SAP processes from the cloud

In practically applied medicine, optimal wound care plays a special role. The risk of infection is particularly high in chronic diseases or after operations, and the healing process is often slow. This is where modern cold plasma therapy comes in: Cinogy has developed a procedure in which bacteria and germs are destroyed and the oxygen supply to the tissue is stimulated in just one treatment step. With its therapy application PlasmaDerm®, Cinogy is considered one of the most innovative companies in this field.

Cinogy emerged in 2006 as a spin-off from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Göttingen. The company can point to several awards, such as the "German Innovation Award" and the "Fraunhofer Prize". The main shareholder is Prof. Hans Georg Näder, Chairman of the Executive Board of Näder Holding, which also includes Ottobock SE & Co. KGaA, a market leader in prostheses and mobility-supporting utensils for people with disabilities. Cinogy and about 50 other companies are organizationally managed by the Näder Family Office (NFO), which is part of Näder Holding. 

Special requirements for medical products

As a manufacturing company in the medical technology sector, Cinogy is subject to special legal requirements and due diligence obligations, such as the Medical Devices Act. Among other things, this law requires that entire production batches can be traced without interruption. Until now, Cinogy had been using a system from Lexware, which only partially fulfilled these requirements. In addition, it often proved cumbersome and simply too time-consuming for Cinogy to compile information on the current inventory situation or the profitability of products.

At the same time, the number of companies belonging to the Näder Family Office (NFO) had grown considerably. In order to ensure the smooth running of all processes, especially financial accounting, a uniform system was to be used for all companies. When evaluating a suitable solution, the advantages of cloud essential were convincing: no in-house IT operation necessary, always up to date due to system updates, significantly faster introduction of the solution and lower costs compared to on-premise operation. The choice therefore fell on SAP S/4HANA Cloud essential - a modern, powerful ERP system that supports process automation with the help of intelligent services and machine learning algorithms, while offering all the advantages of a cloud solution.

From Logistics to Financial Accounting: SAP Full Scope

Although the decision in favor of SAP S/4HANA Cloud essential was made to standardize the financial accounting of all NFO companies, there was more at stake at Cinogy. "Almost all processes were affected," says Jörg Fricke, project manager at Sycor, describing the situation at the beginning. "With the SAP implementation, some processes were first defined and existing processes were optimized. These included the procurement, manufacturing as well as sales processes, planning such as forecast planning of production quantities, project controlling and returns processing - virtually all of the company's processes were mapped in SAP S/4HANA Cloud essential."

This full scope was covered accordingly with SAP modules. In addition to financial accounting, Cinogy now works with SAP logistics solutions as well as the project system for controlling all ongoing projects. The implementation phase took only a few months: "The approach behind SAP Cloud benefited us here," sums up Dirk Wandke. "SAP supports its cloud customers with the Activate program. These are predefined steps that contribute to rapid implementation. No comparison to SAP's complex on-premise installations."

The SAP solution meets all of Cinogy's requirements: For example, the complete traceability of each batch can now be clearly tracked in the system. The profitability of the products can be analyzed in detail, for example, to identify the products with the greatest contribution margin and to control further development in a targeted manner. Stock levels can be viewed in real time, enabling purchasing staff to work much more effectively. As a company whose work is characterized by new and further developments, Cinogy also benefits from the simplified cost and price calculation of new products: costs can be made transparent even during development.

AI-supported processing of incoming invoices.

But it's not just Cinogy's pioneering role in terms of SAP S/4HANA cloud essential adoption that makes this project special. "Complementing SAP Financial Accounting, we implemented our seamlessly integrated solution 'Insiders' to automate the processing of incoming invoices," recounts Jörg Fricke of Sycor. "Incoming invoices are scanned and processed largely automatically. Insiders recognizes, for example, the invoice amount, the sender or an order reference. At the same time, it checks whether the invoice is part of a larger order. All things that otherwise have to be done manually."

At the same time, the automatic recognition of invoices is by no means trivial, because every invoice looks different. Insiders from Sycor uses artificial intelligence (AI) methods and achieves very high recognition rates. The system learns what to do in which case based on existing data, which is constantly growing. The solution works seamlessly with the SAP system. The benefits are evident in practice: the time required to process incoming invoices has been significantly reduced.

Uniform financial accounting for all companies

After Cinogy has successfully gone live with SAP, the other companies of the NFO will gradually be converted to SAP S/4 HANA Cloud in 2021. "For the many companies of the NFO, SAP Cloud is more flexible as an infrastructure," Alexandra Trümper, project manager for the NFO, summarized. "We have the advantage of a unified FiBu without the overhead of an on-premise SAP installation." Cinogy can now once again focus entirely on developing innovative medical technology methods. Thanks to the equally innovative infrastructure, the company is future-proofed and can rely on seamlessly integrated processes as well as the flexibility of the cloud.

About the project

About the company

• Company name: CINOGY System GmbH | Plasma Technology for Health
• Headquarters: 371115 Duderstadt, Germany
• Industry: Medical technology
• Company size: 20 employees
• Web: www.cinogy.de | www.plasmaderm.de