Anglian Water: Streamlining SAP Scheduling

Anglian Water is a leading water and wastewater company that serves over 6 million customers across the East of England and Hartlepool. The company’s 5,000 employees are responsible for supplying safe, high-quality drinking water and managing wastewater services in a sustainable and efficient manner.

In addition, Anglian Water Leisure operates a network of parks and reservoirs, offering activities such as fishing, sailing, and nature trails. The company is deeply committed to sustainability, water conservation, and delivering a seamless customer experience.

As part of its digital transformation journey, Anglian Water worked with Capgemini to seek out a modern WLA solution that could:

• Seamlessly replace their legacy SAP scheduler, Central Process Scheduling (CPS) by Redwood.
• Offer a robust migration tool for existing CPS job definitions.
• Provide flexibility for potential future expansion beyond SAP workloads.
• Deliver excellent support and documentation to ensure a smooth transition.

“Stonebranch offers exceptional support, extensive documentation, and continuous innovation. We also appreciate the flexibility to build bespoke automations tailored to our needs.”

Ghefoor Ahmed
SAP Portfolio & Senior Program Manager
Anglian Water

After evaluating multiple vendors to replace CPS by Redwood, Anglian Water selected Stonebranch Universal Automation Center (UAC) for its comprehensive functionality, strong support structure, and competitive pricing.

Stonebranch UAC was implemented to automate and orchestrate approximately 750,000 monthly task instances across production and pre-production environments in SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA. The deployment included:

• Workload Automation and Job Scheduling: Automating business-critical SAP batch processes.
• Migration from CPS by Redwood: Leveraging Stonebranch’s conversion tool to transition workloads efficiently.
• Enhanced Monitoring and Visibility: Using the Actions tab and Business Service features to improve customer service.

The migration process initially encountered challenges due to the design of some CPS jobs, particularly around SAP mass activities. However, Stonebranch worked closely with Capgemini and Anglian Water to address these complexities, refining the Universal Connector for SAP to streamline SAP variant management, input parameter configuration, and job execution. Capgemini consultant Michael Freestone notes, “A major bonus for us has been the approachability and responsiveness of the Stonebranch team. Working with Andy, Anna, and her team has been a genuinely collaborative and enjoyable experience. Their support across our various initiatives has set a new standard for partnership.”

By automating SAP variant management, input parameter configuration, and job scheduling, Anglian Water significantly accelerated outage preparation processes — reducing preparation time from several days down to just 5–10 minutes. Additionally, UAC’s dynamic job creation capabilities accelerated the setup process, significantly improving operational efficiency. With full visibility and automated cleanup, the company now ensures faster, more reliable SAP job execution, freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

User adoption at Anglian Water was smooth and straightforward. Stonebranch included training as part of the implementation, ensuring all impacted team members were well-prepared from the start. The extensive documentation provided by Stonebranch made it easy for users to build on their initial knowledge and quickly become proficient with the platform.

To further enhance understanding, Anglian Water conducted additional internal training sessions six months post-implementation, which successfully addressed individual learning needs. Overall the onboarding process was efficient and users found UAC easy to navigate compared to previous tools.

“The combination of functionality, support, and cost was hard to beat.  Choosing Stonebranch was a wise decision.”

Ghefoor Ahmed
SAP Portfolio & Senior Program Manager
Anglian Water

With Stonebranch UAC, Anglian Water has achieved:

• Accelerated emergency response capability: Processes that previously required days of preparation can now be executed in as little as 5–10 minutes, even on short notice — critical for effectively managing emergencies.
• A simplified outage management process: UAC has revolutionized how SAP outages (both full and partial) are handled.
• Simplified onboarding: Comprehensive documentation and training support helped users quickly adapt to the new system.
• Greater visibility into issues: The Actions tab has enhanced customer service by providing real-time insights.