Derbyshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Derbyshire in the UK. It is responsible for providing essential services to local communities such as adults and children, community libraries, highways, trading standards and countryside services. It currently employees around 15,000 personnel.
Case study: Derbyshire County Council
Industry: Public Sector | Application: Archiving | Proceed Rightsizer
Background
Derbyshire County Council (DCC) has been a long-term SAP user, and with the move to S/4HANA on the horizon it took the decision to ensure the data within its SAP system was as lean as possible before the migration took place.
Realising the need to gain as much efficiency as possible, DCC decided to engage with archiving specialists Proceed Group as experts in the archiving field, to prepare and right size its data prior to the move.
Getting data in shape prior to any migration is essential, analysis of, and rightsizing a database will reduce costs and also make the migration process much smoother.
Once the migration has happened, it’s also just as important to keep any future growth under control to prevent spiralling costs and reduce the need for future data rightsizing intervention.
“Whilst our in-house IT team is very skilled, we realised there was a gap in knowledge when it came to archiving, and developing a strategy that suited our organisation. Proceed is known for its expertise in this area. We knew that prior to the migration it was imperative to get our database in the best shape we could, so retaining Proceed offered us the best route to success.”
Neil Worthy, SAP Application Manager at DCC
Working together to gain data efficiencies
Creating an archiving strategy is key to a successful archiving project, and working with the DCC team, Proceed was able to create an archiving strategy that would deliver the desired results in terms of creating data efficiencies. Part of the process included making decisions about what needed to be archived, and what needed to be retained. Creating maximum efficiencies, this process helps organisations reduce data sprawl and ensures their existing data infrastructure is as lean as possible prior to the move. Imperative to the future success of the programme is also ensuring that any future data created has rulesets for it to be automatically archived if required. But importantly, allowing access to any archived data that needs to be retrieved quickly and easily.
Knowledge share key to future success
Understanding internal knowlegde gap
Create robust archiving strategy
Knowledge transfer
Proceed works hand in glove with its customers to train, and share knowledge with them that enables IT staff to get the most benefit from their work together. An essential part of their offering, is training customer’s staff to carry on the good work that has begun, and ensuring data efficiencies remain in place into the future.
“Since completion of the project, DCC has managed to reduce its SAP database size significantly– which has provided us with cost efficiencies. We’ve been impressed by the flexibility, and professionalism of the Proceed team.”
Neil Worthy, SAP Application Manager
Proceed overview
Proceed Group has been running data management projects for over twenty years – helping hundreds of customers worldwide. Our services include SAP archiving, content management as well as the decommissioning of SAP and non- SAP systems. This combined with our team of expert consultants and our range of state of the art products, is the key to delivering success for our customers.