Everything went according to plan in this project for Landesbetrieb Information und Technik Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia’s central statistical and IT services provider – IT.NRW. Both IT.NRW and the Landesamt für Besoldung und Versorgung NRW (State office for salaries and pensions – LBV) were very satisfied with the project progress. As planned, the entire migration to SAP HANA was completed within a tight timeframe of only 16 months and on budget. The business-critical migration for LBV was carried out smoothly and efficiently over a long weekend. On Monday, staff were able to work as usual with their SAP HCM system, which was now much faster. Today, the state benefits from time savings in payroll processing: the core payroll processing time was reduced by 50 percent. The maintenance costs have also been reduced to a minimum. They reached a return on investment after only 12 months. Overall, the state's SAP HANA solution is not only economically sound, but this future-proof technology also protects the state’s investments as the Waldorf-based software manufacturer plans to run all its products exclusively on its SAP HANA in-memory database starting from 2025. North Rhine-Westphalia is proud of its new HANA environment. In the global ranking, there is only one with more monthly payroll transactions.
T-Systems has improved the process to the extent that operating costs have been reduced by five million euros,” explains Dr. Jan Mütter, Head of the IT Solutions division at IT.NRW, in an interview.
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To me, the project is like the next level in Super Mario: we’ve left the old level. Using ERP HCM on an IBM mainframe meant we were far outside the mainstream, which made getting support difficult. By going to a new level with SAP HANA, we’ve opened the door to the future and can now optimize the application, as well as use evaluation options that weren’t available in the old setting.
Dr. Jan Mütter, Head of Division “IT solutions”, IT.NRW
Every month, some 279,000 public sector employees, 190,000 other employees, and 207,000 benefit recipients in North Rhine-Westphalia depend on punctual bank transfers. This fact made the decision to replace the old expensive mainframe computer a difficult one for the state office for salaries and retirement benefits (LBV) and the IT.NRW experts in charge of IT issues. The changeover entailed no small risk for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Previously, IT.NRW used a mainframe computer and an underlying DB2 database for monthly payment activities. Shortly before the maintenance contract was due to expire, LBV and IT.NRW opted for a new solution. The idea was that this would not only reduce the high maintenance costs but also open the door to infrastructure consolidation. The negotiated public tender covered aspects such as concept design, testing, project management, technology, implementation, and the timely migration of all SAP HCM (Human Capital Management) data from the old to the new system. The tremendous time pressure and importance of the data migration represented a major challenge for this system.
T-Systems won the tender with its all-in offer and impressive value for money. Experience from previous undertakings with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in other projects enabled T-Systems to develop a comprehensive approach that was perfectly tailored to the needs of the state government, IT.NRW, and LBV.
T-Systems won the public tender with its comprehensive tailored solution that covered aspects such as concept design, testing, project management, technology, implementation, and the timely migration of all SAP HCM data from the old to the new system. The new system’s architecture is based on stable, high-performance, SAP HANA certified x86 hardware and a highly reliable, fast SAP HANA database. The entire system architecture has undergone extensive testing and has been designed to be redundant in order to safeguard critical billing runs accordingly. In its role as general contractor, T-Systems also controlled the subcontractors. Dell EMC supplied and installed the hardware. SNP was responsible for the implementation of the data migration. The SAP standard tool used migrated the huge data sets of the source system to the new target system in such a short time that the migration could be successfully completed in only one extended weekend. After extensive know-how transfer from T-Systems to IT.NRW, handover of all documentation and successful completion of the first three accounting runs, T-Systems was able to hand over the operation of the new SAP HCM infrastructure to IT.NRW. During the operating phase, T-Systems continued to support third-level support and any necessary system adjustments.
North Rhine-Westphalia’s state administration consists of three levels. Ministries and state authorities are on the top level, the civil service on the middle level, and regional administrative bodies are on the third level. They comprise regional councils, tax authorities, and local police forces. There are also state authorities that provide marketable services in competition with other public bodies and private-sector companies. One of NRW’s top level state authorities is the Landesamt für Besoldung und Versorgung NRW (state office for salaries and pensions – LBV). Every month, it processes approx. 676,000 transactions, which break down as follows: around 279,000 civil servants, 190,000 payees, 207,000 pension recipients. Each transaction requires a separate calculation and authorization process. Among other things, the state enterprise Information and Technology North Rhine-Westphalia (IT.NRW) is responsible as service provider of the country for IT and statistics.
