Raj Petro achieves joint venture success

Raj Petro, a Brenntag Group Company, is a leading petroleum and lubricant manufacturing and marketing company. As it accelerated its business growth, the company looked to align its workflows, reporting and compliance processes more closely with Brenntag. As a first step, Raj Petro moved from SAP® ERP business  systems to Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM® Cloud®.

Business Challenge

By becoming a Brenntag Group company, Raj Petro gained ready access to valuable global markets. The company’s goal is to drive a far-reaching transformation to leverage this global network. With several ongoing key initiatives, including relocating its corporate headquarters, it was crucial for Raj Petro to transition to cloud-based solutions within a strict deadline.

Transformation

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic Raj Petro completed the move to cloud rapidly, helping the company optimize its workflows. It brought cultures, processes, and systems into closer alignment with Brenntag—and contributed to record-breaking revenues.
 

“We’re already measuring strong commercial success—and we consider Kyndryl a strategic partner on our ongoing transformation journey.”

- Prakash Subramanian, CFO, Raj Petro

Solution

Targeting a move to cloud
Like many successful manufacturers, Raj Petro relies on SAP ERP to manage its operations end-to-end, from the back office to the factory floor. For years, the company has trusted Kyndryl to support its mission-critical applications, and ran its SAP solutions on IBM® Power® Systems servers and the IBM AIX® operating system at an on-premises data center.

“Our joint venture [JV] with Brenntag brought a wide range of new demands on our SAP solutions,” explains Raj Petro’s CFO Prakash Subramanian. “As well as introducing strict compliance standards for SAP ERP data integrity and disaster recovery, one condition of the JV was that we deliver financial and operational reports in more-frequent cycles. We knew it would be difficult to meet these requirements using our existing infrastructure.”

Jitesh Save, IT Head at Raj Petro, says, “After weighing our options, we decided our fastest route to compliance was a managed services solution. By moving to the cloud, we’d gain the performance and scalability to support our compliance use cases at a significantly lower cost than building a new on-premises infrastructure. Choosing the cloud would also remove the need to build a data center in our new headquarters—reclaiming floorspace and reducing our environmental footprint.”

Selecting a proven partner
After evaluating offerings from several leading cloud vendors, Raj Petro determined that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud® was the fastest and most cost-effective route to unlock the new compliance capabilities.

“We were looking for a trusted managed services partner that would help us to focus on our core competencies, and Kyndryl came to us highly recommended,” recalls Prakash Subramanian. “Kyndryl provided us with many strong client references, which gave us great confidence that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud would meet our needs. In fact, I have had a previous—and highly successful—experience with a move to IBM Cloud in the past, so I had first-hand experience of the professionalism and expertise of the Kyndryl India team.”

Jitesh Save adds, “The success of the JV initiative, as well as our move to a new headquarters, depended on the timely execution of our cloud project. Of all the vendors we considered, we felt that Kyndryl had the deepest experience.”

Meeting strict deadlines—and  breaking revenue records
Using Application, Data, and AI services from Kyndryl, Raj Petro completed its move on time and within budget. Prakash Subramanian explains, “By moving our mission-critical SAP ERP systems to managed services in the IBM Cloud, we can meet our partner’s requirements around compliance and financial reporting cost-effectively. At the same time, moving to cloud gave us the opportunity to optimize our workflows—contributing to record-breaking revenues despite the pandemic.”

Jitesh Save adds, “Since moving our SAP business systems from an on-premises data center to highly available managed services in the IBM Cloud, we’ve slashed our recovery point objective [RPO] to under 15 minutes, and cut our recovery time objective [RTO] to less than four hours. Thanks to Kyndryl, we have peace of mind that our SAP systems are always protected.”

Preparing for an integrated future
During Raj Petro’s cloud initiative, the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep around the world. By choosing managed services over an on-premises data center, the company could seamlessly transition its back-office staff to remote working with the assurance that its SAP ERP systems were being managed and maintained by Kyndryl experts.

“Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud includes support right through the stack, including SAP Basis,” explains Prakash Subramanian. “We’ve not even experienced the smallest issue with our SAP solutions since moving to IBM Cloud. As a result, we are free to focus on what matters: providing the business with the tools they need to do their work effectively.”

Looking ahead, Raj Petro is confident that the IBM Cloud platform will enable it to move smoothly to the next-generation ERP SAP S/4HANA® when the business is ready.

Moving smoothly to the cloud

Working with experts from Kyndryl, Raj Petro completed its move to the managed services environment in just 60 days—well ahead of the deadline for the JV and the opening of its new headquarters.

“Even in the face of considerable external pressures, the Kyndryl team helped us achieve an incredible result,” comments Prakash Subramanian. “Kyndryl made the time for in-depth meetings with our team during the scoping and planning phases of the project, which really paid off further downstream. The switchover from our on-premises environment to the cloud was as smooth as we could have wished for, and the support we received from Kyndryl played a key role in that achievement.”

By embracing the cloud, Raj Petro is empowering its IT organization to spend more time focusing on value-added activities. Jitesh Save confirms, “We recently successfully completed a full test of our disaster recovery capabilities, which would have been too risky to attempt in the past.”

Prakash Subramanian concludes, “We’re already measuring strong commercial success—and we consider Kyndryl a strategic partner on our ongoing transformation journey.”

Take the next step
Learn more about IT Infrastructure Services from Kyndryl. Find out how Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP can help your organization.

April 2022