Trinseo increased productivity and streamlined their SOX controls in a matter of months by automating the exchange of pricing and master data through a Salesforce and SAP ERP integration.
Maximized Trinseo’s existing technology investments in both SAP & Salesforce
Resolved Pricing Discrepancies for fast and accurate SOX compliance
Streamlined Manual processes, eliminating redundant tasks and costly mistakes
Integrated Solution Needed for a Customer-Centric Company
Trinseo, a global chemical materials solutions provider and manufacturer of plastic, latex binders, and synthetic rubber, is known for their customer-centric culture and innovative, sustainable solutions. In order to continue providing the best customer experience and streamline internal pricing controls, Trinseo required synchronization between their key pricing and master data through a Salesforce and SAP ERP system integration.
Previously, key pricing data and master data required manual updating in two places: SAP ERP and Salesforce. This was a very time-consuming process that led to redundant efforts from multiple functions and – at times – costly mistakes. Since pricing directly ties into key Sarbenes-Oxley (SOX) controls, Trinseo was having to reallocate a lot of resources across many functions to reconcile pricing discrepancies between the two systems. Hours were spent manually uploading, downloading, and formatting documents to ensure accurate presentation of the data in both places to satisfy SOX controls. In addition to this pricing struggle, the Customer Master Data in their SAP ERP did not always match Salesforce. This led to a weeks’ long reconciliation report done yearly to ensure both systems displayed accurate customer information.
More importantly, this inefficient process did not support their customer-centric business model. Once an account manager inputs pricing into Salesforce, they would have to wait for someone to approve it to trigger a sync into their SAP ERP. This left customers waiting – sometimes for days – to place orders. If a customer called in to place an order, customer service would have to place the order on hold and reach out to the account manager to confirm pricing accuracy if it was not loaded into SAP. This broken work pace created a lot of disruption to the customer buying journey and held up invaluable orders. To enable operating in an efficient and timely manner, as well as to provide the optimal customer experience they are known for, it seemed integrating the two systems was the best solution.
Built to Last
Trinseo partnered with Excellis after recalling the successful completion of past projects and the ease of working with our team of experts. Another leading factor was having consultants who were true partners in coordinating efforts as this integration project involved five different teams including Trinseo’s SAP team, pricing team, Salesforce Admin, and Accenture. Ensuring all of these teams stayed on task, had the resources and training they needed for long-term success, and worked together was an integral part of the project journey.
Daniela Messingschlager, Trinseo’s Senior IT Business Partner – Commercial, stated, “In past projects with Excellis, we have found that they are a very good partner who shares their documentation, processes, and assets very well. They don’t just program something and then want to sell us support hours. They build something and expect it to work. Also, we wanted everything with this project to work seamlessly. We were looking for a truly integrated solution and knew Excellis had the SAP knowledge to train our internal teams to do this successfully.”
“Excellis builds something and expects it to work.”
Daniela Messingshlager
Trinseo Senior IT Business Partner, Commercial
Fully-Automated. Never Duplicated.
Within a 16 week timeframe, Excellis coordinated with the five different teams and used best industry practices to synchronize the key pricing data and master data between Salesforce and SAP. This integrated approach leveraged Trinseo’s existing technology investments while positioning them to enable future capabilities and enhancements more quickly and easily. The Integration Management and Pricing Management Cockpit has allowed transactions to be fully automated in real-time, eliminating redundant efforts and costly mistakes.
This new streamlined process required little to no training for the multiple departments involved. The Salesforce and SAP ERP integration allows pricing to be updated in real-time; customer orders are able to be placed in the system immediately – ultimately streamlining the customer buying journey and providing a richer user experience. It has also eliminated the constant back and forth between customer service and account managers when a customer’s pricing was in question.
This integrated solution has also allowed for a large reduction in the manual labor around SOX control reports and provides real-time, accurate pricing data. Where once the pricing department focused on manually uploading, downloading, and formatting pricing reports to ensure data accuracy, their attention has been shifted to more value-added business objectives.
“As a result of the automation, we saw an immediate cost savings and generated a total ROI in less than a year.”
Tracy Blumenthal
Trinseo Senior IT Business Partner, Finance
This increased enterprise visibility has cleaned up multiple data discrepancies and all but eliminated the customer account reconciliation report that took a week to complete. Streamlining the pricing and master data between Salesforce and SAP has allowed Trinseo to confidently rely on their ERP system as the single source for truth without double-checking every instance. Excellis also set up the coding in a way that it can be scalable and adaptable for future enhancements – ultimately maximizing Trinseo’s existing technology investment.
Excellence. Delivered.
Trinseo’s customer-centric focus aligned with Excellis’ core value of setting up partners for success. The key to turning any project into a strong, trustworthy partnership is timely communication, which is where this journey thrived.
When asked what she thought of the partnership on this project, Daniela said, “Excellis was always very responsive and quick to address problems throughout the whole project. There was always a lot of really helpful communication going on and whenever there was an issue there was always someone available to talk. During hypercare, if something was found in the morning, it would already be fixed by the time we had our daily meeting. I would send out questions previous to the meeting, and they would go through the document, answer all the questions, provide some examples, and check-in with our support teams to make sure the explanation made sense. I was also impressed with Excellis’ agility and how they were able to seamlessly work with the five different teams involved. In the end, they provided the documentation, coding, project assets, and knowledge transfer so our support teams could fix something if it broke. Excellis was always very well prepared and very responsive. They made us feel like we were the only customer that mattered. This has been the best project experience in my 22 years in the chemical industry.”
“Excellis was always well-prepared and very responsive. They made us feel like we were the only customer that mattered. This has been the best project experience in my 22 years in the chemical industry.”
Daniela Messingschlager
Trinseo Senior IT Business Partner, Commercial
Now, Trinseo’s high-performing solution has further enabled them to align their internal efforts with their customer-centric business model and move into the future at a faster pace. At Excellis, we thrive on building strong partnerships with our clients to bring the most technically sound and cost-efficient solution to market quickly. Contact us today to learn how we can optimize your business for long-term success.
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