Second-time lucky for ANSTO with SAP IBP Rollout

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has proven the value of perseverance with second-time success in implementing SAP-led forecasting technology.

ANSTO is one of Australia’s largest public research organisations, playing a crucial role in the development of radiopharmaceuticals to improve the detection and diagnosis of disease, and supplying radioisotopes and radiotracers for research and application.

It implemented SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) in December 2021, enabling digitisation of its manufacturing supply chain management system and giving teams access to reliable insights in real-time to support better decision making.

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing as Cornelia Boonstra, the organisation’s head of integrated business planning, revealed at the Mastering SAP conference on the Gold Coast.

She outlined the challenging journey to implementing a system that is now saving ANSTO at least $1 million per year and delivering data-led insights with the potential to open up many lucrative new opportunities.

In a session targeted at supply chain and procurement professionals, Boonstra outlined the limitations of a legacy supply chain management system based on Microsoft Excel which was severely limited in its capabilities, produced unreliable data, and took an analyst up to two days to update the spreadsheet. The job of drawing out trends and insights to inform ANSTO’s sales strategies could take weeks, or even months to complete.

In a bid to move forward, ANSTO turned to SAP Advanced Planning and Optimisation (APO) in 2017, taking a year to implement a system that could produce 24-month forecasting down to SKU level. However, ANSTO staff found APO too inflexible, and returned to using Excel.

Finally ANSTO purchased SAP IBP, a Cloud-based solution offering the true statistical forecasting capability that would allow ANSTO to perform complex tasks such as customer categorisation and rebalancing its mix of locally produced and imported products. The latter function has dramatically reduced the organisation’s reliance on imports, driving seven-figure annual savings in just 18 months since the deployment.

Boonstra and her team also included functions such as revenue planning, budgeting, and reporting and analytics in the rollout, and sought to simplify the design and install robust testing protocols.

“We took a measured approach to deploying IBP, starting with the demand module first, followed by the supply module,” Boonstra told conference delegates. “We held daily stand-up meetings to make sure we stayed on track.”

Having successfully deployed SAP IBP within her own team and eliminated Excel-based planning, Boonstra is keen to champion a rollout of IBP across the entire organisation including finance and sales, and also to enhance the statistical forecasting capabilities by adding more historical data.

ANSTO has an extensive history with SAP, having implemented SAP SuccessFactors for its recruitment and employee management, and Concur for financial management of functions including staff travel and expense reconciliation.

ANSTO’s second-time success, with IBP succeeding a failed experiment with APO, demonstrates the value of careful and considered research to find the suite or product best suited to an organisation’s needs and workflows.