Case Study ► Manufacturing
Holcim EMEA Digital Center reduces document management costs tenfold with Syntax and AWS
About the project
Holcim EMEA Digital Center, a leader in the design and manufacturing of construction materials and solutions, has partnered with Syntax to replace its on-premise document management system with a cloud-based one that is natively integrated with SAP and AWS.
Customer Profile
Name: Holcim EMEA Digital Center
Location: Madrid, Spain
Industry: Manufacturing, Construction
70+
content repositories replaced
0%
file duplication rate achieved from 19%
10X
Cost reduction
14.5TB
Size reduction from the SAP database
12K
content management system users
Challenges
The Holcim EMEA Digital Center provides IT services to over 36,000 users in 19 languages across 40 different countries in the EMEA region. The center faced persistent challenges with its existing corporate document management infrastructure, as well as high associated operating costs. Consequently, the team chose Syntax CxLink to modernize and consolidate its systems. This involved the internal development of a new document management system using standard SAP components designed for the AWS cloud.
In undertaking this project, Holcim aimed to address several key challenges:
– Reduce the costs associated with corporate document management.
– Increase operational agility and enhance automation.
– Improve scalability and performance compared to the previous system.
– Decrease the percentage of duplicate documents.
– Effectively migrate over 65 million documents from the previous system.
Project approach and solution
Holcim addressed its challenges by adopting Syntax’s CxLink to develop an integrated Document Management System (DMS). This solution, which integrates seamlessly with Holcim’s existing infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS), utilizes live data from SAP applications to enhance efficiency and streamline operations.
Solution based on standard SAP components
For the implementation, Holcim EMEA’s IT department developed a serverless solution in-house, based on standard SAP components, capable of ensuring a smooth migration from the company’s existing content management system without the need for middleware or protocol converters.
A new standard in migration precision and speed
Utilizing the tool developed with Syntax CxLink, Holcim was able to migrate files from the existing system to Amazon S3 through optimized batch processes. This tool simplifies the complex task of moving files and enhances the overall transition process, establishing a new benchmark for precision and speed in content migration.
Intuitive, simple and adaptive interface
The Syntax CxLink dashboard offers an intuitive and easy-to-configure interface. Its menus and tools support seamless migration, accommodating over 40 business units and up to 33 different document types. This user-friendly interface ensured a smooth transition for a variety of business needs.
“The native integration of Syntax CxLink with both SAP solutions and AWS services was crucial for carrying out the migration of files to Amazon S3 seamlessly, quickly, and smoothly. Syntax CxLink has been the answer to our need for an officially SAP-certified component to connect to the AWS public cloud intuitively and with the utmost reliability”
– Daniel Cano, Applications Transformation Manager,
Holcim EMEA Digital Center
Results
This successful implementation represents a major achievement in Holcim EMEA’s efforts to modernize and streamline its document management infrastructure, while simultaneously reducing costs and complexity. Syntax CxLink has not only provided a solution that integrates seamlessly with both SAP and AWS, but it also offers new possibilities for archiving different types of corporate data and further cutting infrastructure costs.
Syntax CxLink enabled Holcim EMEA to:
– Effectively replace over 70 content repositories, streamlining
and optimizing document management processes.
– Achieve greater efficiency, improve collaboration, and enhance
document security across multiple business scenarios.
– Reduce the size of the SAP database by 14.5 TB.
– Cut costs by up to 10x compared to the previous document
management system.
– Achieve a 0% file duplication rate compared to the
previous system’s 19%.
– Reduced document upload times to milliseconds, previously taking
minutes or failing due to errors, thereby eliminating related downtime.
Syntax CxLink enabled Holcim EMEA to:
Every organization is dependent on fast, reliable, and secure document and data management. Syntax CxLink for ArchiveLink delivers exactly that. This unique product, certified by SAP, is designed from the ground up to extend your SAP applications to cloud-native technologies, from document management to SAP data archiving, SAP data extraction, and AWS Data Lakes.
To learn more, visit our Syntax CxLink Solution Page