Page 1 · Master View

Life Scientific Discovery Report

  1. 1.Executive Summary
  2. 2.Who We Talked To
  3. 3.Inter-Function Relationships
  4. 4.Systems / Surfaces Discovered
  5. 5.AI Usage
  6. 6.Upcoming Agenda
  7. 7.Appendix

Page 2 · Executive Summary

Executive Summary

Life Scientific operates a crop-chemicals/agrochemical formulation model. It is asset-light: active ingredients and raw materials are sourced from suppliers, formulation and filling are performed by third-party tollers or contract manufacturers, and finished goods are sold through country and commercial channels as Life Scientific SKUs. The source material describes a business operating around the EUR 100M / 100-person scale with an aspirational scale target toward EUR 1B / about 150 people. This scale ambition creates a control and automation problem: the future stack must support growth without relying on the same personal knowledge, inboxes and spreadsheets that currently bridge gaps.

Life Scientific is migrating an operating model where SAP B1 is an important system of record, but not the complete business record. The live SAP B1/HANA interrogation confirms a material transaction, reporting, access, attachment and customisation footprint across six production schemas, but it also reinforces the core discovery finding: critical evidence, approvals, workflow state, reporting logic and reconciliation support, external partner confirmations and operational judgement are distributed across SAP, email, Excel, bank portals, Power BI, DataRails, SharperLight, Power Apps, SharePoint, AZAP, Odoo, regulatory tools and human approval trails.

Life Scientific is migrating to ERPNext and Dual Entry. As part of this programme, there are other platform choices being made, such as the EDI platform and iPaaS. These choices must be managed tightly to ensure no overall slippage and ensure meeting France's eInvoicing mandate, which has a September 1 2026 deadline.

Past 12 Months Scanned from SAP B1

Tables with data
~15%

~85% sit empty.

Suppliers
690
SKUs
Active1,420
Total4,128
Warehouses
Active57
Total102
Orders
Sales Orders3,265
Purchase Orders4,594
Estimated usage of SAP within LS
55%

Estimate: transcript-weighted current process usage; roughly 45% still sits in Excel, email, portals, BI and partner evidence.

Biggest Takeaways

  • 1
    This is a full operating model migration

    SAP B1 is an important system of record, but it is not the complete business record. Critical workflow state, approvals, evidence, reporting logic and reconciliation support currently sit across multiple systems, regulatory tools and human approval trails.

  • 2
    Event sequence is critical

    The future state must preserve how a business event actually happened, not just the final SAP transaction state. PO, supplier confirmation, shipment/BOL, import/customs, GRN, production order, toller report, COA, invoice, landed-cost true-up, payment, bank settlement, reporting and reconciliation need to be validated as linked sequences.

  • 3
    Key processes are unsupported on SAP

    Alternative BOMs, label-version control and partial stock blocking are among the many processes that are not fully supported on SAP today, resulting in off-system workarounds and trackers.

  • 4
    Finance close and reporting depend on manual judgement and parallel logic

    The SAP interrogation profiled 45,143 manual-journal rows, including 12,437 month-end rows, plus 2,518 saved Query Manager rows across the scanned schemas. AP approvals, bank-detail verification, payment runs, bank postings, landed-cost/WIP reconciliations, DataRails/consolidation, Power BI, Query Manager, Excel packs, SharperLight extracts and finance close files need explicit future-state ownership and audit trails.

Page 3 · Interview Coverage

Who We Talked To

Objective: Phase 1 and Phase 2 interviews were used to find the unknown unknowns across functions, systems, files, approvals and day-to-day workarounds. Not all Phase 2 responses are back yet, so this is a current-to-date view.
Interviewed
22 people, with 35hrs of interview recordings.
Files received
41 uploaded evidence files for review.
Core Excel
53+ core Excel processes surfaced.
Spreadsheet touchpoints
125+ spreadsheet references, extracts and handoffs surfaced.

"For customer service order entry and accounting, none of them are supported by SAP B1 currently. Everything seems to require an external spreadsheet, whether you're in North America or over in Europe."

Tracy Schaefer

Best overall · P1 Q5 · line 87

"The SAP inventory for the United States has never been correct the whole time I've been here, so I just don't use it. I trust the third-party warehouse count sheets instead."

Tracy Schaefer

Best shock quote · P1 Q14 · line 249

"Toller capacity, minimum quantities, lead times, toller assignments, and label versions are all managed in parallel in Excel files. The whole MRP side is currently done outside the SAP B1 system."

Karine Radovix

Best planning quote · P1 Q5 · line 61

"There is no file that brings together all the necessary information on toller capacity, minimum quantities, and lead times. Each person creates their own file. A shared database is missing."

Karine Radovix

Best no-source-of-truth quote · P2 Q4 · line 49

"When product is shipped before it is visible in SAP, I give an Excel file to the warehouse or factory and I am the one maintaining what will be shipped and when. I don't have a fail-safe way to do that in SAP."

