Success Grows Out of Long-Term Relationships and Trust

Founded in 1916, The Shepherd Material Science Company is a family-owned, multi-national manufacturer of specialty products consisting of three businesses, The Shepherd Chemical Company, The Shepherd Color Company, and Glass Coatings & Concepts (GCC). They have worked with NTT DATA Business Solutions as their trusted partner for SAP solutions since 1997, only briefly pausing that partnership to try working with Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Recently, Shepherd found themselves managing resources and data for multiple, disparate systems, a complicated infrastructure, and no single source of truth when it came to their data. Without a standard single platform for the entire business, Shepherd found that there were multiple interpretations depending upon what data was being pulled and from which source, be it financial data, production data, or sales data. It was also costing them productivity for their knowledge workers (defined as shared services, accounting, finance, etc.). To fix all this, they decided to work with NTT DATA Business Solutions to implement SAP S/4HANA and help reduce the number resources that Shepherd needed to manage.

“We honor the relationships that we build with our trusted partners and NTT DATA Business Solutions has been one of those,” said Jeffrey Stenger, Finance Business Partner Manager at The Shepherd Material Science Company. “When we went to Microsoft Dynamics AX as a decision point, you guys never said anything bad or disparaging about your competitor and that says a lot about your character.”

In addition to implementing SAP S/4HANA for their entire organization, NTT DATA Business Solutions helped Shepherd move resources to the data center in Cincinnati, Ohio and provided application management services and managed cloud services. They also implemented GIB Suite Inventory to help optimize Shepherd’s supply chain performance within SAP. All of these things combined came together to increase the accuracy of their data which could be accessed from a single source, while also increasing productivity and helping standardize processes and reporting. Over time, Shepherd expects to be able to automate even more tasks in order to free their employees up to continue working on improving their business.

“NTT DATA Business Solutions has been battled tested over the years. When we returned to working with you, you were there during all of our implementations. Having your consultants and the people in our group working on that project together helped strengthen our relationship,” said Jeffrey Stenger, Finance Business Partner Manager at The Shepherd Material Science Company.

In the meantime, some early successes have included reducing the infrastructure needed to run the business and making it more manageable. For example, one site was able to reduce the number of servers needed from 140 down to 3. But it goes beyond that. Daniel Willman, Shepherd’s CFO and Treasurer, has also reported seeing a significant gain in cyber security, an increased ability to recruit knowledge workers, as well as better transparency and efficiency when working with their third-party auditor.

NTT DATA Business Solutions is honored to continue to work with The Shepherd Material Science Company as we continue to work toward new successes.