Nava Bharat Ventures Limited

For the past forty years, Nava Bharat Ventures has been driving the key sectors mining, energy, and agriculture in India and Africa. The company operates several power plants, processing plants as well as mines and manufactures ferroalloys for the rail and automobile industries.

Nava Bharat’s more than 1,100 employees generate sales of about USD 159 million.

About the Project

Transforming into a Real-Time Business in Just 5 Months with SAP S/4HANA

Finding the Best Path to Groundbreaking Technology

Mining, energy, and agriculture form the backbone of global industry – and for the past four decades, Nava Bharat Ventures has been driving these key sectors in India and Africa. The diversified company operates several power plants, processing plants, and mines in various geographies, and manufactures ferroalloys for the rail and automobile industries.

With such a broad range of business processes and operations, Nava Bharat needed a powerful ERP solution to store and manage its data. However, due to data inconsistencies, redundancies, and lack of structure in reporting, users at some plants were experiencing performance issues with the existing ERP system. It took too long to extract data and generate reports.

Nava Bharat decided it was time to act and collaborated with NTT DATA Business Solutions to identify the best approach. After visiting plants in multiple locations, NTT DATA Business Solutions consultants gained an understanding of the company’s business processes and the requirements of the users. The project was to include process optimization, user training, and complete system conversion to the next-generation business suite SAP S/4HANA.

Reducing Complexity for a Smooth Migration

A key project requirement was to keep downtime to a minimum. To do this, NTT DATA Business Solutions opted to use SAP Activate methodology. This innovation adoption framework includes best practices and useful tools to accelerate the implementation process. In addition, the project was simplified by combining the SAP upgrade and database migration into one step using the database migration option (DMO) in Software Update Manager.

Before the go-live, NTT DATA Business Solutions performed two mock upgrades. For the second one, the team reduced downtime to 26 hours by enabling parallel processing. Finally, by optimizing resources, the production upgrade was completed with just 16 hours of downtime.

The large number of custom objects in the system posed a challenge during the migration – many reports were redundant and some ranges overlapped. To overcome these issues, NTT DATA Business Solutions advised Nava Bharat on how to streamline and standardize the structures, merging some reports into one.

Real-Time Data for Better Decisions

Since going live with SAP S/4HANA, Nava Bharat has seen a drastic improvement in system performance and reporting times. It has also been able to optimize business processes in finance, logistics, and material requirements planning. Employees now have instant access to the data they need, and they are extremely satisfied with the added flexibility they receive from SAP Fiori® apps.

In addition, Nava Bharat has gained greater control over budget allocation and utilization, as well as procurement processes. NTT DATA Business Solutions continues to provide support with system administration, landscape maintenance, and enhancements – ensuring Nava Bharat will continue to capitalize on the benefits of SAP S/4HANA in the future.