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Apple Computer, Inc.
Apple Computer- Canada, Inc.
Apple Computer, Inc.
(R/3 Implementation)
Apple
Computer, Inc. (Support System Implementation)
Apple Computer, Inc.
(iTunes Implementation)
Apple Computer, Inc., ignited the personal
computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II,
and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980’s with the Macintosh. Apple
owns manufacturing facilities in the United States, Ireland and Singapore as
well as distribution
sites in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Japan.
Apple is committed to bringing state of the art computing products and support
to the following business channels:
Business Environment
Apple Computer, B.V.
located in Apeldoorn (Netherlands), represents the central distribution site for
the European market. It receives assembled products from the Apple production
site in Cork (Ireland) and its OEM products from suppliers in Asia and other
parts of the world. At the distribution site, finished products get stored and
final, country-specific assembly work takes place. The site is responsible for
shipping the Apple products to customers directly and/or various Apple owned
subsidiaries in different European countries. The site forwards the European
sales forecasts to Apple Computer, Inc., which plans their manufacturing and OEM
parts.
Apple Computer, Inc.,
decided to use the SAP R/3 solution to replace a number of mainframe systems and
software which was getting more and more complex and expensive to maintain. In
the overall Apple IT strategy, the R/3 system is playing a key role in
supporting the information required by each Apple site. The core role of the
system suits the company’s increasingly complex business processes and helps to
simplify the required system environment by reducing the number of necessary
interfaces.
SAP R/3 Implementation
Scope
The R/3 implementation of
the central European distribution site located in Apeldoorn, (NL) and the
central OEM planning group in Cupertino, CA was divided into 2 (two) phases.
Phase 1 included
Financial Accounting (FI), Accounts Receivable (FI-AR), Controlling (CO), Sales
& Distribution of Finished Goods (SD) and Asset Management.
Phase 2 included
the central planning and purchasing functions of the OEM group in Cupertino, CA
as well as the remaining functionality of Accounts Payable (FI-AR), Sales &
Distribution (SD), Controlling (CO), Materials Management (MM) and Production
Planning & Execution (PP).
In both phases a number of
interfaces were needed to guarantee the flow of the information required through
the entire Apple system environment. Most of the interfaces are vital for
Apple’s corporate worldwide integration of Financials, Logistics and Planning
functions.
Support Teams
Team Consulting Group, Inc. (TCG) was the
secondary-consulting partner at Apple Computer,
Inc. by subcontracting it’s services to a big six consulting organization. The
TCG consulting team was formed by a small team of 4 (four) application
consultants, covering all of the
main application modules (SD, CO, MM and PP). The TCG consulting team was
working
full time at the client site for the time frames mentioned above.
Duration
Phase 1 was implemented in a 6 (six) months
time frame and went live on 04/1996.
Phase 2 required an additional 6 (six) months
which resulted in a live date of 10/1996. The overall implementation time for
the 2-site implementation was 12 months.
Business Environment
In 1994 Apple Computer,
Inc., decided to use the SAP R/3 solution to replace a number of mainframe
systems and software packages that were becoming more and more complex and
expensive to maintain across multiple regional geographies. The overall Apple IT
strategy was to implement the SAP R/3 system in a regionally phased approach.
The first region to implement SAP R/3 was Europe. The next region to come up on
SAP was the Americas, which included Apple Canada and Apple USA. Afterward, the
Latin America division, which includes Apple Mexico, was brought live. The last
Apple region to implement SAP R/3 was Asia-Pacific, which includes, Japan, Asia
(based in Singapore), and Australia.
SAP R/3 Implementation.
Scope
During its first primary
engagement with Apple Computer in 1995, Team Consulting Group, Inc. (TCG) was
involved in both the European and Canadian implementations and provided Apple
with both direct business knowledge, as well as experienced SAP system
knowledge. When TCG began its second primary engagement with Apple Computer in
1999, the SAP R/3 system had already been implemented in Europe and all of North
America, but a number of large enhancement projects were looming on the horizon:
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Upgrade from 3.1H to
4.5B
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Implement SAP in Latin
America
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Implement SAP in
Asia-Pacific
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Other Business Driven
Initiatives
In 1999, Apple engaged
TCG due to an immediate need for experience in SAP upgrades, functionality and
long term global vision. Apple project schedules did not allow time to educate
or ramp up new consultants in their operations or implementation history. As a
result, TCG was a logical choice as service provider and immediately began
working on the redesign, retrofit and testing required for the Apple 4.5B
upgrade. The Americas SAP system was successfully upgraded in March of 2000.
The next project in line
was the implementation of the Latin America Division. This SAP implementation
required functionality that was not yet used by Apple in North America. Export
and Inter-company functionality was implemented along with standard Apple / SAP
functionality. The Latin America Division was successfully implemented in
October of 2000.
After implementing Latin
America, TCG was asked to provide design and training support in the SD area for
the Asia-Pacific implementation. This division was successfully implemented in
June 2001.
Additionally, TCG worked
with Apple IS&T Management to develop a model and a methodology for providing
ongoing support and development for all of its’ SAP Global business procedures.
The initial step was to identify, classify and prioritize existing open requests
and potential future requests across regions. An infrastructure for evaluating,
prioritizing, costing and tracking these projects needed to be built and rolled
out. TCG played an active part in the design, training and implementing of these
processes.
