Steps Gerresheimer takes to transform its IT

CIO Zafer Nalbant explains what the medical packaging manufacturer does to modernize its IT through AI, automation, and hybrid cloud.

By mid-2023, Walldorf-based Gerresheimer had its IT strategy revised, and a central component of this was its cloud journey, for which CIO Zafer Nalbant and his team built a hybrid environment consisting of a public cloud part based on Microsoft Azure, and a private cloud part that runs in a data center completely managed by T-Systems. And according to Nalbant, IT can freely decide and adapt which systems and applications run in which cloud environment.

“Over the next three years, all 54 locations will gradually migrate to this cloud environment,” he says. Only production software and machines that can’t have latency remain on site.

At the same time, Gerresheimer is building an IoT platform. “In the future, we’ll connect all production and application servers to this and build our own data lake,” he says, adding that the next step will be to use AI there to learn from their own data.

Evaluate everything

The technological realignment also requires a change in the IT strategy. “In the past, IT was mainly concerned with resolving tickets and ensuring availability,” he says. But today, Gerresheimer is increasingly relying on the cloud and purchasing IT management services from managed service providers to ensure high availability. This not only frees up IT time and resources to focus more on supporting business operations, but is intended to generate greater added value for business processes and company success. “We want to push forward digitalization and AI together with the business areas,” says Nalbant.

For this purpose, central, cross-divisional teams are set up for important company processes to take stock of the processes and evaluate how they can be standardized, digitized, automated, and supported by AI.

The goal is to optimize around 70% of the processes in the specialist departments at the 54 locations by 2028.

Everything on platforms

Gerresheimer is currently looking for platforms for this purpose. “We want to use the Microsoft Power platform, but also low-code/no-code platforms because we think we can’t automate every process with the Power platform,” says Nalbant.

The company has been using ServiceNow as an IT service management tool and ticket system for around three years. The platform is intended to become Gerresheimer’s IT framework, which includes, among other things, the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) and software asset management.

The plan is to expand the framework into a self-service platform. Users can automatically create dashboards, order software, and manage installations, for example, that cloud resources can book. “We want to reduce these processes to just a few minutes,” he says. “That’s what we’re currently working on.”

Piecemeal to SAP S/4HANA

In addition, Gerresheimer is pursuing a strategy to migrate to SAP S/4HANA. According to Nalbant, this is set rather conservatively. “We don’t want a big bang launch, but rather start a finance transformation in 2024,” he says, and then other modules should follow gradually. “Many companies fail here because they set the scope too large. We want to avoid that.”

By the end of 2027, when Gerresheimer stops supporting legacy systems, all of its SAP systems worldwide should be completely migrated.

AI in the company

Nalbant says that AI has a lot of added value for employees, and the first applications are already in use and will soon be rolled out globally. A dedicated AI hub was also implemented directly in Microsoft Teams. “It contains, among other things, translations, ChatGPT 4, or spelling and grammar checks for users,” he says. “We also ensure that our data remains internal and can’t be used as public learning data.” Such an approach is very well received by employees. “It’s likely the workforce has used these tools in the browser before, but now we have the ability to control them,” he adds. The focus is on using AI within clearly defined limits in order to increase user productivity instead of preventing its use.

This gives the team insight into the applications and ability to see which ones are used the most. “We can then specifically expand the most popular apps to support the business even better,” says Nalbant.

When it comes to security, Nalbant also relies on colleague AI. “We have a managed security operations center that operates 24/7, and we’d also like to build our own platform with a data lake in order to learn from our data,” he says.

No staff shortages in IT

Irrespective of this push into AI, people will not become superfluous, says Nalbant. On the contrary, Gerresheimer is looking for additional employees in IT in order to implement the strategy. According to Nalbant, the company has no difficulty finding highly skilled employees in the market, especially considering Gerresheimer’s working environment and culture. During the Coronavirus pandemic, for instance, the company grew and learned that business can also run well remotely. “We decided not to send our people to the office for three or more days, like many other companies, but to make it more flexible,” he says.

The employees are in the office two days a week, with one day reserved for team exchanges. The entire team is then in the office for personal conferences and lunches together. For the rest of the week, employees can decide for themselves where they work from and when, and trust-based working hours apply.

Gerresheimer also offers workation opportunities. “Colleagues can work from other European countries for up to 30 days,” says Nalbant, and depending on one’s manager, even 60 days are possible. This is particularly well received by younger generations.

The portfolio and tasks also play a role, says Nalbant. Many employees can identify with Gerresheimer products, and since the realignment, the IT department continues to work on technologies to advance its strategy. “This makes the company interesting as an employer and attractive for young talent,” he says.

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