planning activities
• 92 percent time savings on planning run (from three hours to 15 minutes)
• 98 percent faster reporting for accounts receivable

The Valliant Group successfully runs SAP, and is running better.