COOP

COOP Achieves a 40% Reduction in Risk
and Testing Time Using Panaya

About
COOP

COOP is one of the biggest Suisse retail trade and wholesale companies. The cooperative has around 2.5 Million members and more than 77,000 employees. Under its own brand, COOP runs supermarkets, department stores (“COOP City”), restaurants, DIY markets (“COOP Bau + Hobby”), pharmacies (“COOP Vitality”) as well as petroleum service stations and convenience shops (“COOP Pronto”) via its subsidiary COOP Mineraloel AG.

“With the support of Panaya’s solution we were able to import many references into the system. We hadn’t done anything on this scale before. By performing it this way, we were able to ensure an overall better quality of the SAP system – even beyond the upgrade.”

Davyd Däppen | Manager IT Processes ERP ACES, COOP

The Challenge

The COOP Group had recently upgraded its central ERP SAP systems Coop Retail System (CRS) and Coop Trading System (CTS) to EHP5. Previously, the testing was performed manually, a very time consuming process that left them vulnerable for multiple risks across the systems.
Next, COOP planned an upgrade from EHP5 to EHP7. At the same time, two smaller systems CPS Coop Production System (CPS) and Coop Web-Shop Retail (CWR) were also upgraded. More than 5,000 SAP users were affected by the upgrades.

Simultaneously, the hardware was upgraded to meet the additional 20 percent performance requirement. With the upgrade to EHP7, new components such as MIM and IE11 were introduced and would require additional efforts in comparison to the former upgrade to EHP5.
COOP needed a solution that was able to support the testing of the new system with little risk, improving the quality of the testing while also shortening the test phase.

Furthermore, project managers required a solution that would allow them to better estimate the quantity structure of the testing expense. The goal was to prioritize within the testing process and be able to ignore obsolete areas.

The Solution

The team at COOP sought out the most efficient, rapid system to implement the upgrade using a solution that supports User Acceptance Testing from the Cloud. Based upon their extensive research, COOP selected Panaya, which supports User Acceptance Testing from the Cloud. Without this, they would have experienced a significant risk for errors during the upgrade, which would have resulted in the additional expense of 10 man years and a cost of €500,000 for the Near Zero Downtime Service (NZDT) process of SAP.

The Results

During a 7-month period, the COOP Group deployed Panaya for the upgrade. The system went live on schedule and was completed in the projected timeframe and budget.
According to Panaya’s pretest analysis, there would be three times more support packs patched to the system than with the previous upgrade. Upgrading to EHP7, 827 support packs were imported, as compared to the 269 required by the EHP5 project.

After COOP went live, all critical errors were eliminated. Its development department was able to start the corrections immediately after the first modification adjustment.
Furthermore, they were able to delete some old programs that weren’t necessary anymore.

Of 181,407 references in the SAP system in total, Panaya recommended implementation of 31,011 indications. This way the corrections could be realized in a more targeted manner. Since many corrections could be realized before test clearance, some follow-up actions were unnecessary. Examples included additional developments and tests.

The Bottom Line

Overall, COOP accomplished a reduction of the total project scope by 53%. Concerning the testing effort, COOP and Panaya achieved savings by 40%. A total of 30% savings was also achieved at code corrections.

“Time-consuming, laborious manual testing is outdated, and Panaya offers the most reliable, transparent, user friendly solution on the market. Panaya will be our valued partner in all further upgrades,” concluded Däppen.