Business Challenge Whirlpool Corporation looked to drive growth, improve efficiency and enhance the consumer experience, but was limited by aging infrastructure, including a legacy SAP ERP deployment. Transformation Whirlpool Corporation is migrating to SAP® ERP powered by SAP HANA to IBM Power Systems™ in Mike Berendsen, the IBM Cloud™, with IBM Services for Managed SAP Vice President, Applications, freeing up resources for innovation. Global Information Whirlpool Corporation gains the IT capability to Systems, Whirlpool accommodate future growth, and can now direct Corporation resources to improving the consumer experience and modernizing its business operations.

Business benefits: “The vast majority of our Whirlpool Corporation operations are handled SAP HANA Freeing up resources for by IBM Services for expertise of IBM enables Managed SAP Applications. Whirlpool Corporation to innovation with a managed SAP The flexibility that the invest in business priorities service delivers ensures and innovation cloud deployment to support that we will have plenty of High global operations headroom for future growth, near-continuous availability with no need for major supports 24/7 global capital expenditures.” operations Whirlpool Corporation is a leading global company, with approximately USD 21 billion in annual sales, 92,000 employees and 65 Mike Berendsen, Vice President, Global manufacturing and technology research centers as of 2018. The company Information Systems, Whirlpool Corporation IBM Cloud markets Whirlpool, KitchenAid, , Consul, Brastemp, Amana, , and IBM Power Systems JennAir, Indesit and other major brand names in nearly every country Share this create a scalable platform throughout the world. for future growth Increasing consumer engagement

In any consumer-focused business, engaging with consumers is key to ensuring their long-term loyalty and increasing sales.

With a century-long record of growth and success behind it, global home appliance producer Whirlpool Corporation knows this better than most. The company envisaged new ways of improving the client experience around buying, using, and maintaining household appliances, seeking to deepen its relationships with consumers.

Mike Berendsen, Vice President, Global Information Systems at Whirlpool Corporation, explains: “We no longer want to be just a manufacturer of appliances – we want to create a broad ecosystem of connected home devices – such as smart ovens or smart refrigerators – that through data, enable maintain our established place at the Management applications. Whirlpool flexibility – which we knew would give us to build relationships and understand forefront of the global home appliances chose to move its SAP environments us room to grow and provide maximum our consumers better so we can improve industry, we set out to overhaul our IT to IBM Power Systems servers in the uptime. With global operations running 24 our products. Our goal is to make their infrastructure and management of our IBM Cloud and engaged IBM Services hours a day, seven days a week, it’s vital for daily lives easier.” SAP environment, aiming to achieve to run, manage and optimize its us to have maximum availability – and we greater reliability and scalability.” SAP deployment. This allows the believed that IBM could provide this.” The company’s existing SAP systems Whirlpool team to focus their resources ran within Whirlpool Corporation’s on innovation. “Candidly, with IBM we can more rapidly on‑premise data center infrastructure Ensuring flexibility expand HANA capacity, and we felt that that was proving a barrier to expansion of Mike Berendsen comments: “We need the flexibility of IBM Services for Managed application capabilities. and availability maximum availability for the four SAP Applications would empower us geographies in which we operate, and to enhance our culture of innovation Unexpected downtime and lack of To enable manufacturing, supply chain there aren’t many cloud providers even further. flexibility threatened to block Whirlpool’s management, logistics and consumer that could entertain hosting SAP transformation and continued growth. care, Whirlpool Corporation chose environments on Whirlpool’s scale. “With our SAP environment run by to modernize its SAP application IBM, we can take on a lot more as an Mike Berendsen continues: “In order landscape, and selected SAP® ERP “We realized that IBM Cloud and IBM organization and will be able to scale up to drive further growth and power the powered by SAP HANA®, SAP® Services for Managed SAP Applications capacity as our business continues to innovation that would help us ensure BusinessObjects™ Business Intelligence is the perfect solution for our SAP grow. This would be almost impossible consumer satisfaction and loyalty, and and SAP Customer Relationship environment because of its reliability and without a partner like IBM.”

