About the company
Secil was founded in 1918, operating a small natural cement plant that had been in service since 1904. In 1930 Secil underwent a major merger with Companhia Geral de Cal e Cimento. The merger shaped the existing group of almost 40 companies that currently operate in complementary areas. Although cement production remains Secil’s core activity, the company also integrates mining and the production of concrete, hydraulic lime, mortar, and coverings. The company has cement plants across eight countries and four continents, with an annual cement production capacity of more than 9.75 million tons. Today, Secil operates as a major player in the construction materials sector, with more than 2,600 employees and 100% Portuguese capital. Industry Focus: Construction System Version: SAP ERP Number of Users: Over 1,000 internal with external customer access Devices: Smartphone, Tablet and Desktop access Timeline: Three months to meet digital transformation migration deadline
Challenge
10-year-old user interface of Secil’s existing solution had a dated look and feel, and the platform’s out-of-the-box ERP capabilities did not support automation for digital transformation for its SAP ERP
Business expansion into other construction industry sectors required additional functionality beyond its cement-process-related platform
Company needed a better, more modern user experience (UX) for its management tool, customer portal, and commercial portal
Solution
Shift to Neptune DXP for lower TCO, less coding with the help of no-code/low-code and easy SAP integration to support a robust user experience with mobile capabilities.
Pilot Neptune in HR for maximum employee reach and to prove usability, to make adoption and training more seamless
Build a new procurement portal and digitize all main processes to reduce approval time and new-vendor processes.
Modernize and automate multiple interfaces across internal, customer, and commercial portals while creating new automation capabilities for numerous new business sectors.
Create a Digital Hub with 4 portals to improve customer and vendor relationships; unify customer experiences and mobile-friendly interfaces across all portals.
Account for remote locations, complex labor regulations, and shift management.
Results
Built 17 enterprise applications across HR, procurement, quarries, commercial excellence, logistics, and accounting.
Created new self-service capabilities for truck drivers, quarry weight measurement, and offline app capabilities for remote quarry locations with the ability to create and submit their own orders, 37% of Secil’s suppliers migrated to the Digital Hub resulting in an increase of sales orders by 27%, and sales volume increased by 53% compared with the previous portal.
Employee self-service capabilities empower workers to handle their own time-off requests and manage their own transports.
Vacation approval time quickly decreased from three weeks to three days, and the company eliminated the need to print over 7,500 documents each year.
New applications helped reduce the management capacity needed from two full-time equivalents (FTEs) to one.
App for procurement purchases reduced approval time from two weeks to two days, and the new-vendor process decreased from three weeks to three days.
By decreasing phone calls and optimizing transport routes, the portal reduced the time required to manage this process to 0.5 FTE
Freed 1,500 labor hours annually with an explosives-tracking app while improving the ability to support safer quarry operations and meet legal requirements.
Positive return on investment (ROI) across all Neptune Software projects.
