A Bayer branch becomes a corporate winner by monitoring business, infrastructure and security in real time

The Problem

Bayer needed to monitor its most critical processes: the CropScience sales network which handles more than 80% of Bayer CropScience's revenue. Any downtime means loss of money. Any incident has to be approached proactively, repair times have to go down, and Service Levels have to go up.

The Solution

Tango/04 1-2-3 Monitoring Suite

About the Company

Bayer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Present in virtually every country and with more than 100.000 employees, this German giant sets the tone as one of the most innovative and prolific developers of new medication and chemical compounds with thousands of different uses. Bayer's division CropScience focuses on improving environmentally friendly agriculture, offering improved seeds, biotechnological solutions for plague control and solutions improving the overall health of the environment.

The problem of not being in control

Bayer CropScience experienced many problems when attempting to control and ensure the quality of its most important service: its extensive sales network. This network consists of 150 outlets throughout Argentina, all with access to Bayer's CRM Siebel for order and sales transactions and each with their own particular IT infrastructures.

''These outlets generate more than 80% of Bayer CropScience's revenue. If for any reason the process fails, they may go to the competition'', explains Francisco Rastelli, IT Manager at Bayer.
''Four years ago Bayer CropScience launched a completely new business concept: direct control of the sales to the end user, the actual producers and owners of the fields. Before that we did not know anything about the final buyer of our products, but now we have a complete overview of order and billing histories'', adds Diego Santiviago, responsible for e-Commerce at Bayer CropScience.
To make all this run smoothly it is of the essence to meticulously monitor not only Siebel, but also all supporting components, operating systems and servers. According to Diego Santiviago ''...It was very complicated to determine where an actual incident was taking place in our systems. On occasion it was the end user who alerted us of a failure, complaining he had been waiting 15 minutes to print out a bill."

Before Tango/04 it was “...very complicated to determine where an actual incident was taking place in our systems.’’

Luis Cuadrado, Data Processing Coordinator, remembers those times well. ''They called us from CropScience many times a day, and each time we had to find out whether an incident took place on the server, in the databases, or in Siebel, or determine whether it was an end-user problem. A quick diagnosis was sometimes an impossible challenge.''

Wanted: Proactivity and Control

Facing this problem, Bayer set itself the goal to find a solution which would provide the IT department with an easy overview of Business Services and processes, in order to identify problems proactively and in real time in any stage of Bayer's business processes, take early action when faced with incidents, thereby preventing loss of revenue due to unavailability and measure the compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLA).

The Solution: Monitoring on a higher level

Bayer had already implemented VISUAL Message Center and VISUAL Security Suite to monitor its (1) infrastructure and (2) security and auditing. Implementing the last element of the entire suite, (3) Business Services Management (BSM), turned out to be a winning bet. The entire solution allows the user to quickly and intuitively model the interdependency between applications and IT components, thereby offering extensive control over business processes and providing a tremendous visibility of Business Services. Bayer's IT department quickly understood the benefits of such a solution.

Thanks to Tango/04 “...we have a complete overview of order and billing histories”

''Once we had implemented the third level of Tango/04's 1-2-3 Monitoring Suite, we became responsible for the monitoring of Business Services as well. It now helps us to align two very different worlds; the technological side of the business and the experience of the end user'' explains Cuadrado.

''In very little time the monitoring system was up and running'' adds Santiviago. ''Because Tango/04 has a lot of experience with multi-platform monitoring, we can control this cocktail of systems, which is now working out very well. We have a full-color panoramic overview in real time of all the elements we monitor, with timely alerts and clear flagging of incidents, which is really spectacular. We are very happy with Tango/04."

Bayer CropScience now has full control of every step, from taking the order down in Patagonia, through to the payments done in Buenos Aires. ''We have really lowered the time needed to fix an incident after implementing Tango/04'' concludes Cuadrado.

''This way, 80% of our business are perfectly controlled''
Francisco Rastelli
IT Manager, Bayer

Conclusions: A rapid return on Investment

''If anything changed here at Bayer with the implementation of Tango/04, it is that the end users don't suffer system black outs anymore. We're much more relaxed now controlling everything in real time", reflects Santiviago, Cuadrado adding, "We have 42-inch screens in our control center that show every area that we monitor: business processes, infrastructure and security. When someone comes in, before greeting, they glance quickly at the screens to see if something is red.'’

"We finished the entire project in a month and a half. This shows how easy Tango/04 is to implement and how quickly you get a result for your investment'', Cuadrado adds. ''And we are really impressed with its great potential'', continues Santiviago. But the last word is for Francisco Rastelli, who finishes Bayer's conclusions poignantly: ''thanks to Tango/04 we can say that we have one of the most modern monitoring solutions in Bayer''.

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