Chicago February 12, 2002 Technology Solutions Co. (TSC), a provider of extended enterprise solutions, today announced that General Motors Locomotive Group (GMLG) has selected TSC to manage its SAP "Center of Excellence" (COE) for the next three years. As part of this outsourcing agreement, TSC will provide all SAP-related consulting services to GMLG worldwide.
The $2 billion LaGrange, Ill.-based division of General Motors initially engaged TSC to assess the competency of its COE and develop a best practice template. TSC and GMLG established a cross-functional SWAT team of key GMLG management and TSC experts tasked with business process improvement. The SWAT team focused on improving the product shipment process, material planning, management reporting, and customer service enhancements. Within six weeks, TSC helped reduce GMLG's customer order backlog and improved its customer order cycle time significantly.
"We were facing a large challenge when TSC took on the initial project," said Richard Wurtzel, director of GMLG Application Systems. "We needed a partner with strong project management experience that could quickly develop and deliver creative solutions. It was also important to find a firm that had solid manufacturing experience, as well as strong SAP competencies. TSC proved to us in a very short time that it was the organization that could most effectively solve our business problem."
After the initial SWAT team project, TSC continued its work with GMLG, establishing a new SAP configuration alignment for key business processes, as well as continuous knowledge transfer. The business processes addressed include order to cash, procure to pay, plan to produce and budget to close. As a result of TSC's ongoing involvement the GMLG order backlog reduction and order fulfillment process continues to improve.
"TSC's quick response, as well as its willingness to work initially on a risk-reward basis, really impressed us," said Dave Scott, executive director of GMLG. "The TSC team was an elite group of consultants who weren't afraid to make strong recommendations and act on them. Because of their keen understanding of our business and SAP problems, as well as their ability to 'speak our language,' the TSC team has been the first firm to ever deliver on the service levels we expected."
GMLG has now chosen TSC as its exclusive SAP integration provider for the next three years for the worldwide division, including its Locomotive and Defense Business Groups. "GMLG required a take-charge, no-nonsense approach to resolving its configuration and business process issues," said David Wasson, senior vice president at TSC. "We knew it was critical to quickly realign GMLG's business processes and deliver immediate business results. Having successfully achieved that goal, our focus moving forward with GMLG will be on further leveraging our unique best practices and methodologies to optimize their use of SAP."
TSC was selected after a thorough bid process, which included the world's leading IT service organizations.
