Wednesday, April 21, 2010

SAP to Acquire TechniData, how this impacts EH&S consultants

Dear friends,

Today I read news that SAP to acquire TechniData. Along with last year's transfer of EH&S IP products rights to SAP, this move will induct experienced EH&S workforce into SAP. It is definitely one of the exciting things for SAP on Sustainability Front, next to acquiring Clear Standards acquired almost one year ago. I would rate the current acquisition much ahead than the previous one - though TechniData and SAP are already interconnected for so long. There are many who are interested to see how this will impact EH&S delivery and whether it’s a positive for them or not, so on.

Definitely it’s a positive move for the SAP's EH&S and sustainability market as a whole . With SAP expertise and TechniData EH&S background, you will see much more innovation on SAP EH&S and Sustainability front, a definite next generation products from SAP including realization of EH&S as a SaaS product. There is also possibility that SAP would like to do customer on-boarding themselves for this specialized field, so it could impact EH&S consultants for where customer would go for this new opportunity, but at the same time opens up new EH&S consultants opportunity due to wider SAP presence and customer confidence. Finally SAP is proposed to expand its SAP EHSM and Sustainability portfolio, so it would be imperative to increase their EHS Staff. As on today it is reported that TechniData has 500 employees and 1,600 customers.

Overall I find this move, interesting, challenging and exciting for EHSM consultants.

Check this link for some FAQ about the acquisition

http://www.sap.com/about/investor/pdf/TechniData_FAQ.pdf

Thanks

Monday, April 12, 2010

Chemical Safety Assessment and Exposure Scenarios using Chesar

Dear Friends,

Few days back I happened to work with Beta version of ECHA new tool called Chesar (CHemical Safety and Assessment tool). This is a tool developed to support in preparing Chemical Safety Assessment and Chemical Safety Report. It has features like getting the data fro IUCLID, Assessment and Exposure Scenario building and generation of Chemical safety report. The exposure estimatio in Chesar is based ECETOC and ERC / EUSES and it can even use external exposure estimation tools. When I created a CSR, it automatically created 45 pages dossier as per the CSR format.

After working with SAP REACh Compliance for so many months, this tool has given me very good insight into a functionality which, I was assuming for past 2 years and also a probable direction on Best Practice Scenario for achieving REACh Compliance cosisting of SAP REACh Compliance and 3rd party tools!

When I see this tool with an overall SAP REACh Compliance business process, it fits into the overall framework either during initial transfer of all uses and substance information directly into IUCLID (which is carried out using IUCLID - EH&S interface) and using the information for actually carrying out exposure estimation, or even after final legal process check and end point gap analysis and transfer the data into IUCLID5 (as per original SAP REACh Compliance 1.1. business logic).

So from SAP EH&S, it would be useful to create a Chesar Property tree consisting of administrative data, Physicochemical data, Environmetnal hazard information and trafer that information for Exposure estimation - since these are the data which system needs. I understad, with the existing REACh property trees (classes/characterisitcs) within SAP REACh, it should be possible to create a flexible property for ease of use for Chesar, it would not only reduce the burden of maintaining additional endpoing documents which are not required for Exposure assessment, but also ease of use. Once exposure estimation is carried out in IUCLID 5.2 it is good idea to take the data back into SAP EH&S eSDS property tree and use that for creation of eSDS or even create eSDS in Chesar (need to wait till June 2010).

Thanks