Alexander Van Zanten Jut

Best supply-chain control quote · P1 Q13 · line 157

"When an invoice has a PO, GRN, pricing, or quantity issue, it's not tracked on a separate portal or even on Excel. It's tracked via our Outlook inbox, flagged as a query or marked as unread until resolved."

Geovanna Morris

Best finance workflow quote · P1 Q11 · line 133

"The finance drive would definitely be the biggest risk because that is where the majority of supporting evidence is maintained to back up transactions posted within SAP."

Nicholas Alessiani

Best audit-risk quote · P1 Q19 · line 229

"Just by looking at the system, you will never be able to understand the assumptions and judgments behind forecasts, budgets, capitalization, impairments, and manual journals. That does not live on SAP B1."

Stephen McAliskey

Best hidden-logic quote · P1 Q5 · line 61

"For offer comparison and avoiding spend, if I want to know the difference between the actual cost and what we had put in the budget, today in SAP B1 it is impossible."

Omar Chirou

Best procurement quote · P1 Q7 · line 85

"When cross-functional decisions are made, we don't do a great job of aligning or recording them. It was an important decision, but the governance of it, I don't know to what degree we do. Right now we're just relying on people."

Vikram Sridhar

Best executive quote · P1 Q18 · line 217

Key concerns surfaced from the quotes

SAP B1 is not carrying the full process

Customer service, procurement, planning and finance describe work that starts or ends in SAP, but still needs external proof to be trusted.

Spreadsheets are operational controls

Excel is not just reporting. It holds inventory checks, supplier comparisons, label status, forecasts, variances, handoff context and shipment control.

Human judgement is carrying source-of-truth gaps

People are joining warehouse counts, supplier emails, toller files, finance evidence, SAP records and cross-functional decisions by judgement.

Function / team People we spoke with Total files received
Production / Planning Vanessa Lozano, Karine Radovix, Meryll Roger, Thomas Terrier, Lee McDuffie, Christine Robertson 17
Customer Service / Order Fulfillment Tracy Schaefer, Agnès Jammes, Sabrina Osmani, Alexander Van Zanten Jut 17
Procurement Omar Chirou, Valentin Perillat 0
Finance Geovanna Morris, Jana Keaney, Stephen McAliskey, Gary McGovern, Mary Moorehead, Nicholas Alessiani 7
IT / Engineering / Transformation Vikram Sridhar, Joey Jooste, Cathal Murphy, Jack O'Regan Kenney 0
Total 22 people 41 files

Page 4 · Inter-Function Relationships

Inter-Function Relationships

How to read this: the map separates people we interviewed from people who were only surfaced through interview mentions. Those newly surfaced names are important because they point to hidden owners, approvers, evidence holders and country/product specialists that sit outside the initial interview list but still appear inside the operating model.

"For the creation of new product, I'm dealing with Gary Cooney, Julia Casados... Nicholas Warren... for the launching of a new product."

Agnès Jammes · Customer Service

"I will go to Nicolas or Arène... who create the products at the beginning of the cycle."

Sabrina Osmani · Customer Service

"Daily or weekly contacts with the country managers: Robin Jaco for France, Ali for the UK... and Mathias for Germany."

Karine Radovix · Production / Planning
Transcript Communications Preview 112% Open full view

People surfaced for follow-up

Nicholas Warren — Production / PlanningLabels, packaging, BOM changes, SDS/label files and toller instructions. Referenced by Sabrina, Tracy and Agnès; a major handoff between customer service, planning, product setup and regulatory-label work.

Gary Cooney + Julia Casados — Regulatory / Product CreationNew article/product creation, MasterApp validation and regulatory checks. Agnès directly ties them to product creation and validation, surfacing a function not yet interviewed.

Arène — Product Creation / Master DataProduct description changes and product creation at the start of the cycle. Sabrina says she goes to Nicolas or Arène for product-record changes.

Ali — Commercial / Country ManagementUK/Eastern country demand, product updates, pricing asks and Power BI consumption. Mentioned by both Karine and Alexander across planning and customer service.

Mathias / Matthias + Petra — Commercial / Country ManagementGermany credit-note checking/approval and country commercial ownership. Alexander names them in the German credit-note flow; Karine names Mathias for Germany.

Robin Jaco — Commercial / Country ManagementFrance country management, forecasts, price-list and customer-service flow. Mentioned by Karine and Sabrina; bridges forecast/demand and customer service.

Page 5 · Systems / Surfaces Discovered

All departments Systems / Surfaces Discovered

8Known before interviews
25After interviews: Phase 1 + Phase 2

All departments map

The map keeps the known working-document baseline on the left, then shows the systems and surfaces that Phase 1 and Phase 2 made visible.

