Dis-Chem Pharmacies is a large retail pharmaceutical chain in South Africa with an aggressive growth path.
Dis-Chem has been South Africa’s first choice in pharmacies since 1978, with their linked dispensaries, family clinics, wound-care clinics and comprehensive self-medication centres. As a leading specialist in beauty, sport supplements, health and well-being, they offer expert advice and a wide range of products in these categories.
The Dis-Chem Story
Requirement: New infrastructure and move to HANA
In 2018 Dis-Chem decided to invest in new infrastructure and align their choice of platform with the SAP roadmap.
The outcome was to migrate all non-HANA databases to HANA. Dis-Chem considered this an attractive commercial opportunity
as a result of previous HANA migration projects, as well as having a positive commercial impact through the elimination of DB2
licence costs on all SAP instances.
Solution: Migration to HANA on-premise and Managed Services
Dis-Chem considered both cloud and on-premise options, selecting on-premise with new hardware. They selected EPI-USE Labs
and First Technology, using Hitachi equipment. This decision was influenced by a successful BI HANA migration, as well as the
hyperconverged solution which EPI-USE Labs implemented in 2016.
The EPI-USE Labs Managed Services team undertook this project by migrating each SAP system landscape separately, as planned in
collaboration with Dis-Chem. The following system landscapes were migrated to newly acquired infrastructure, in this order:
- Re-platforming of the SAP Business Warehouse (BW) landscape
- SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) landscape (DMO Migration DB2 -> HANA)
- SAP ECC HR landscape (DMO migration DB2 -> HANA)
- SAP PI migration landscape (DB2 -> HANA)
- SAP ECC FILO landscape (DMO migration, combining a Unicode conversion and DB2 -> HANA)
Aside from the above, the Fiori Gateway and Solution Manager systems were also migrated to HANA DB.
As part of the solution, EPI-USE Labs integrated innovative solutions including Unified Platform™ to monitor, automate and
orchestrate this complex landscape; Data Sync Manager™ to aid in maintaining refreshed non-productive systems; and Client
Central™ as an incident and change management tracking facility.
EPI-USE Labs is providing ongoing Managed Services that comprise SAP monitoring and housekeeping, break fixes and ticket
resolution against an SLA, support pack and SAP note technical upgrades, proactive Basis processes, SAP Platform and Basis advisory and a regular set of non-productive client refreshes.
“The EPI-USE Labs and First Technology teams delivered the project in record time with flying colours. The migration was seamless, and they overcame all the technical barriers with ease. Their communication was very good throughout; they kept our stakeholders well-informed, and aligned expectations. And they’ve continued to provide us with excellent support.”
Kim Sim, Chief Information and Innovation Officer, Dis-Chem PharmaciesAbout Dis-Chem
Dis-Chem Pharmacies is a large retail pharmaceutical chain in South Africa with an aggressive growth path.
Dis-Chem has been South Africa’s first choice in pharmacies since 1978, with their linked dispensaries, family clinics, wound-care clinics and comprehensive self-medication centres. As a leading specialist in beauty, sport supplements, health and well-being, they offer expert advice and a wide range of products in these categories.
§ Founded in 1978 by pharmacists Ivan and Lynette Saltzman
§ Over 150 stores in Africa and more than 18,000 employees
§ Listed 27.5% of its issued share capital on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in November 2016
§ The Dis-Chem Foundation provides care and support to improve the lives of individuals while relieving the burden on communities, families and friendsThis case study first appeared on www.epiuselabs.co.za
