Raj Petro Leverages Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud
Raj Petro, a Brenntag Group Company, is a leading petroleum and lubricant manufacturing and marketing company with a global footprint in more than 95 countries worldwide. Offering a complete range of industrial, automotive and specialty lubricants, the company employs more than 500 people and generates annual revenues of around USD 250 million. As the company accelerated its business growth, it looked at closely aligning its workflows, reporting and compliance processes with Brenntag. As a first step, Raj Petro moved from SAP ERP business systems to Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud.
Business challenge
Like many successful manufacturers, Raj Petro relies on SAP ERP to manage its operations from end-to-end: from the back office to the factory floor. For years, the company has trusted IBM Systems to support its mission-critical applications, and ran its SAP solutions on IBM Power Systems™ servers and the IBM AIX® operating system at an on-premises data center.
Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro explains “Our joint venture with Brenntag brought a wide range of new demands on our SAP solutions. As well as introducing strict compliance standards for SAP ERP data integrity and disaster recovery. One condition of the JV was that we deliver financial and operational reports in more-frequent cycles. We knew it would be difficult to meet these requirements using our existing infrastructure.”
Transformation
Working with experts from IBM, Raj Petro completed its move to the managed services environment in just 60 days—well ahead of the deadline for the JV and the opening of its new headquarters. By embracing the cloud, Raj Petro is empowering its IT organization to spend more time focusing on value-added activities.
Business Impact/ Results
- Delivers leading-edge performance and high availability, enabling Raj Petro to meet its partner’s stringent financial reporting and compliance requirements.
- Completed the move to cloud in just 60 days, avoiding costly delays to Raj Petro’s planned relocation to a new corporate headquarters in India.
- Reduces Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to 15 minutes and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to four hours, cutting business risk in a recovery scenario.
- Streamlines Raj Petro’s eventual move to the next-generation ERP SAP S/4HANA.
Business challenge story: Selecting a proven partner
Raj Petro has several ongoing key initiatives, including relocating its corporate headquarters. To achieve this, transitioning to cloud-based solutions within a strict deadline was crucial.
Jitesh Save, IT Head at Raj Petro, adds “After weighing our options, we decided our fastest route to compliance was a managed services solution. By moving to the cloud, we’d gain the performance and scalability to support our compliance use cases at a significantly lower cost than building a new on-premises infrastructure. Choosing the cloud would also remove the need to build a data center in our new headquarters—reclaiming floorspace and reducing our environmental footprint.”
After evaluating offerings from several leading cloud vendors, Raj Petro determined that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud was the fastest and most cost-effective route to unlock the new compliance capabilities.
Jitesh Save, IT Head-Raj Petro adds, “The success of the JV initiative, as well as our move to a new headquarter, depended on the timely execution of our cloud project. Of all the vendors we considered, we felt that IBM had the deepest experience.”
Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President-Technology, IBM Technology Sales, IBM India & South Asia, said, “Raj Petro’s joint venture with Brenntag Group meant bringing the processes and systems closer to drive transformation across global network. Moving to IBM Cloud, enabled Raj Petro to manage the strict compliance requirements, enhance performance, optimize workflows and drive scalability. By leveraging Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP solutions on IBM Cloud, the transition was completed seamlessly, in time and within the budget despite multiple on-ground challenges.”
Transformation story: Preparing for an integrated future
During Raj Petro’s cloud initiative, the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep around the world. By choosing managed services over an on-premises data center, the company could seamlessly transition its back-office staff to remote working with the assurance that its SAP ERP systems were being managed and maintained by IBM experts.
“We were looking for a trusted managed services partner that would help us to focus on our core competencies, and IBM came to us highly recommended,” says Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro. “IBM provided us with many strong client references, which gave us great confidence that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud would meet our needs. In fact, I have had a previous—and highly successful—experience with a move to IBM Cloud in the past, so I had first-hand experience of the professionalism and expertise of the IBM India team.”
Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud includes support right through the stack, including SAP Basis,” explains Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro. “We’ve not even experienced the smallest issue with our SAP solutions since moving to IBM Cloud. As a result, we are free to focus on what matters: providing the business with the tools they need to do their work effectively.”
By embracing the cloud, Raj Petro is empowering its IT organization to spend more time focusing on value-added activities. Jitesh Save, IT Head, Raj Petro confirms, “We recently successfully completed a full test of our disaster recovery capabilities, which would have been too risky to attempt in the past.” Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro concludes, “We’re already measuring strong commercial success—and we consider IBM a strategic partner on our ongoing transformation journey.”
Looking to the future, Raj Petro is confident that the IBM Cloud platform will enable it to move smoothly to the next-generation ERP SAP S/4HANA® when the business is ready.
Results story: Moving smoothly to the cloud
Raj Petro has several ongoing key initiatives, including relocating its corporate headquarters. To achieve this, transitioning to cloud-based solutions within a strict deadline was crucial. Thanks to IT Infrastructure Services from IBM, Raj Petro completed its move on time and within budget.
“Even in the face of considerable external pressures, the IBM team helped us achieve an incredible result,” comments Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro. “IBM made the time for in-depth meetings with our team during the scoping and planning phases of the project, which really paid off further downstream. The switchover from our on-premises environment to the cloud was as smooth as we could have wished for, and the support we received from IBM played a key role in that achievement.”
“By moving to Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud, we have made our IT organization leaner and more effective. We’ve also empowered our personnel to focus on fine-tuning our systems for operational excellence rather than getting tied down with technical issues.” Adds Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro “By moving our mission-critical SAP ERP systems to managed services in the IBM Cloud, we can meet our partner’s requirements around compliance and financial reporting cost-effectively. At the same time, moving to cloud gave us the opportunity to optimize our workflows—contributing to record-breaking revenues despite the pandemic.”
Jitesh Save, IT Head at Raj Petro shares, “Since moving our SAP business systems from an on-premises data center to highly available managed services in the IBM Cloud, we’ve slashed our recovery point objective [RPO] to under 15 minutes, and cut our recovery time objective [RTO] to less than four hours. Thanks to IBM, we have peace of mind that our SAP systems are always protected.”