Known before interviews Current system surfaced or expanded Evidence surface / external proof path Adjacent or target system edge Dashed edges show Phase 2 expansion from known or Phase 1 anchors.

SAP-B1 Preliminary Scan

Highlights from Source's recent production SAP scan captured the following metrics. The volumes themselves do not suggest a technical migration challenge; the migration risk is in the regional structure, table usage and process meaning behind the records.

While these illustrate that overall volumes will not present a technical migration challenge, they show that a deep understanding of the underlying variances in structure and tables across regions will be required in order to execute a semantically valid migration.

Schemas
6

Master · DE · ES · FR · IE · US

Tables per schema
2,900+

in each schema

Tables with data
~15%

~85% sit empty

Schema-variant tables
81

72 one-schema + 9 partial-schema tables

Total row count
18.4m

rows across the scanned production schemas

Layout differences
153

tables with different layouts across the six schemas

Page 6 · AI Footprint

AI Usage

High-level read: Finance is the strongest current AI-using business function. IT / Transformation has the deepest technical exposure. Customer Service, Procurement, and Production Planning show narrower or earlier-stage use.

"I really heavily now depend on Granola for notes... Claude AI for a lot of the key analysis and data extraction."

Finance · Stephen McAliskey · Phase 1 Q3 · line 47

Used for: meeting notes, FP&A analysis, data extraction, forecasting inputs, demand-planning inputs, and reporting prep.

"Claude's AI with SAP B1 has helped the team pull analysis from SAP in a consolidated way."

Finance · Geovanna Morris · Phase 2 Q7 · line 94

Used for: VAT filing templates, consolidated AP/AR aging, and cash-flow files that previously needed manual SAP-to-Excel work.

"I set it up to quickly review my emails... if it's an invoice coming into me, did I approve it?"

Customer Service · Tracy Schaefer · Phase 2 Q10 · line 133

Used for: email triage, invoice follow-up, Canada shipment tracking, daily task recaps, and Granola meeting notes.

Finance reporting

The strongest concrete use: SAP extraction, VAT/intrastat, AP/AR aging, cash-flow and stock-risk reporting.

Email and task support

Claude and ChatGPT are used for email review, recap emails, important-message cleanup, and daily to-do reminders.

Meetings and notes

Granola appears mainly as a note-taking / meeting-capture support tool in Finance and North America CS.

Early experiments

Planning and procurement mention regulatory checks, presentations, Excel help, label checks, and future KPI ideas.

Where each tool is showing up

Department × tool usage surfaced in interviews. This is a simple observed-use view, not a formal deployment map.

None observed · Mentioned / emerging In use

Observed usage by department

Relative measured usage from transcript mentions and described current tasks. Fuller bar = stronger current observed use.

Citations

Transcript anchors used as citations for the quotes, topic cards, and usage matrix above.

  • Finance: Stephen McAliskey Phase 1 Q3/Q7/Q8/Q11/Q13; Geovanna Morris Phase 1 Q8 and Phase 2 Q7; Mary Moorehead Phase 1 Q9; Gary McGovern Phase 1 Q9; Jana Keaney Phase 2 Q6.
  • IT / Transformation: Joey Jooste Phase 1 Q2/Q8/Q11; Jack O'Regan-Kenney Phase 1 Q3/Q11; Cathal Murphy Phase 1 Q17/Q18.
  • Customer Service: Tracy Schaefer Phase 2 Q5/Q10; Sabrina Osmani Phase 1 Q8 and Phase 2 Q10.
  • Procurement: Valentin Perillat Phase 1 Q3/Q8 and Phase 2 Q6.
  • Production Planning: Karine Radovix Phase 2 Q5; Meryll Roger Phase 2 Q12; Thomas Terrier Phase 2 Q6/Q9.

Page 7 · Upcoming Agenda

Upcoming Agenda

Purpose: use this as the working agenda for Dublin onsite and remote follow-up sessions. Additional process slots and detailed agendas are confirmed from the Sunday report review and final report.
Slot Session Focus / topics People / location
Sunday Salora arrives in Dublin Arrival and setup.

Ali + Nathan

Tuesday AM Engineering / IT & Transformation + Programme Management
  • Sunday report review
  • Target architecture review (main focus)
  • SAP dependency / decommissioning
  • State of Avalara and Ramp access
  • New integrations: iPaaS / Orderful / Windmill consideration
  • Master data discussion (based on SAP B1 scan)

Vikram, Geovanna, Joey

Remote / TBC: Jack (CTO)

Source: Nathan / Ali / Gavin

Tuesday PM FinanceSource intro

Source intro: department-level understanding; insights from transcripts.

Procure-to-pay / AP: supplier/e-invoice intake and status source of truth / portals; approval and payment-readiness model; GRN, shipping, and prepayment exception rules; payment-run audit trail; supplier bank-change control.

