INSIGHT 2|2019

21 FOCUS ON less important — cultural integration and a fusion of the different ways of doing business. “IT systems are a sort of metalanguage,” Petenao explains. “When you harmonise them, you force the organisation to speak the same language.” The importance management is placing on IT integration is reflected in the amounts allocated by the Board of Directors to the project. “We can say we’re doubling our IT portion of capex,” Petenao adds. “That’s because there are three advantages to putting Prysmian and General Cable on the same computer system: you reduce costs, you speak the same business language, and you can share best practices.” Increased IT spending up front will save costs down the line, and help the entire company achieve its goal concerning operating synergies. The integration plan calls to move Prysmian and General Cable’s computer systems onto a single ‘Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing’ (SAP) platform. A SAP governs pretty much everything a business does on its office computer system. When the IT integration plan is completed, every office in every country in the world, from China to Australia to Chile, will run on a single SAP, enabling all of the business and product units to work from one database. The IT integration of Prysmian and General Cable will keep Petenao, the Chief Digital Officer Stefano Brandinali, and IT HQ / local teams busy for many months to come. And it will be more complicated than past harmonisation because this time around they will be updating the SAP in the US by adopting a new SAP platform — S/4HANA — the new ‘intelligent generation of ERP’, at the same time they are integratingwithGeneral Cable. If they didn’t, they would need to start the overhaul of the SAP after integration was completed. Prysmian Group believes that to best deploy its expertise, it needs to have a solid and replicable base. So the hard work now will be more than worth it. You reduce costs , you speak the same business language , and you can share best practices