The technology team defined two key elements for success in its enterprise mobility SAP strategy:

1. Understanding user needs so they could create a simplified UX that would delight employees and make them more productive
2. Choosing a development platform that could leverage the IT team’s existing skillset, integrate easily with SAP and build on its breadth of capabilities and depth of information, was easy for developers to learn and use, and could deliver quick results and strong ROI for the business.

“We needed a framework that delivered the look, feel and functionality that users required, while also being cost-effective,” said Darren Bambrick, Senior Developer at Glanbia.

Initial attempts to build a number of apps with the free technology available to them did nothing to simplify the development and maintenance process for the team.

As the project evolved, the team also identified a guiding mission statement to “deliver a rich and cohesive user experience, grounded in design, developed once and deployed to all.”

That’s where Neptune Software’s low-code rapid application development platform, Neptune DXP – and SAP Fiori – came in.

To deliver the best possible solution for its customers, the team drew upon Fiori guidelines to help them:

• Ensure users know what to expect
• Create apps that are intuitive and have consistent look, feel and behavior
• Deliver apps that only expose functionality that users need to complete their tasks
• Streamline the number of designers needed

“Neptune Software was a perfect fit to meet all of our requirements,” said Mr. Bambrick. “Built to take full advantage of Fiori, it has a simple-to-use editor and feature-rich application designer and leverages our team’s collective ABAP skills.”

“It also fits within our existing infrastructure without requiring additional hardware or software such as Gateway or SAP HANA. Plus, built-in device encryption protects the enterprise and updates are handled automatically so we don’t have to worry when jQuery standards or HTML libraries change.”

The rollout was accomplished in one-third of the time of previous options.

An initial proof of concept (PoC) rollout delivered three apps to replace older offerings, including:

• Employee lookup
• Employee leave request
• My Approvals, featuring workflow to enable managers to approve purchase orders and leave requests

The team put Neptune tools to use immediately and with little learning curve to complete the projects in eight short weeks, first adapting Neptune application templates and developing the native apps, then installing and deploying them to mobile devices and training the user base.

“With Neptune Software, we can deliver highly productive and back-end intensive apps in a third of the time it took with our previous options.”

“We’ve been able to shift our focus from great app development to great app design, a transformation that leads to greater application acceptance and adoption by our users.”

That initial success of the PoC led to even more projects. Today, with Neptune Software installed for more than two years, Glanbia is confident it’s successfully meeting the sophisticated and diverse needs of its user base.

The team has streamlined the user experience while delivering a range of mobile and desktop apps across its SAP infrastructure for HR, CRM, MM, SD, and FI.

A cross-enterprise business applications portal enables users to leverage user-friendly apps for ERP, HR, and manufacturing as they see fit and based on their roles.

This includes nine mobile offline apps and more than 20 desktop apps such as:

• A mobile CRM system for account management and sample request
• A product catalog information app providing material master data as well as product images to an SAP Hybrid system for B2B and B2C applications
• Task-based apps to streamline HR processes for timesheets, payslips, leave requests, workflow approvals, personal development plans, and web forms development

“Feedback from our business users has been really positive, and we’ve recently seen an exponential growth in the requests for Neptune applications,” said Mr. Bambrick. “Not only have we moved away from paper-based processes, but our apps are also widely used and manage a heavy workload – a highly popular Web Forms app processed nearly 13,000 forms last year alone.”

Expansion of its mobile UX strategy continues at Glanbia, with another 10 apps currently underway, and more proposals awaiting approval, including a warehouse implementation and a new change management workflow tool for materials management.

For an expanding company like Glanbia, that’s exactly the results it needs to continue performing at maximum strength and speed.

Glanbia is an Irish global nutrition group with operations in 32 countries. It has leading market positions in sports nutrition, cheese, dairy ingredients, speciality non-dairy ingredients and vitamin and mineral premixes.

Glanbia has deep roots in the dairy industry and has become the world’s leading producer and marketer of quality performance nutrition consumer products supporting active lifestyles.

Customer Industry: Food & Beverage/Nutrtion
Number of Users: 4,000
SAP Version:  SAP HR, CRM, MM, SD, FI
Devices:  Desktop, tablets and smartphones
Scope: Mobile, web and desktop
Implementation Time: 8 weeks