Since 1928, spectators at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade have marveled at the iconic, giant balloons that drift through the streets of mid-town Manhattan. No party-store helium canister will do for these towering balloons, which often measure several stories high. Those gargantuan renditions of our favorite characters are all sent flying by Messer, a leader in the safe and reliable production and delivery of industrial and medical gases for more than 120 years.
Those gases also include oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, neon, xenon, and krypton—all critical to supporting processes and products in electronics, food and beverage, metals, biopharmaceuticals, and other industries.
Business demands and market realities in the dynamic gas sector are constantly in flux, so Messer relies on real-time data intelligence to stay agile and flexible in their decision-making. Increasingly hampered by siloed data and a patchwork of third-party visualization tools, Messer embarked on a digital transformation to create a next-generation data management solution worthy of the company’s high-tech, high-flying operations.
Data with a Purpose
Messer knows critical and often lifesaving business decisions require accurate, real-time intelligence and insights. CIO David Johnston explained: “The stakes in many of the sectors that we provide gases for are really very high.”
From steel plants to the semiconductor industry to intensive care units, “it is critical that our distribution processes are operating at a level that ensures our customers are getting what they need when they need it.”
Messer was able to rise to the moment and meet the urgent needs of its customers when the COVID-19 pandemic delivered unprecedented demand for oxygen coupled with massive logistical challenges. That global crisis revealed that Messer’s legacy IT system needed an overhaul.
Messer’s siloed data was in several different databases, which meant it was time-consuming to access, and a single source of the truth was elusive. Various visualization tools also required different data formats, which slowed reporting time and bogged the IT department as it tried to manage a complex, disparate landscape, creating, as Johnston explained, “a huge amount of complexity and a huge amount of inefficiency.”
Messer CIO David Johnston sought a solution that would provide a unified source of truth and the powerful analytics tools Messer needed to give an elevated purpose to the company’s data—a new, cloud-based data management and analytics foundation for an actual data-driven enterprise. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) was the company’s choice.
The Modern Data Landscape Delivers
SAP BTP, with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, and the next-generation SAP Datasphere, provided a modern data architecture to establish a single, trusted source of truth, combining 12 data sources in one solution for mission-critical business insights.
Messer has been reaping benefits across the board, from IT and supply chain cost savings to improved customer service, inventory management, and data security. “We started with five specific use cases that we went after,” Johnston shared. “As I sit here today, we’re at well over 200.”
Messer’s new, simplified IT landscape has empowered business users, who benefit from intuitive, self-service dashboards and quick access to relevant, actionable, real-time data, as well as IT personnel, to now focus on higher-value, strategic tasks. This amounts to accelerated time-to-insight and more energy and resources available to focus on future innovation.
“With a data fabric that allows us to see our business in a consistent, fast, reliable, and highly trustworthy way,” Johnston said, “what we can do is really almost unlimited.”
Next for Messer and Wise Advice with an Eye on AI
With Messer’s new, streamlined data management foundation, the sky is no longer the limit.
“Our objective isn’t just to deliver a suite of great dashboards and great analytics stories,” Johnston explained. “Our goal is to build out a strong, coherent, strategic data fabric that will allow us to unlock the power of AI and drive the next level of business transformation.”
For other organizations hoping to build the data foundation that will send them soaring into the future, ready to capitalize on artificial intelligence technologies and whatever else awaits, Johnston’s advice is to frame your technology transformation as a business transformation, and a business imperative.
“Bring the business community together around data,” he said. “All the key stakeholders, the influencers, and the owners of data from across the organization: bring them to the table.”
The Full Episode
Messer CIO David Johnston joined SAP BTP Better Together: Customer Conversations to discuss the medical and industrial gasses industry and Messer’s digital transformation.
- Thought Leadership Podcast: Johnston sat down with Thulium’s CEO Tamara McCleary to discuss why end-to-end data-driven insights are necessary, what technology solutions were required for the world’s largest privately owned industrial gases company to transform, and why Messer leveraged SAP BTP to drive a complete business transformation.
- Practitioners’ Video: Johnston and I discuss why and how Messer, one of the biggest suppliers of medical oxygen and other industrial mission-critical gases, built a new, cloud-based data management and analytics foundation because the future belongs to data-driven organizations, and thriving in the dynamic industrial gases sector means responding quickly to changing market conditions.
Explore more success stories of customers leveraging SAP BTP to drive transformation that overhauls legacy IT systems:
- DuluxGroup: How can an innovative cloud-based integration shape a modern and hybrid IT landscape?
- Lufthansa Group: Co-creating a data fabric infused with context and governance for accurate business-wide data-driven decision-making
For the full episode and the on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit sap.com/btp. To share input on the topics and technologies you want us to cover, or if you are interested in being a guest on the show, email us.
Timo Elliott is vice president and global innovation advocate for SAP BTP at SAP.