Our expectations were met!

Siemens Infrastructure & Cities (IC) Sector develops solutions for rail-based mobility. This includes high-speed and intercity trains, locomotives as well as rail automation and rail electrification solutions. In this area, Nagarro has been working as an IT service provider since 2013. The client IC IT RL draws a positive interim result of this teamwork:

Our expectations were met! Successful teamwork between the technical department, purchase department and the suppliers leads to service advantages and saves expenditure. Experience report on the exchange of supplier for IC IT RL.

At the end of 2012, Service-agreement for SAP PLM system, and user support was issued again within the Rail systems and mobility & logistics divisions. In May 2013, the decision to appoint Nagarro as the new supplier for the next 3 years fell through. After a 4 month transition phase, and now five months of normal operation, the team draws a positive interim result: “My expectations in the exchange of suppliers has been reassured, and I am fully satisfied with the service quality and the teamwork“, describes Dr. Gunnar Klaffenbach, Director of IC IT RL PLM-department. “The successful teamwork already started in the offering phase. We have included IC purchasing in our work from the beginning and the agreement is prepared well in detail. Important factors in the selection procedure were technical competency, long-term experience in SAP-projects and absolute reliability of the partners. Even cost reduction for the same service level should be achieved for our customers.“

The SAP PLM-service is highly complex: A 12-member Nagarro team supports the IC IT RL-customers within the projects and takes care of the interest of 11,000 users, 15,000,000 documents in the system and 1,300,000 product structures.

“The high complexity of the system and the entire PLM-process makes the order fascinating and challenging“, says Klaus Scheller, Key Account Manager at Nagarro for Siemens AG. “Thanks to the excellent RfP documents, we were aware from the beginning that it depends on the reliability and continuity of the supporting team in case of this complexity and scale. With this new teamwork model – the team partially works on site in Erlangen and partially remote from Munich – even a stepwise cost reduction could be achieved over a period of three years of contract term.“

Holger Dammann, group leader IC IT RL PLM DSP, adds: “Both the business model of the provider and the service-oriented colleagues have convinced me. It was new for us at the start to not have the support team constantly on site. But thanks to WEoF-Services e.g. it is possible anyways to work with VirtualClient in a flexible manner and independent of the site. In order to ensure a high service quality, monthly service reviews with the business management are carried out by Nagarro and thus possible gaps are discussed and corrective measures are initiated.“

An exchange of suppliers is complex. However if one plans well, then he can be successful. Here it’s worth considering whether the expenditure, which causes an exchange, is adequately compensated by benefits, and the risks associated with it are controllable. The teamwork with procurement is indispensable here. “An early integration of procurement has advantages in every offering – even in case of final selection of future partners “, says Michael Rojahn, IT PCE P. “Nagarro was well known to us as reliable supplier having signed a master agreement since years, even Siemens Corporate IT had a good experience with the supplier, and thus Nagarro was accepted as a preferred supplier of Siemens AG on October 1st, 2013. We could recommend the company further.“

Due to the positive interim result, we are confident to continue our successful cooperation; first plans to transfer other topics within PLM-Services to Nagarro are on the table already.