SUSE supports Guerbet’s fast-paced growth, keeping operating costs low

“Our relationship with SUSE continues to be close and productive, and we have been very satisfied with the quality and clarity of their support, documentation and training. When the opportunity presents itself, we will advocate strongly for migrating our other line-of-business applications running on Linux to the SUSE Enterprise platform.” Laurent Londais, CTO, Guerbet.

With more than 2,800 employees in five continents, Guerbet is a global leader in medical imaging that is enjoying a period of dramatic growth. The technology team led by CTO Laurent Londais, realized that rationalizing business processes and consolidating systems would enable the company to achieve a substantial reduction in operating costs, whilst enabling rapid and seamless future expansion. Added to this, embracing a standardized way of working across different business units would greatly enhance its supply-chain visibility.

With this strategy in mind, Guerbet set out on a major business transformation initiative, named G-ONE. By replacing decentralized operations with a single, unified IT platform comprising near-real-time analytics capabilities, the company’s continued growth wouldn’t impact its ability to drive lean, compliant and cost-effective global operations.

The first phase of migration to the new SAP platform needed to complete within 24 months, after which the technical service agreement with an incumbent managed services vendor expired. To set G-ONE in motion, Guerbet required a secure, scalable and high-performance server platform for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for SAP Applications was the natural fit for its high performance, scalability and availability.

To reduce complexity and enable faster, more consistent and repeatable server deployment Guerbet deployed SUSE Manager to automate Linux server provisioning, patching and configuration. SUSE Manager also delivers automated monitoring, tracking, auditing and reporting, helping Guerbet optimize operations, contain costs and meet stringent regulatory demands.

The journey to operational efficiency

To date, Guerbet has reduced its number of ERP platforms to just two and successfully migrated 21 ERP systems (supporting 34 of its entities) to the new SAP platform.

By embracing global standards across the business it is now far easier and faster for Guerbet’s senior managers to compare performance between different geographies. There is less manual work for the finance team and with deeper insight into complex data flows inside the business, Guerbet can identify opportunities to enhance the efficiency of its global supply chain.

Guerbet unlocked more than 3.5 million euros in cost-savings by ending its technical service agreement six months before the expiry date—an achievement for which Guerbet received a silver award from SAP for having undergone the best business transformation of the year.

By the time Guerbet completes the decommissioning of its legacy Oracle ERP systems and data centers a further $1.5 million in cost savings will be realized. These efficiencies are about more than technology. By rationalizing processes, Guerbet can achieve powerful economies of scale in areas such as supplier management. Compliance and security have also been strengthened as a result of the team gaining full visibility into unpatched SAP systems.

With the SAP HANA database at the heart of its new analytics platform, Guerbet has boosted the performance of some of its key reports by a factor of 30, whilst the stability and availability of SLES for SAP Applications provides the confidence that mission-critical systems will be online 24/7.

Click here to find out more about how Guerbet enhanced operating efficiency, reduced costs and gained deeper insight into its global supply chain.