Dexco: Reworking business operations in the cloud to set new benchmarks for product sustainability and innovation
en
Industry
Mill products—building products
Region
São Paulo, Brazil
Company Size
12,322 employees
A focus on best practices and standardization
Leading building materials manufacturer Dexco SA reinforced its reputation as an early adopter of innovative technologies by investing in SAP Cloud ERP Private solutions as part of the RISE with SAP journey. Through this cloud transformation, the company has newfound agility from strategic real-time data insights, allowing it to accelerate the pace of delivering on its promise of solutions for better living.
>97%
of customizations eliminated
70%
of legacy satellite systems consolidated
75%
faster accounting close time
"Our successful transformation to SAP Cloud ERP Private was driven by a dedicated internal team and active participation from business areas."
Renato Dantas, IT Architecture Manager, Dexco SA
Pioneering through continuous investment in technology and design
Dexco SA is a market leader in the production of engineered wood panels, sanitary ware, metals, and ceramic tiles. Home to some of Brazil’s most popular names in construction, renovation, and decoration, the company’s building product brands include Castelatto, Ceusa, Deca, Durafloor, Duratex, Hydra, and Portinari.
Setting a benchmark in quality and design, Dexco delivers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions that combine aesthetics and functionality to fulfill its promise of solutions for better living. The company is respected across the sector and known for its strong commitment to environmental sustainability, eco-efficiency in processes and solutions, and responsible forest management, with recognition through numerous industry certifications and awards.
Structured into four business lines—wood, metals, sanitary ware, and coatings—Dexco was operating on an aging business technology foundation with satellite systems, mass customizations, and inefficient asynchronous integrations. When the time came to modernize its operations, the company sought a stable and scalable digital foundation. It needed to remove the limitations imposed by the old technology environment while achieving fluid and efficient business processes and connected operations across the enterprise.
Adopting advanced digital technologies for maximum impact
Dexco made the decision to upgrade its business operations on SAP Cloud ERP Private solutions through the RISE with SAP journey. This would strengthen ongoing governance and help it align with the evolution of SAP Business Suite. Dexco also committed to a clean core approach to maximize the flexibility and scalability of the new technology foundation.
Besides upgrading to SAP Cloud ERP Private, Dexco’s transformation included integrating with an ecosystem of SAP solutions. This business landscape encompassed the SAP Integrated Business Planning solution, the SAP Extended Warehouse Management application, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, the SAP Analytics Cloud solution for planning, and the SAP Transportation Management application. The project also included AI initiatives in master data governance and sales using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), the SAP Cloud ALM tool, as well as SAP LeanIX and SAP Signaviosolutions.
Since its legacy environment was besieged by customizations, Dexco decided on a greenfield model for the implementation, requiring it to reshape legacy processes as standard. To kick-start the rollout, Dexco selected the coatings business area, choosing a big-bang approach so that it could go live with all solutions simultaneously. The company subsequently rolled out the technology to other business areas, handling the data migration using SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit and SAP HANA service smart data integration for SAP BTP, enabling real-time data integration. During the course of the transformation, Dexco also completed two technical upgrades.
Increasing strategic agility and pace from data-driven insights
Since going live with its new technology foundation built on SAP Cloud ERP Private, Dexco has seen significant improvements across the company. For example, more than 70% of its legacy satellite systems have been consolidated, simplifying the management of its IT landscape.
Likewise, there’s been a significant improvement in integrations. The complex web of connections that was expensive to maintain and difficult to scale is gone. In its place is a more modern, stable, and scalable event-oriented architecture built on SAP BTP.
By maintaining its fit-to-standard culture—seeking standard solutions and best practices before any development—the company has minimized customizations and the associated maintenance costs. In doing so, Dexco dramatically reduced a structure of 13,000 customizations to just 300 custom codes. This way of working also puts the company in a strong position to rapidly adopt innovations and upgrades.
With centralized access to digital finance processes and comprehensive business reporting across its finance operations, the company has increased agility in delivering strategic information throughout its operating environment. This includes accelerating the financial closing process by reducing the accounting close time to just two to three days. Previously using manual processes, this activity took 12 days to complete.
In addition, the project allowed Dexco to consolidate its position as a pioneer in adopting SAP innovations. So far, the company has adopted the Joule capability embedded in SAP SuccessFactors HCM and integrated with Microsoft Teams.
Dexco is also using the SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing solution by Tricentis on SAP BTP for rapid and efficient continuous testing that uses the capabilities of SAP Business AI. Meanwhile, adopting SAP LeanIX solutions to assess business capability maturity and SAP Signavio solutions for continuous process mapping has maximized efficiency in managing business processes.
Furthermore, the company’s investment in SAP Cloud Application Services offerings, premium engagement offerings, and SAP Preferred Success services proved highly valuable for supporting and safeguarding the journey from planning to delivery. Harnessing a dedicated enterprise architect for RISE with SAP, a lean team, the right tools, strong governance, effective teamwork, and consistent leadership combined to elevate the quality of IT and business collaboration.
"Coordinated change management was a critical factor in delivering our transformation agenda. It was planned from the start and helped us avoid resistance in business areas, increasing the smooth adoption of our new digital foundation."
-Renato Dantas, IT Architecture Manager, Dexco SA
Pioneering AI innovation for core processes
The combination of a clean core approach, robust governance, and effective teamwork allowed Dexco to undertake its transformation journey with confidence and safety.
In terms of what’s next, Dexco is working with SAP Labs Network and premium engagement offerings to develop a use case for dedicated Joule Agents and applying the SAP Business AI capability directly to core processes.
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