Order-to-cash / AR: outbound exception: credit note, failed EDI, pricing/customer issue; cash or aged-debt follow-up only if a balance remains open; rebates only if they affect close or reporting.

Record-to-report / close: one unresolved balance-sheet item; close checklist, reconciliations, audit support, and sign-off; reporting dependencies only where they affect close or sign-off.

Tax, treasury and eInvoicing: VAT, Intrastat, and e-invoicing evidence model, including SharperLight extracts and future Avalara boundary; tax authority payment approval and tie-back; live cash versus posted bank and bank-rec sign-off.

LifeScientific: Geovanna, Mary Moorehead, Stephen McAliskey, Nicholas Alessiani / Jana Keaney / Teresita Atacador

Source: Nathan / Ali / Gavin / Shane / Brian

Tuesday EOD Pace check for Friday
  • Review gaps and blockers
  • Decide Friday sessions needed

LifeScientific: Vikram, Geovanna

Source: Gavin / Nathan / Liam

Wednesday AM Finance follow-upKey topics
  • AP exceptions
  • AR / eInvoicing readiness
  • Close and reporting
  • Stock / landed-cost controls
  • Additional process slots TBC Sunday
  • Detailed agenda from final report

Onsite: Geovanna, Mary, Gary McGovern / Stephen McAliskey, Nicholas Alessiani / Jana Keaney / Teresita Atacador

Source: Nathan / Ali / Gavin / Shane / Brian

Wednesday Evening ProcurementKey topics
  • RFQ → quote comparison → supplier selection → PO
  • Active ingredient / co-formulant purchasing
  • Supplier confirmation / ETA evidence
  • Payment terms / deposits
  • Additional process slots TBC Sunday
  • Detailed agenda from final report

Remote / US: Omar Chirou, Valentin Perillat

Onsite / Dublin: Deirdre Kennedy (compliance, if material)

Thursday AM Customer Service / Order FulfilmentKey topics
  • Order management
  • Customer / ship-to / bill-to data
  • Available-to-promise / allocation
  • Warehouse / EDI delivery handoffs
  • Additional process slots TBC Sunday
  • Detailed agenda from final report

Onsite: Sabrina Osmani, Tracy Schaefer

Remote / Germany: Alexander Van Zanten Jut (confirm)

Remote / Lyon: Adriana Vivier-Boudrier / Annette Dugourd / Agnès Jammes

Thursday PM Production / PlanningKey topics
  • Demand planning / forecasting
  • S&OP / supply planning cadence
  • MRP / production scheduling
  • BOM / toller / batch-release rules
  • Additional process slots TBC Sunday
  • Detailed agenda from final report

Onsite: Karine Radovix, Thomas Terrier, Christi

Remote / US: Lee McDuffie

Remote / Lyon: Vanessa Lozano / Christine Robertson / Killian Mania Paris / Arnaud Taillandier / Nicholas Warren / Meryll Roger

Friday AM Cross-functional clarificationKey topics
  • Forecast → procure → produce
  • Procure-to-pay and landed cost
  • Order-to-cash and warehouse handoffs
  • Master data / source of truth
  • Additional process slots TBC Sunday
  • Detailed agenda from final report

Onsite: Geovanna, Mary, Joey, Karine, Thomas, Sabrina, Tracy

Remote / US if unresolved: Lee, Omar, Valentin

Remote / Lyon/Germany if unresolved: Christine / Vanessa / Alexander / function contacts

Source onsite: Nathan / Ali / Gavin

Source location TBC: Shane / Liam

Friday PM Next steps / close-out
  • Confirm owners, actions, and communications
  • Agree Source access to additional relevant systems
  • Agree Monday follow-up plan

Onsite: Geovanna, Vikram

Onsite function owners if needed: Mary / Joey / Karine / Sabrina / Tracy

Source onsite: Nathan / Ali / Gavin

Source location TBC: Shane / Liam

Remote only if still blocking: Lee / Omar / Valentin / Lyon contacts

Page 8 · Appendix A

Appendix A · Systems, Evidence And Source-Of-Truth

System estate interpretation: read this as a layered control environment. SAP B1 is central, and the live interrogation confirms a substantial transaction, access, reporting, attachment and customisation footprint. However, numerous tools and files still operate as source systems, control surfaces, evidence repositories, reporting layers, or workflow substitutes.

