Putting Data First for Life Sciences with Bio-Rad
Streamlined global SAP data migration across diverse legacy systems achieves data accuracy and ensuring ongoing compliance.
About the Company
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. is a developer and manufacturer of specialized technological products for the life science research and clinical diagnostics markets. Bio-Rad’s diagnostic products and systems use a range of technologies and provide clinical information in blood transfusion, diabetes monitoring, autoimmune, and infectious disease testing markets. These products are used to support the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of diseases and other medical conditions.
Choosing a Trusted Partner for Trusted Accuracy
Project Background
After decades of growth and expansion, Bio–Rad had accumulated many diverse, legacy systems – all in multiple languages and countries with disparate data sets that lacked uniformity. To streamline these systems and associated acquisitions into one global process, data had to be harmonized and cleansed before it could be consolidated into a single SAP ECC instance. This final, major legacy SAP ECC data migration would culminate a multi-wave go-live and mark the successful completion of a globalization initiative known as the Mariposa Project.
"In partnering with Syniti, Bio-Rad was able to take data off the critical path. It became a non-issue. It enabled project resources to focus on other areas that were of issue.”
Implementation Highlights
Bio-Rad partnered with Syniti to streamline the global SAP data migration and define processes for subsequent waves.
“Initially, Bio-Rad didn’t have any real methodology or process to get the data from one system to another. When we brought in Syniti, they used their Data First methodology and SKP platform to make sure that we could make that happen,” explained Paul Michel, VP IT Governance & PMO at Bio-Rad Laboratories.
As soon as Syniti brought in the SKP platform and broke down their migration methodology, “from there, we started to see better outputs and results,” recalled Michel. “We were stuck with many Tier One objects – materials, products, customers, vendors – and had many, many issues with that to get those elements out of the legacy system and into SAP.”
Each release consisted of entire regions of countries moving their business operations to SAP. In a single wave alone, hundreds of data-related objects – including recipes, routings, bins, pricing, source lists, and more – from numerous legacy source systems, needed to be properly converted and mapped before they could be integrated.
Prior to Syniti, there weren’t any referential integrity checks – meaning that if inventory needed to be loaded, you needed to know the predecessors of data objects first to ensure that the inventory could even be loaded. “If you don’t have that, if you don’t have a tool like SKP that does that and connects the dots, then it’s very difficult to do,” Michel explained.
Multiple countries, regions, and languages weren’t the only complexity in the global transformation; different regions also have their own regulations and licensing requirements. Many of these complexities could also impact shipping, on-time delivery, and customer satisfaction. In order to make all that happen, all the data has to be first and foremost accurate, with clear governance and roles in place on who takes ownership of what data. In other words, accountability of the data.
"For any efforts associated with data migrations, Syniti was so predictable in the outcomes that we were looking for that we didn’t want to look for another partner or another tool. This was the tool that worked and that delivered the results that we were looking for."
Results
“For any efforts associated with data migrations, Syniti was so predictable in the outcomes that we were looking for that we didn’t want to look for another partner or another tool. This was the tool that worked and that delivered the results that we were looking for,” said Michel.
“After a while it starts to make sense, people start to see the outcomes and the data quality is improving,” he continued. “So that predictability starts to sink in, and people start to realize this is a method that we can stand behind.”
That predictability played a key role in establishing trust as Syniti continued to demonstrate the results that were promised upfront. In each data load, the integrity of the data was checked through at every step of the process. Several mock data loads test the accuracy of the data, building upon each load to form a better data quality system – so by the time you go to production, it’s perfect.
“Our data has to be a hundred percent accurate,” said Michel. “We’re an FDA-regulated company, so starting with a partner like Syniti who just focuses on data gives you an advantage to make sure that it’s being taken care of and taken seriously. Look at Syniti as a partner that can help you to take one of the critical success factors for a project and make sure that it works.”