Interstate Bakeries Corporation is the largest wholesale baker and distributor of fresh delivered bread and snack cakes in the United States. The Company also sells dry products such as croutons and stuffing.
The Company operates 47 bakeries throughout the United States and employs more than 24,000 people. From these strategically dispersed bakeries, the Company's sales force delivers baked goods to more than 200,000 food outlets on approximately 9,000 delivery routes. The Company's products are distributed throughout the United States, primarily through its direct route system and approximately 1,100 Company-operated thrift stores, and to some extent through distributors.
RowSix provided the consulting services associated the upgrade and implementation of the IBC SAP HR/Payroll (HCM) system. Their services included project management, architecture, team leadership, configuration, methodology, change management and infrastructure (basis) skills. The consulting services resources provided by RowSix LLC were highly skilled and deeply experienced in their areas of expertise. RowSix took our Unix/Oracle SAP Version 4.7 HCM system and accomplished the upgrade to ECC 6.0 SAP HCM version on Windows/SQL. The upgrade and implementation of SAP HCM for IBC in conjunction with the use of RowSix as our single source provider has progressed through four successful waves and is currently successfully ongoing toward the final wave.
RowSix provided the lead functional and technical consulting, solution architecture, and project management expertise to achieve the upgraded business process designs, configuration, verification, and implementation of the technical and functional upgrade of the SAP HCM functionality for Interstate Brands Corporation. RowSix was selected as the single source provider to achieve the migration for the IBC client from a Unix Oracle environment, to a Windows SQL environment, in conjunction with upgrading the functionality from SAP ERP 4.7 version to ECC 6.0. This technical movement of the client from a Unix/Oracle landscape to the new Windows/SQL landscape was successfully accomplished by a small and targeted solution team of RowSix solution providers for a low cost in less than six weeks. Then, in conjunction with this migration to Windows/SQL effort, and in combination with IBC client resources, RowSix flawlessly and successfully achieved the technical and functional upgrade from version 4.7 to ECC 6.0 functionality in support of all 420 union contracts and associated complexities, in less than six months.
The twenty-four thousand employee population is predominantly hourly, working under approximately 420 union contracts, across all states (except Hawaii). These employees are distributed across approximately 2,300 personnel areas resulting in the configuration and support of the SAP standard tax remittance and reporting for approximately 650 tax type/tax authority combinations at the Federal, State, County, City, and School level. The IBC deployment included the SAP standard components such as the creation of the IBC specific wage type catalog for all earnings, tax and deductions, integration of time accounting with Kronos, integration of benefits administration, gross to net payroll accounting processing, deduction frequencies, advancing, priorities, arrears limits and balances, garnishments, earnings and deduction taxability configuration, Off-Cycle Workbench, Process Model Workbench, and retro calculation processing. This implementation also included the final payroll processing functionality such as check and direct deposit processing, the transfer to FI/CO, third party remittance, and tax reporting. In addition to this lead technical assistance was provided to the IBC specific configuration of other components such as all aspects of personnel administration including actions, dynamic actions, and user exits; the conversion of legacy master data and balances; the cost assignment alternatives and solution; the integration with Kronos for the HR master data updates from SAP to Kronos; and the interfacing of the Kronos time to SAP to achieve both on and off-cycle payroll.