A.1 Evidence By Layer

Layer Examples from discovery Shortfall / migration issue
Planning / MRPAZAP, forecast files, monthly country-manager forecast inputs, MRP extracts, PAC meeting changes.Forecast source-of-truth, cut-off dates, late-cycle approval, toller capacity and business-opportunity handling need formal target design.
Master data and regulatory workflowMasterApp, Power Apps, SharePoint, LS Database, homologation/RTW/approved supplier list, KIM, registration approval data.Workflow may work but often ends with manual SAP entry/update; ownership and target treatment remain open.
Spreadsheets / EUCAsForecast files, purchase plans, supplier price database, toller capacity files, label annual review, stock/expiry extracts, payment trackers, close files, VAT templates.These are control surfaces, not convenience files. Each needs owner, source data, final record location and rebuild/archive decision.
Email / mailboxesAP inbox folders, personal planning/procurement mailboxes, supplier confirmation emails, label instructions, customer-service evidence, Teams decisions.Many approvals and workflow states are in email. Target process must capture owner, status, approval and evidence at transaction time.
External portalsBank portals, supplier/vendor portals, Odoo, warehouse/3PL portals, POD/BOL sites, credit insurer platform, tax authority portals.Portal-only evidence can disappear from migration unless exported, attached, or explicitly linked in future workflows.
Reporting / BIPower BI, DataRails, SharperLight/Crystalite, SAP Query Manager, Excel packs, board/ELT/finance packs. Live SAP interrogation found 2,518 saved Query Manager rows.Report logic and reconciliation outputs must be inventoried as a dependency estate. Saved queries should be classified by owner, consumer, purpose, source, refresh, tie-out and rebuild/retire decision.
Integrations / automationEDI/Alluvia, Odoo e-invoicing, SDI Spain, DataRails connector/API, ODBC feeds, bank files, Glanthus, internal apps, FTP/feed references.Each flow needs owner, data contract, retry/logging/replay evidence, cutover test and fallback.
Internal engineering / governanceNavigator/PDLC, Neon/LSNAV, GitHub, Cloudflare, databases/auth, Power Apps/SharePoint support, access review evidence.Internal tools can solve gaps, but they must not create a new shadow estate without ownership, access, logs and support model.
EDI / B2B integrationAlluvia currently connects SAP to four AS2 trading partners; Orderful is being explored because the EDI will need to be repointed to ERPNext/DualEntry as part of migration.This is not only a connector swap. It requires trading-partner outreach/testing, message-level mapping, token/connectivity validation, error visibility, support ownership and cutover fallback. Names and transaction sets must be confirmed before design is locked.
Middleware / automation platformWindmill is being proposed internally as the middleware/automation layer in place of a traditional iPaaS, with agreement from NG that the risky option would be having no middleware.Future integration design should define which flows run through Windmill, what observability/control it provides, who owns production support, and where business-facing evidence of success/failure is retained.

A.2 Source-Of-Truth Model By Domain

Domain Likely current truth Future-state question
SKU/item identitySAP B1 plus MasterApp/Power Apps/SharePoint and manual master-data owner action.What is authoritative: ERPNext, MasterApp replacement, regulatory database, or a controlled master-data workflow feeding all systems?
Registration / sellabilityRegulatory tools, LS Database/Power BI/KIM, SharePoint, label team/regulatory knowledge.How does ERP know a product is planned, sales locked, sellable, blocked, expired, label-version-ready, or registration-constrained?
Forecast / demandCountry-manager forecast file, Stephen/finance file, ASAP/AZAP load, PAC meeting adjustments.What is the official forecast source, cut-off, late-cycle approval path and downstream MRP feed?
Toller capacity and formulation assignmentIndividual Excel files and Valentin/procurement/planning knowledge.Will this live in ERPNext, a planning system, a controlled SharePoint/Power App workflow, or a dedicated planning database?
Label versionSharePoint/label folders, annual review workbook, personal trackers, email instructions to tollers, BAT approval.Should label version be held on item, BOM, production order, PO, batch/lot, or a linked label-management system?
Inventory availability and statusSAP stock, stock extracts, toller/warehouse reports, Odoo/NA trackers, customer-service availability sheets.How are free, blocked, partially blocked, allocated, expired, QC-held, relabel-required and externally held stock represented?
Payment readinessPO/GRN/invoice relationship map, AP inbox approval, supplier bank verification, payment proposal, bank portal approval.Which system proves approval before payment, exception approval, beneficiary validation and bank settlement?
Cash positionBank portals and daily cash files for live cash; SAP/DataRails for accounting/reporting after posting.Separate live operational cash from accounting cash and reconcile with controlled timing.
Close/reporting truthSAP, DataRails, Power BI, Excel reconciliations, manual journals, finance packs.Which reports are rebuilt in DualEntry/BI, which are retired, and which need historical comparatives?
EDI transaction stateAlluvia/SAP today, with external AS2 trading partners and likely partner-side acknowledgements/statuses.If Orderful is selected, what is authoritative for message receipt, validation, translation, acknowledgement, ERP posting status, exception status and reprocessing evidence?
Integration execution / logsCurrent truth is likely split across connector platforms, SAP, Odoo/portals, DataRails/API, manual files and engineering knowledge.If Windmill becomes the middleware, where are logs, retries, replay results, runbooks, alerts, secrets, approvals and business-readable integration status owned and retained?

