Advanta Seeds
About
Advanta Seeds, part of the UPL Group, is a leading global agricultural company dedicated to delivering high-quality seeds and innovative farming solutions. With a strong presence in key international markets, the company supports farmers through advanced research in crop genetics, sustainable agriculture and agronomic best practices. Beyond seed production and distribution, Advanta Seeds plays a crucial role in driving agricultural innovation and strengthening global food security.
Problem
The “Advanta Seeds SAP SAC implementation” initiative presents an opportunity to transform existing planning, budgeting and forecasting processes from the legacy ABS system into a robust, user-friendly solution within SAC.
- Data integrity: Poor data integrity results in inaccurate reports and misguided business decisions.
- What-if scenario: Forecasting alternative business scenarios is constrained by the current system’s lack of efficient what-if analysis capabilities, leading to delays in decision-making.
- Unit of Measure (UOM): Errors in COPA reporting arise from inconsistent units of measure across departments, compounded by the system’s lack of automatic UOM conversion, which results in inaccurate calculations.
- Centralised planning: Centralised planning lacks flexibility, causing delays when departments have unique requirements.
Solution
- Phase-one go-live: 22 September 2022
- Phase-two go-live: 7 August 2023
- Phase-three go-live: September 2024
- Finance transformation will be live in August 2026
- SAC enables accurate forecasting and budgeting of key contribution margin items, including revenue, Cost of Goods Manufactured (COGM) and variable costs.
- Supports planning at both product and customer levels.
- Covers overhead expenses and working capital as part of comprehensive financial planning.
Impact
Advanta Seeds is undertaking a strategic transformation to modernise its planning, budgeting and forecasting processes by migrating from legacy systems to a unified, agile SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) platform. The initiative aims to streamline operations, enhance data visibility and enable timely, data-driven decision-making across the business.
- Automated MIS processes: Automation reduces manual effort and errors, accelerating report generation and improving consistency.
- Improved data integrity: Centralised data management and enhanced validation ensure accurate and reliable reports, supporting better business decisions.
- SHF: Smallholder farmer reach reflects the area planted with advanced seeds and the number of farmers reached, based on planned seed rates and farm sizes.
- S&OP: Allows rapid assessment of business performance by clearly comparing actual results with targets and prior-year achievements, helping identify key gaps and trends.
Anne Greenwald