Support Teams
The TCG support team at Apple varies from 2 to 6
people providing business application expertise in the Logistics (SD, MM, PP) as
well as Financial SAP modules.
Depending on the project the overall Apple global IS
project team consists of approximately fifty resources. This team is a mix of
Apple IS staff and external consultants who perform project related and
production support tasks.
Duration
| 4.5b Upgrade |
6 Months |
| Latin America Implementation |
6 Months |
| Asia-Pac Implementation |
12 Months |
| Global Design Process |
4 Months |
| Misc. Project Work |
On Going |
Business Environment
While Apple has been live
with SAP R/3 since 1996, has continuously expanded, and evolved its personal
computer and hardware business, the implementation of the iTunes Music Store in
2003 was an exciting addition to the Apple business model, and to TCG’s
repertoire of Apple-supported projects.
The Apple iTunes software
application has been around since 2001, but now a Music Store to legally buy
songs and albums on-line, and download high quality digital recordings to a Mac
or windows PC, was to be implemented. The first phase of the project offered a
library of 200,000 music tracks to iTunes.com visitors. Within 6 months over
400,000 tracks were made available as well as audio books. Also, within the
first 6 months of operation, more than 10 million song downloads were
processed. Such a depth and breadth of product and technology prompted Time
Magazine to declare the Apple iTunes Music Store the 2003 Invention of the Year.
SAP R/3 Implementation
Scope
Phase 1:
The
iTunes Music Store implementation included mainly the SAP application modules
for sales & distribution (SD) and financial accounting (FI).
An interface from
the web-based Music Store front-end into SAP was required to capture customer
order information and track title volumes for vendor / label royalty payments.
New credit card functionality had to be supported for this new product line, as
well. Reports to provide download volume statistics and royalty audit
capabilities were necessary to meet the requirements of Phase 1.
With the expected
and actual volume of sales orders being processed, performance tuning and
testing became a significant element to this new endeavor.
Phase 2:
With
the implementation of Phase 2, Gift Certificate functionality was offered on the
iTunes Music Store and the service was opened up to users of the Microsoft
Windows operating system.
SD and FI were again
the main business modules required to support the implementation, which
included, but was not limited to accounting for Gift Certificate deferred
revenue and reconciliation of open balances with the gift certificate processing
system.
Support Teams
Team Consulting Group, Inc. (TCG) was contracted directly by Apple
Computer, Inc. to implement both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the iTunes Music Store.
The SAP team supporting the Music Store implementation consisted of 3 TCG
consultants for the majority of the project duration (1 SAP Project Manager, 1
SD Application Consultant and 1 FI Application Consultant). The TCG team worked
closely with the Apple Internet Services team and later with the gift
certificate team during the second phase of the implementation.
Duration
Phase 1:
The
above-mentioned functionality for Phase 1 was implemented on 04/28/2003 in a
time frame of 7 months.
Phase 2:
The functionality for Phase 2 was implemented
on 10/16/2003 in a timeframe of 3 months.
Business Environment
Apple Canada, Inc. was
established in 1980 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. The
headquarters is located in Markham, Ontario serving customers through more than
300 channel partners and from offices across Canada in; Halifax, Quebec City,
Montreal,
Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria.
A central US site located
in Austin, TX supports the Apple Canada business. At this distribution
center all Canadian sales orders are managed. In addition the daily shipments of
the finished
products to the end customers and various Apple Canada offices are coordinated.
Beside the daily business, Austin is feeding back the demand of finished
products to the manufacturing site in Sacramento, CA, as well as the requests
for OEM products to the central OEM
planning group in Cupertino, CA.
Apple Computer, Inc.,
decided to use the SAP R/3 solution to replace a number of mainframe systems and
software which was getting more and more complex and expensive to maintain.
In the overall Apple IT strategy, the SAP R/3 Canada implementation was the
third R/3
implementation. Learning from the earlier experiences at Apeldoorn’s (NL)
central distribution center and the smaller OEM group, located in Cupertino, CA,
the Canadian business was a good candidate to start the North American rollout
of the R/3 system. The Canadian installation played a core role in the Apple IT
rollout strategy, leading the way to further R/3 implementations at multiple
sites in the US and abroad. It served as a test case to support the company’s
increasingly complex business processes and helped to simplify the system
environment by reducing the number of necessary interfaces.
SAP R/3 Implementation
Scope
The Canadian R/3
implementation included the main SAP application business modules, such as
financial accounting including AR and AP (FI), Controlling (CO), Sales &
Distribution (SD) and
Materials Management of Finished Goods (MM).
A number of interfaces
were needed to streamline the flow of information required by the entire Apple
systems environment. Most of the interfaces are vital for Apple’s corporate and
Canadian integration of Financials, Logistics and Planning functions.
Support Teams
Team Consulting Group, Inc. (TCG) was the
secondary-consulting partner at Apple Computer, Inc. by subcontracting it’s
services to a big six consulting organization. The TCG consulting team was
formed by a small team of 3 (three) application consultants, covering the main
application functionality in SD, CO and MM. The TCG consulting team was working
part time at the client site (2-3 days/week) for the time frame mentioned above.
The overall Apple team consisted of approx. 20
(twenty) resources. Most of these resources were fully assigned to the project.
The in-house team was a mix between Apple IS staff and users from the Canadian
distribution site.
Duration
The above mentioned functionality was implemented in
a time frame of 5 months. The live date of 01/1997 was achieved.
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iTunes Implementation)