Page 9 · Appendix B

Appendix B · Process Findings By Function

Scope: these findings focus on migration-relevant processes that are business-critical, poorly supported, inconsistent, external-evidence-heavy or likely to create cutover risk.

B.1 Production / Planning

Process / areaObserved current patternFuture design consideration
Forecast to MRP and production planCountry forecasts are gathered monthly, converted for AZAP, reviewed through PAC meetings and adjusted for short-term opportunities.Single forecast truth, cut-offs, late-change approvals and link to production/toller capacity.
Toller capacity and schedulingTollers provide plans and confirmed dates; capacity, minimum quantities and lead times can sit in individual files.Central capacity/formulation-assignment data and evidence trail for schedule changes.
Production orders and service POsSAP shows 1,086 production-order status records, 739 BOM headers, 1,918 BOM component rows, 9,193 goods issue rows and 4,688 goods receipt rows. Production orders and tolling/service POs remain separate business objects.Link manufacturing execution, tolling charge, purchase/service PO and production evidence.
Alternative BOMs / component responsibilitySAP B1 lacks easy alternative BOMs; temporary BOM changes and component-responsibility decisions can be email-based and case-by-case.System-held route-specific BOMs or controlled temporary BOM change workflow.
Toller reports and theoretical vs actual consumptionTollers provide reports; SAP may post theoretical consumption with later reconciliation against actual stock and variances.Variance thresholds, exception workflow, actuals capture and finance linkage.
Labels and version controlLabel versions, annual review, BATs, SharePoint, trackers and email instructions carry the control; SAP does not prove the version used by batch.Label-version linkage to production order, batch/lot, toller instruction and post-production evidence.
Batch, lot, expiry and stock statusSAP holds 15,432 batch master rows, 23,431 batch quantity rows and 276,704 item/warehouse rows. Interviews still indicate partial blocking, expiry, relabel/QC and batch exception risks.Richer stock statuses, partial blocking, expiry controls, relabel/QC holds and cutover sampling.

B.2 Procurement

Process / areaObserved current patternFuture design consideration
Supplier prices and RFQsSupplier/toller prices and supplier evidence may be copied into SAP through price lists/catalogs, but reference information remains in Excel and email.Authoritative supplier price/term source, validity dates, approval history and evidence retention.
Equivalent co-formulants / supplier catalog workaroundInternal item can map to different supplier product names; mapping is maintained by procurement in SAP partner catalog where information exists.Controlled equivalence mapping and receiving/planning visibility.
Packaging format / unit formatPackaging format such as drum, IBC, 200kg or 1000L may be requested from supplier but not consistently captured in SAP.Packaging format and UOM conversion captured for ordering, transfer, storage, receiving and production planning.
Prepayment / pro forma / dispatch follow-upUS, Canada and new-supplier prepayment flows are tracked by email: PO marked pro forma, Finance confirms payment, Procurement/Planning follows dispatch.Workflow status from pro forma to payment confirmation, dispatch, GRN/invoice offset and owner accountability.
Supplier evidence correctionIf SAP price is wrong, supplier written email can be authoritative and evidence may remain in personal mailbox.Attach or link correction evidence to transaction or supplier price record.
PO/GRPO/AP matching exceptionsSAP found 672 open POs, 113 stale POs, 338 open GRPOs, 92 stale GRPOs, 515 open AP invoices, 15 stale AP invoices and 392 AP invoice samples without PO/GRPO lineage.Three-way matching, exception queues, pro forma/BOL evidence capture and open-state cutover treatment.

Page 10 · Appendix B Continued

Appendix B · Process Findings By Function

B.3 Customer Service / Order Fulfillment

Process / areaObserved current patternFuture design consideration
Commercial-to-order mediationCommercial often does not directly use ERP; Customer Service converts country-manager/customer needs into operational orders and fulfilment work.Role design and workflow ownership must match actual order activity.
North America order/inventory workaroundUS uses SAP plus warehouse portals and country-manager inventory/order sheets; Canada uses Odoo plus checks/balances sheets.Separate NA migration path and evidence model for inventory, lot, BOL/POD, invoicing and order status.
EDI order intake and blockage resolutionEDI/Alluvia handles French/core customer flows; Customer Service and SAP support resolve blocked messages and reference-data issues.Technical and business ownership for EDI cutover, error queues, rerun evidence and customer confirmation.
Shipment / POD / BOL evidenceWarehouse and carrier evidence may live in portals, Odoo attachments, PDF/Word/Excel files and email.Store or link signed BOL, POD, delivery order, labels, status and shipment references.
Price and terms exceptionsException approvals can sit in email and should be easy for country managers to retrieve and review for recurring patterns.Price exception fields, approval record, customer/order linkage and reporting.
Quality / complaints / returnsQ-Pulse was decommissioned; photos, emails, testing evidence and toller/customer records may be fragmented.Owner and system of record for quality issues, complaints, returns, recalls, rework, relabel and final resolution.
Order-to-cash open-state profileSAP found 143 open sales orders, 8 stale sales orders, 25 open deliveries, 1,655 open AR invoices, 11 stale AR invoices and 301 delivery lines without invoice target.Owner validation of open orders, deliveries, invoices, EDI exceptions, fulfilment evidence and CS workarounds before cutover.

