Headquartered in Stellenbosch, Capitec is South Africa’s leading digital bank. Through its innovative Global One banking solution, the bank empowers over 20 million clients to transact, save, insure and access credit in real time.

Founded:

2001
Branches:

853
Employees:

16,000

Summary

Challenges

Thousands of supplier invoices had to be archived each month.
Previous data center infrastructure was nearing end of life.
New archiving solution had to be compatible with RISE with SAP.

Solution

Selected a cloud archiving solution.
Leveraged a trusted partner to implement the migration.
Employed a proven implementation methodology for a fast, non-disruptive go-live.

Results

Enabled 60,000 invoices to be archived each year.
Eliminated infrastructure management complexity.
Boosted scalability and enabled innovation.

Challenges

Thousands of supplier invoices had to be archived each month for regulatory compliance purposes
Previous on-premises archiving infrastructure was approaching end of life
New archiving solution had to be compatible with RISE with SAP

Since it was founded in 2001, Capitec has strived to deliver outstanding banking experiences. Whether clients choose to visit one of the bank’s 853 branches across South Africa or engage via the Capitec banking app, the objective is to deliver seamless, personalized journeys that help people live better.

Werner Carstens, SAP Architect at Capitec, took up the story: “In the financial services space, trust is at the heart of everything we do—our clients need the confidence of a secure, reliable and responsive service on every channel. To underpin our services, Capitec leverages a range of mission-critical back-office applications.”

Behind the scenes, OpenText and SAP solutions play a key role in vital business processes at Capitec. Workflows such as procurement, maintenance and financial accounting all run on SAP S/4HANA®. Previously, the organization leveraged an on-premises deployment of OpenText™ Vendor Invoice Management for SAP® Solutions to streamline the accounts payable (AP) process in SAP S/4HANA, with OpenText™ Archive Center for long-term data retention.

“Although clients never see our back-office solutions, they play a vital role in enabling us to pass audits, address supplier enquiries and pay invoices,” continued Carstens. “For the past three years, OpenText and SAP solutions have helped us to streamline our AP process.”

As the contract for the data center infrastructure hosting Capitec’s SAP S/4HANA solution approached end of life, the bank looked for a new long-term infrastructure platform.

Carstens commented, “Capitec is pursuing a cloud-first strategy, aimed at improving the agility and resiliency of our services. In that context, moving our SAP solutions to the cloud was the natural choice, and we selected RISE with SAP. Protecting our invoice data would be just as crucial when we moved our SAP solution to the cloud. So, we looked for a new approach that would allow us to archive our invoices and protect other types of SAP documents in the future.”

OpenText should be a consideration for other financial services organizations that run SAP. And if you choose OpenText Professional Services, based on our experience, you’ll be in good hands.

Werner Carstens
SAP Architect, Capitec

Solution

In collaboration with SAP and OpenText, Capitec selected OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions, a cloud archiving solution that combines comprehensive imaging capabilities with convenient document access.

Products deployed

OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions

Manage SAP and non-SAP data cost-effectively and securely with a cloud archiving solution
OpenText™ Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions

Fully automate the digitization of incoming SAP-related document
OpenText™ Packaged Services

Reduce time-to-value of Information Management solutions

Moving to a cloud-based archiving solution

By moving to Core Archive for SAP Solutions, Capitec recognized that its AP department could continue to archive invoices in the cloud using the same tried-and-tested workflows from the previous on-premises solution.

“The more we looked into the capabilities of OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions, the more we felt it was the right solution for Capitec,” recalled Carstens. “Because the solution looks and behaves in exactly the same way as OpenText Archive Center, we could ensure a seamless switchover with no need for additional employee training. Crucially, moving to the cloud means we can scale out the solution with ease, which will allow us to archive different types of SAP and non-SAP data in the future.”

Selecting a trusted partner for implementation

To move to the cloud solution, Capitec engaged OpenText Professional Services. Using the OpenText Core Archive Migration FasTrak methodology, the OpenText team leveraged best practices based on their experience with many previous migrations to accelerate the implementation.

“We evaluated potential implementation partners, but none of them could match the expertise of OpenText Professional Services for this type of cloud migration,” said Carstens. “With the FasTrak methodology, OpenText offered us a set of proven processes detailing risks and risk controls for every stage of the project. The fact that OpenText Professional Services has performed so many of these migrations gave us a great deal of confidence that we were in safe hands.”

Leveraging a proven methodology

Working with Capitec, OpenText Professional Services deployed the new cloud instance of Core Archive for SAP Solutions and performed several iterative test migrations to ensure that the solution was correctly configured. At the same time, Capitec, OpenText and Capitec’s previous hosting partner worked together to migrate the company’s on-premises OpenText Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions to the OpenText Cloud, enabling a flexible, scalable platform for invoice capture.

“By nature, we’re a very inquisitive organization, and we really appreciated that the OpenText team took the time to thoroughly explain how the cloud solution works and answer our questions in depth,” added Carstens. “We also liked that the OpenText team jointly agreed on project milestones with us based on the FasTrak methodology. This flexibility was really valuable, as the archive deployment was running in parallel with our RISE with SAP migration and there were many dependencies between the two projects.”

With OpenText Core Archive and OpenText Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions in the cloud, we don’t have to worry about the underlying technology—instead, we can focus on analyzing our service consumption metrics and planning our long-term usage requirements.

Werner Carstens
SAP Architect, Capitec

Results

Today, Capitec uses Core Archive for SAP Solutions to protect data on thousands of supplier invoices each year. The new solution is managed from end-to-end by OpenText, freeing Capitec from time-consuming infrastructure-related activities.

Enabled 60,000 invoices to be archived a year

By following the FasTrak methodology with OpenText Professional Services, Capitec switched to archiving in the cloud with zero disruption for business users. Today, 16 Capitec AP professionals use OpenText Core Archive to protect more than 60,000 invoices a year.

“I was impressed by the care and attention that the OpenText team dedicated to planning the migration steps,” said Carstens. “Weeks before the switchover, OpenText configured our on-premises solution to automatically route newly archived invoices to OpenText Core Archive, along with a full audit trail of every transaction. As a result, there was no pressure to migrate the archive in the shortest possible timeframe.”

Carstens continued, “After we migrated to RISE with SAP and moved our invoice archive to the OpenText Cloud, we simply configured the new SAP solution to read the archived invoices from OpenText Core Archive. Once in production, it worked perfectly from day one.”

Eliminated infrastructure management complexity

Since moving its invoice capture and archiving capabilities to the OpenText Cloud, Capitec has unlocked time-savings around infrastructure management—enabling it to focus on maximizing the business value of the cloud.

“In our previous data center environment, our hosting partner managed our compute, storage and networking solutions, but we were responsible for making decisions about sizing and scaling the environment,” said Carstens. “With OpenText Core Archive and OpenText Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions in the cloud, we don’t have to worry about the underlying technology—instead, we can focus on analyzing our service consumption metrics and planning our long-term usage requirements.”

Boosted scalability and enabled innovation

Capitec now has a robust and highly scalable cloud platform to support its AP invoice archiving capabilities, which will allow it to rapidly accept new types of content to meet future regulatory and corporate governance requirements.

“One of the many benefits of OpenText Core Archive is that it perfectly aligns with our cloud-first strategy,” stated Carstens. “If we decide to bring other types of SAP or non-SAP data into our archive, we can scale up immediately. We’re also equipped with a complete view of our usage, which translates to predictable costs and makes forward planning easier.”

Carstens concluded, “OpenText should be a consideration for financial services organizations that run SAP. And if you choose OpenText Professional Services, based on our experience, you’ll be in good hands.”