2 Valued partnership Services for Managed SAP Applications, “The time and cost Whirlpool is also benefiting from the Benefits in detail Mark Slaga, General Manager, IBM increased scalability and reliability that its savings of partnering with Services for Managed Applications, cloud-based infrastructure provides. IBM Services for Managed comments: “The IT industry is moving • 80 percent of critical business fast and it’s a lot to keep up with – and Mike Berendsen comments: “The flexibility transactions handled by SAP solutions SAP Applications has that’s where IBM comes in. IBM has that IBM delivers ensures that we will have allowed us to significantly had a long and deep partnership plenty of headroom for future growth, with • By migrating its SAP environment to the increase our consumer with Whirlpool Corporation, and the no need for major capital expenditures: IBM Cloud supported by IBM Services breadth and depth of our capabilities, when we need more capacity, all we for Managed SAP Applications, Whirlpool focus, with initiatives such as well as our understanding of the have to do is ask the IBM team, and we is benefits from the increased scalability as rolling out point of sale business, enable us to add real value to only pay for what we use – perfect for a and reliability that its cloud-based Whirlpool’s operations.” high-data growth business like Whirlpool infrastructure provides. support systems and Corporation. deepening our commitment Mike Berendsen explains: “We take a Key components to connected appliances.” multi-cloud approach to ensure we are “The time and cost savings of partnering competitive in the marketplace. IBM with IBM Services for Managed SAP provides us with excellent support in Applications has allowed us to significantly Applications: SAP® ERP powered by Mike Berendsen ensuring our various cloud capabilities increase our customer focus, with SAP HANA®, SAP® BusinessObjects™ are integrated and optimized, to ensure initiatives such as rolling out point of sale Business Intelligence, SAP Customer Vice President, Global Information continuity across the business. support systems and deepening our Relationship Management Systems, Whirlpool Corporation commitment to connected appliances.” “We value the partnership we have with Software: IBM® Services™ for Managed IBM – the team is constantly challenging “We’ve also seen major improvements SAP Applications, IBM Watson IoT™ us to do more with our resources and in system availability since migrating our find innovative ways of working. The SAP deployment. By reducing downtime, Hardware: IBM Power Systems™ The strong SAP experience within IBM involvement of IBM doesn’t end at we’ve ensured that we can attend to our was another key differentiating factor in the data center; they’ve helped us by consumers whenever they want to engage Services: IBM Cloud™, IBM Services™ Whirlpool’s selection of a cloud provider. introducing fresh thinking to a range of – and with a global business like ours, (GTS) Whirlpool saw great value in being able operational areas, including supply chain that means always!” to focus more energy on providing new management, facilities maintenance, and capabilities for consumers. bringing new products to market.” To help improve consumer experience, Whirlpool Corporation partnered with Mike Berendsen adds: “IBM Services IBM Watson® Services to implement an for Managed SAP Applications enables Increasing consumer IoT (Internet of Things) solution, using us to free up staff to focus on more sensors on connected appliances to value-add tasks and drive the innovation satisfaction collect data about how those devices that will make a real difference to our are being used which can be accessed consumers. It’s important for us to stay Today IBM Services for Managed through the IBM Cloud. abreast of the latest SAP developments. SAP Applications runs the SAP ERP, The expertise that IBM demonstrated in all SAP BusinessObjects Business This means that Whirlpool’s consumers things SAP gave us confidence that they Intelligence, and SAP CRM systems that can activate functionality within the would manage our SAP environment as Whirlpool Corporation uses to conduct appliances via smart devices, and the effectively as possible to ensure efficient 80 percent of its critical transactions. company can keep monitoring and business processes and help create value By migrating its SAP environment improving products even after they’ve throughout the organization.” to the IBM Cloud supported by IBM been sold. The data shows exactly how

3 consumers are using their machines, and how the machines themselves are responding, making it easier to tailor future “The IT industry is moving designs to consumers’ requirements. fast and it’s a lot to keep up Mark Slaga comments: “Our partnership with – and that’s where IBM with Whirlpool has developed to the comes in. IBM has had a exciting stage that we’re now looking at how to extend its SAP ERP systems into long and deep partnership IoT and even using artificial intelligence with Whirlpool Corporation, capabilities to make better decisions and the breadth and depth based on the additional data the company is capturing.” of our capabilities, as well as our understanding Mike Berendsen concludes: “Working in partnership with IBM to migrate our of the business, enable SAP environment to IBM Services for us to add real value to Managed SAP Applications is a very Whirlpool’s operations.” important step for our business. The expertise of the IBM team in managing our SAP applications and the flexibility and Mark Slaga reliability of IBM Services for Managed SAP Applications fill us with confidence General Manager, IBM Services for that we are ready to deepen relationships Managed Applications with consumers, and are well-placed to meet any other new industry challenges that may arise.”

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