B.4 Finance

Process / areaObserved current patternFuture design consideration
AP invoice intake and statusSupplier invoices arrive through AP inboxes, vendor portals and direct-debit portals, then move through holding/query/posting folders. SAP found 515 open AP invoices, 15 stale AP invoices and 392 AP invoice samples without PO/GRPO lineage.Invoice status, owner, due date, exception reason, approver and document trail in-system.
PO/GRN/invoice/payment relationshipFinance relies on the relationship map and approval trail to understand approval before payment.Preserve PO-to-GRN-to-invoice-to-payment audit trail and exception approvals.
Bank posting and payment runsDaily bank statements are downloaded from bank portals, bank GL is reconciled manually, and payment files move between SAP and bank portals. SAP profiled 6,219 outgoing payment rows; bank release and cash-state evidence remain outside SAP.Bank feed/statement import, automated reconciliation, payment proposal review, bank approval evidence and settlement reconciliation.
Supplier bank-detail verificationNew vendor/bank-detail changes require verification, often by phone/known contact/website and secondary review. SAP profiled 1,898 suppliers, 1,184 with bank rows, 714 without bank rows and 33 duplicate bank-value indicators.Fraud-resistant bank-detail workflow with evidence and approval segregation.
Month-end close and manual journalsClose relies on DataRails, Power BI, Excel schedules, manual journals, reconciliations and judgement adjustments. SAP profiled 45,143 manual-journal rows, including 12,437 month-end rows.Journal support, preparer/reviewer evidence, reconciliation sign-off, close checklist and migration controls.
Landed cost, WIP, stock and production varianceData is extracted, reconciled and sometimes corrected manually; stock sold or unavailable can make corrections complicated.End-to-end costing/variance design and reconciliation cadence across operations and finance.
VAT / Intrastat / taxSAP/SharperLight extracts, consultant templates, SharePoint packs, CMR/SAD/evidence and local authority portals are used.Evidence-owned tax process, VAT code controls, reporting templates and country coverage.
Canada / Odoo / Excel exceptionCanada is outside the main SAP B1 accounting flow and appears through Odoo/Excel/manual consolidation.Explicit cutover, historical and reporting path for Canada.

Page 11 · Appendix C

Appendix C · Critical Systems And Files

Classification required: each inventory group should be assigned owner, target treatment and UAT/cutover handling before target design is locked.
Inventory groupExamplesClassification required
SAP B1 configuration and custom footprintUDFs, UDTs, Query Manager rows, layouts, payment files, relationship maps, reports, attachments and live SAP interrogation outputs. Key scan indicators include 2,518 saved query rows, 585 UDF-by-table rows, 56 user-table rows, 62,344 attachment line rows and 1,228 exception samples.Classify each object as live, rebuild, archive, retire or investigate; assign owner and UAT treatment before target design is locked.
Planning and production filesAZAP extracts, forecast file, business opportunity file, toller planning files, capacity/formulation assignment files and variance justification files.Owner, cadence, source, consumer and target location.
Label and regulatory filesAnnual review, label trackers, SharePoint labels, BATs, Word/PDF label files, KIM/registration/LS databases and Power BI product status.Authoritative label/version source and batch linkage.
Finance filesAP inbox folders, payment trackers, daily cash files, close checklist, reconciliation workbooks, manual journal supports, VAT/Intrastat packs and DataRails/Power BI reports.Control evidence and reporting rebuild/retire decision.
Customer-service filesCountry-manager price/terms sheets, order trackers, warehouse portal exports, BOL/POD files, NA inventory/order sheets and complaint/quality trackers.Official vs convenience copy and target workflow.
Third-party portalsBank portals, Odoo, warehouse/3PL portals, vendor portals, tax authority portals, credit insurer and Alluvia/EDI.Evidence export, owner, access and integration treatment.
Internal apps and Microsoft estatePower Apps, SharePoint lists, MasterApp, CapEx/R&D order apps, project code lists, Navigator, PDLC, Neon and LSNAV.Retain, rebuild or retire plus access/data ownership.
EDI and middleware integration assetsAlluvia configuration, four AS2 trading partners, AS2 configuration, certificates/keys or token requirements, transaction sets/maps, endpoint URLs, acknowledgements, error logs, Orderful evaluation/test cases, Windmill flows/jobs, secrets, schedules and runbooks.Owner, source/target, message contract, evidence retained, test plan, fallback, support model, rebuild/retire decision and cutover readiness.

