The Switzerland-headquartered pharmaceuticals firm Novartis has announced a successful SAP Business Warehouse (BW) carve out, with SNP Group as its partner of choice.
Novartis’ research and medicines focus on core therapeutic areas with high unmet patient needs, including neuroscience, oncology, immunology and cardiovascular treatments, as well as technologies such as Radioligand therapy, and gene and cell therapy treatments. With a mission to reimagine high-value medicine through technology to improve and extend people’s lives, Novartis medicines now reach more than 284 million people worldwide, and in 2023 generated $45.440bn in total revenue for the firm.
Whether for compliance and data isolation purposes, or for a divestiture or spin-off, targeted extraction and migration of certain data, while leaving the rest intact, can be a regulatory must. Such was the case for this parent firm, as Novartis was seeking to separate its software strategy in a spin-off of its generics and biosimilars division, Sandoz, to enable both companies to pursue independent growth strategies.
Across the business, the technology stack includes many of the big vendors: SAP S/4HANA, Snowflake, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Veeva Systems, Oracle and Tableau to name a few. For this project, the task involved carving out one of Novartis’ SAP Business Warehouse (BW) systems, which stored 5TB of sensitive data. Moreover, part of that data had to be deleted from the system before the handover.
To complete its vision on the technical side, Novartis chose to partner with data migration specialist SNP after a history of previous projects with the vendor. Due to the highly sensitive nature of the data, the SNP consultants involved in the project also needed to go through compliance training courses and certifications.
Preparations for the carve-out could be completed remotely, but SNP consultants worked on-site with Novartis in Switzerland during critical phases of the project, for instance, when handling productive data.
SNP consultants were given the task of copying the SAP BW system to the project landscape using SNP’s proprietary CrystalBridge software, removing the non-necessary Novartis data and then migrating the rest to the newly built Sandoz landscape. Additional components were added such as Chamaeleon for re-modeling and SNP Validate for automated testing.
The project took a year to complete in full, with Novartis having planned for two go-lives: one technical go-live, where Novartis had the chance to test the system and confirm everything was delivered according to the specifications and, following a smooth round of testing, the other a business go-live to its employees.
After this successful SAP BW carve-out for Novartis, the firm also opted to receive post-go-live support from the SNP team, ensuring a steady transition to its independent SAP BW system.
Sachin Verma, associate director at Novartis commented on the project outcomes: “We have already completed several projects with SNP, so the choice of the partner for this planned SAP BW carve-out was easy. We knew they would get the job done exactly the way we needed it, and they did not disappoint – I definitely recommend working with SNP consultants.”
As Novartis and Sandoz handled this changing business structure, the SAP BW carve out segregated the sensitive data warehousing operations, with an ongoing SNP partnership being the best medicine for a less turbulent transition.
