BCS is our ERP system
User report from Mercoline GmbH
Projektron BCS has long been THE central tool for us, through which we map almost all of our company's processes. We quickly benefited from the decision to reduce the number of different tools and thus also various interfaces and finally decided that BCS should be our ERP system.
SAP and EDI experts - For more than 25 years
Mercoline is a leading provider of customized IT solutions and services for SAP and EDI. At the same time, we are part of DATAGROUP and therefore work together with around 3,500 colleagues with a wide range of skills in a wide range of projects. Mercoline offers fully integratable add-ons for the SAP Business Suite and SAP S/4HANA in the areas of foreign trade and transport logistics, e.g. connection of transport service providers, freight cost management, ATLAS customs processing, export control, sanctions list check or preference processing. Currently, more than 200 companies from all industries - from medium-sized businesses to large corporations, whether in Germany, Europe or the USA - have been relying on Mercoline's software and services for more than 25 years and appreciate their convincing cost-benefit ratio. These customers include Pelikan AG, Griesson - de Beukelaer GmbH & Co. KG, Berentzen-Gruppe AG, Melitta Haushaltsprodukte GmbH & Co KG, SKF Lubrication Systems Germany GmbH and Carl Kühne KG (GmbH & Co.).
We carry out around 30 to 40 projects per year. Depending on the project, the project volume varies between a few thousand euros and six-figure amounts, the duration between a few weeks and several years.
BCS and Mercoline - a shared development history
We have had Projektron BCS on board since 2007. At that time, we were looking for software to professionalize our project management. We decided on Projektron BCS from an initially large selection of different software products. In addition to the convincing price-performance model, the decisive factor was the immediate proximity of the company headquarters to ours in Berlin and the associated "direct line". Over the many years, thanks in part to this geographical proximity, we have been able to gradually build up a close relationship with Projektron, from which both companies continue to benefit to this day.
We began our use with simple project control. The circle of users was initially limited to a few people with project responsibility. A milestone in our usage history was the introduction of the ticket system: From this point on, almost all employees worked with BCS and almost all processes were transferred to the system. Times could be booked on tickets. We also quickly began to generate our invoices, including booked hours and other billing-related information, in BCS and to send them out from BCS.
Thus, over the years, we have successively added all the modules BCS has to offer, including CRM, external support portal for our customers and, most recently, expense reporting and applicant management. We have been actively involved in the development and further functional design of many of the features that BCS has to offer today, or we have contributed our suggestions.
BCS as ERP system in the SAP consulting house
BCS has long been the central tool for us, which we use to map almost all of our company's processes - with the exception of payroll, which we still manage using an external system. Among other things, BCS has replaced SAP Business One as our company administration software and OTRS as our ticketing system. Thanks to BCS, we didn't even have to purchase CRM software. We quickly benefited from the decision to reduce the amount of different tools and thus various interfaces and finally decided that BCS should be our ERP system.
We knew that we could map all our business processes in BCS. Each of our employees uses BCS every day from the first day of work, and our entire customer support is based on the ticket system in BCS. In addition to the ticket system, deployment and resource planning has become indispensable for internal work organization.
Drivers of automation: our use of BPMN
Since 2020, we've been keen to closely follow the development of the BPMN module and promote its integration with BCS. We wanted to move our home-written workflow engine for applications, forms management, authorization requests, and other use cases into BCS. Once the graphical interface was available in BCS, we began actively using the BPMN capabilities. With the onset of the Corona pandemic, when mobile working became a necessity for our team, these functionalities helped us a lot in digitizing our workflows and processes. Very quickly, we were able to digitally map our invoice workflow and approval processes in BCS. Paper invoices that arrived in the office could thus be digitized and submitted to various cost center managers for review and approval without them having to be on site.
If we create a new business partner, a new customer contact or a sales order in BCS, BPMN processes initiate all the necessary follow-up activities and logics that create tickets, workflows, checklists and notifications.
Since we work very intensively with classifiers, especially in the area of product development, it was very important to us to be able to use classifiers within a process as well. Projektron immediately took up our suggestion and implemented the option of selecting classifiers in BPMN processes: It is now possible to store a drop-down selection list at an object and automatically fill it with a predefined list, a database field or with classifiers - depending on the process.
We are currently working closely with Projektron's development department to expand the possibilities of the asset management module and also link it to BPMN. The idea is to enable the automated creation of an asset from a procurement process.
Many plans with BPMN
We still have many ideas that we would like to implement in the BPMN process manager in Projektron BCS. Since we are currently in the process of developing and improving our ISMS, we would like to integrate as many of our processes as possible into BCS, which we have been mapping with tickets, templates, checklists and workflows up to now. Here are some use cases that we will implement next:
- Access concept/authorization request with multi-level approval workflow: we want to store different system landscapes and system owners, who will then be informed automatically as soon as they have to release an approval in the system. The entire process will be documented automatically in a ticket and, if necessary, trigger one or more further workflows - with concrete work instructions to persons carrying out the work.
- Secure development in SAP: In addition to specifications, we have created other fields for technical documentation on tickets in which we store further information, for example, a list of development objects that have been touched and possible effects on security. Now we want to automatically populate these fields from SAP via an interface. Whenever a new commit is created from SAP, changes to development objects are automatically noted and documented in the designated fields in the respective BCS ticket. The persons responsible automatically receive a notification and a corresponding template for review and acceptance.
- Creation of a new user (e.g., in the onboarding process): The request to create a user is currently stored in our workflow system. After everyone has approved, the request becomes a ticket. This ticket is, again, previously manually provided with a template with appropriate workflows and checklists for the departments responsible for the setup. We will revise our entire onboarding process and extend it with the BPMN module of BCS. This includes documentation about assigned rights, access rights to file systems, set up system names, up to the automatic creation of users.
Proven and recommendable overall solution
Even after 15 years, we are still not able to fully utilize the project management functions of BCS - however, we are constantly opening up new areas and possibilities of the software. We are also always happy to take advantage of the training offered by Projektron GmbH to update our knowledge of new functions and their possible applications.
Over the years, Projektron BCS has proven to be a good overall solution for mapping all of our company processes. We are happy to present the possibilities of the software and our way of working with BCS to interested parties, business partners or other companies within the DATAGROUP group.