Page 12 · Appendix D

Appendix D · Interesting Transcript Quotes

Reading note: close-to-verbatim excerpts below use ellipses only where filler was removed or nearby sentences from the same answer were joined. French interviews are marked as translated.
#QuoteSource
1
“We don’t really have the systems in place to support functioning for any of that. So it’s a lot of scrambling. But as we grow this is not going to be sustainable.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q2
2
“Where I do struggle day to day is where information is stored. That is not always clear and not easy to find.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q3
3
“SAP for the United States has been so out of whack for the last couple years that it just hasn’t been of any value. Period.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q4
4
“From a customer service order entry side, as well as accounting, none of them are supported by SAP B1 currently. Everything seems to require an external spreadsheet.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q5
5
“Cannot rely on the lot numbers or quantities that are in the SAP system at all… I end up going around the system and shipping the orders out manually and billing them out manually.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q6
6
“The SAP inventory for the United States has never been correct… so I just don’t use it… my source of truth is the third-party warehouse counts.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q14
7
“Right now… this is all basically manual. Ideally this would be all system tracked and linked.”
Tracy Schaefer · P1 Q18
8
“SAP doesn’t come in because you can’t process in SAP what’s not in the system… So it has to be via an Excel file.”
Alexander Van Zanten Jut · P1 Q12
9
“Nobody will know basically if I’ve shipped it except for me and anyone who I’ve cc’d in the Excel files.”
Alexander Van Zanten Jut · P1 Q12
10
“I am the one maintaining what will be shipped and when… I don’t have a fail-safe way to do that in SAP. If I get sick… it will be very hard to see which ones I’ve done.”
Alexander Van Zanten Jut · P1 Q13
11
“VAT codes are a pain. A big pain. Period.”
Alexander Van Zanten Jut · P1 Q14
12
“Everything rests on Alex’s and my knowledge and on passing that knowledge on… nothing is formalized in a file that is passed from person to person.”
Sabrina Osmani · P1 Q5 · translated
13
“There is no link between the customer order and the internal email… Everything is done manually on each order.”
Sabrina Osmani · P1 Q10 · translated
14
“For orders outside EDI, we receive them by email in our personal mailboxes… There is no more proof than that.”
Sabrina Osmani · P1 Q13 · translated
15
“All of that is information that is managed in parallel in an Excel file… The whole MRP side is currently done outside the SAP B1 system in the ASAP module.”
Karine Radovix · P1 Q5 · translated
16
“There is no file that brings together all the necessary information on toller capacities, minimum quantities, and lead times… Each person creates their own file. A shared database is missing.”
Karine Radovix · P2 Q4 · translated
17
“This extract is made from data that is currently in SAP B1 but cannot be used directly in the tool. It therefore forces us to make these extracts and separate files.”
Karine Radovix · P1 Q7 · translated
18
“There is no ticket, there is no specific tool to track these operations. It is done through emails and through the tracking of product availability.”
Karine Radovix · P1 Q16 · translated
19
“Only the vigilance of the label owners allows us to ensure that the right version is used… this management is done in separate Excel files.”
Karine Radovix · P1 Q18 · translated
20
“Today, this process is too manual and rests entirely on the shoulders of a single person, which makes the process fragile.”
Karine Radovix · P2 Q3 · translated
21
“Today we have no proof that the correct label version was actually used… we have no guarantee that this file is indeed the file that was printed and put on our cans.”
Meryll Roger · P1 Q10 · translated
22
“We cannot really trace back to know which batch has that label… we cannot extract this information automatically.”
Meryll Roger · P2 Q7 · translated
23
“Everything that I do right now is outside of the system. I have a manual spreadsheet… just because today nothing exists.”
Lee McDuffie · P1 Q9
24
“At this point, it would be an email that would stop the ship from occurring… I would flag that in my spreadsheet as well.”
Lee McDuffie · P1 Q16
25
“We are not able to block only one liter… It’s not possible.”
Vanessa Lozano · P1 Q17
26
“The KPI relating to the transport budget, currently it is an Excel file… I would not call it an official document, rather a working document.”
Thomas Terrier · P2 Q1 · translated
27
“Because our systems are quite complex and manual at the moment… if there is a person in the team that is on annual leave or is sick, that opens up our finance team to risk.”
Geovanna Morris · P1 Q2
28
“It’s not tracked on a separate portal or even on Excel at the moment. It’s tracked via our Outlook inbox.”
Geovanna Morris · P1 Q11
29
“The finance drive would definitely be the biggest risk… that is where the majority of supporting evidence is maintained… and not directly within the ERP system.”
Nicholas Alessiani · P1 Q19
30
“We don’t do a great job of aligning or recording decisions like that… It was an important decision, but the governance of it… I don’t know to what degree we do… right now we’re just relying on people.”
Vikram Sridhar · P1 Q18