Success Story Egger

Central Job Scheduling for EGGER: BatchMan Live in only three days!

Objective

The EGGER group has been working with SAP since 1997. In 2006, the EGGER computer center completely switched to the Suse Linux Enterprise operating system on the HP hardware platform. In the course of this reorganization, the processes in the computer center were also to be standardized and the job scheduling and monitoring to be optimized. Of the highest importance here was the central control of the background processing as well as its documentation.

Initial Situation

Over 2,000 employees at EGGER use the SAP System (ERP/HR/BW/CRM/XI/Solution Manager). Up to the introduction of BatchMan, the background processing was controlled centrally with the standard functions from SAP. The jobs were scheduled using Transaction SM36 and monitored via the CCMS (Computing Center Management System). On the other hand, the documentation was maintained in another system. In the process, the application presented various difficulties, which could not be eliminated with the means provided by SAP.
Erfolgsgeschichten HONICO Kunden

Industry: Wholesale and Retail

Use Case: Reorganization and optimization of processes

Vorteil: Cross-System Job Scheduling

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 Limits of SAP Job Control

  • Monitoring or alert messages were too limited
  • Successive, cross-system jobs needed time buffer
  • No automatic recovery jobs, only possible by manual start
  • No event-controlled start dates – only possible through external events
  • Cumbersome maintenance of job documentation in another system

The Decision for BatchMan

Overall, the job control was not sufficiently comfortable and effective, so that the EGGER computer center decided to introduce software from a third-party provider.

In addition to optimizing the processes outlined above, EGGER also wanted to control, maintain and monitor all background jobs centrally. Software with a central approach had to be found for the job control, which had always been organized centrally. Furthermore, the standardization in the data center played a key role in the decision for a job scheduler.

Installation

Installing BatchMan went quickly and smoothly by importing the proper transports. EGGER received competent support from HONICO for installing and customizing BatchMan. After 1.5 days of consultation, the software ran as it should and was adapted to meet the special demands of the Egger computer center.

Conclusion and Outlook

The functionality of BatchMan fulfilled all the requirements that EGGER placed on job scheduling and monitoring software. Two employees work with BatchMan on a daily basis to control and monitor the entire background processing. Each of them needs 30 minutes a day to do so. The use of BatchMan gave EGGER possibilities in background processing that were not previously known or not covered.

In order to adapt BatchMan even better to EGGER‘s business processes, HONICO specially developed an interface (at EGGER: Solution Manager Helpdesk) that can transfer alert messages as tickets to any external tool.

EGGER's opinion

„IWithin three days, all periodic jobs were transferred in BatchMan and the system was live.“

Thomas Berger,  IT Management Computer Center SAP Basis

The Solution

  • Automatic messages in case of processing errors
  • Faster processing through automation of cross-system jobs without scheduling time buffers
  • Central documentation of background jobs to ensure revision security
  • Automatic recovery jobs in case of an occurring error
  • Event-controlled planning of processes

About EGGER

The EGGER Group, headquartered in St. Johann in Tyrol, is one of the leading international wood processing companies. The family business, which was founded in 1961, now produces at 18 locations worldwide with around 9,000 employees. Customers worldwide are the furniture industry, the wood trade, DIY stores and DIY shops. In the 2016/2017 business year, the group achieved consolidated sales of around 2.38 billion euros.