From Two Weeks to 20 Seconds: How NXP Transformed Customer Onboarding with SimpleMDG
Jon Simmonds
VP of Consulting and Advisory Services, SimpleMDG
As part of the SAP Best Tech Awards 2025 finalist NXP shared its journey of transforming customer onboarding. In this Q&A, Jane Foote, Chief Information Officer of NXP, explains how a manual, weeks-long process became an automated 20-second experience with SimpleMDG on SAP BTP.
Tell us about NXP and the challenge you were facing?
NXP is a distributor of mission-critical business supplies across New Zealand. We carry more than 11,000 items—from office products to PPE, technology, cleaning, and more—and distribute them daily through our three distribution centers.
A few years ago, as we set out to expand into the mid-market space, we faced a significant challenge: our customer onboarding process was slow, inconsistent, and heavily manual. It often took up to two to three weeks to create and approve a new account. That wasn’t compatible with the digital-savvy eCommerce customers we wanted to attract.
What led you to adopt SimpleMDG?
Because we were already running SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), it was a natural choice to adopt a product built natively on BTP. SimpleMDG mirrored SAP’s customer objects, offered intuitive field mapping, and was simple enough for our internal teams to adopt quickly.
Unlike traditional MDG tools, it was largely plug-and-play and integrated directly with our systems. The implementation, delivered by partner Laidon, was scoped and completed in just eight weeks—on time and on budget.
How did the new onboarding process work?
The new workflow is fully automated and self-service:
Customers fill out a form on our mid-market website.
An instant API-triggered credit check runs.
Credit limits are automatically calculated.
If approved, a SAP account is created instantly—payer and sold-to.
The customer can start shopping immediately on credit or a credit card.
What business impact have you seen?
The results have been transformational:
Onboarding has been reduced from two weeks to under 20 seconds.
Manual checks and data entry were limited, resulting in annual savings of 500–1,000 hours.
1–2 FTEs freed up thanks to automation.
Customers can trade immediately, which is a significant advantage for revenue generation.
This success also serves as a springboard for further MDG-driven transformation across our business.
Any reflections on working with Laidon and SimpleMDG?
This was a significant project delivered in just eight weeks. Laidon was incredibly easy to work with, and the outcome speaks for itself.
Conclusion
NXP’s onboarding transformation showcases the power of combining SAP BTP and SimpleMDG. By reducing onboarding to seconds and enabling customers to self-serve, NXP has not only enhanced customer experience but also positioned itself for scalable growth in the mid-market.
Watch the full video testimonial here: SAP.com Video
Frequently Asked Questions
Duplicate prevention is a validation step that runs before an account is created. Typical checks compare tax or company registration numbers, legal names, addresses, and contact details. Fuzzy matching helps catch near-duplicates, such as “Pty Ltd” versus “Limited” or minor spelling differences. This matters more in self-service onboarding, where no staff member reviews the entry. Ask the vendor how matching rules are configured and what happens when a possible duplicate is found.
Not entirely. Automation works best when clear rules decide most cases, and exceptions are routed to people. Examples are a failed credit check, a requested credit limit above a set threshold, a mismatch in company details, or a high-risk region. These cases can go to a credit controller or data steward for manual approval. An audit trail of every automated decision also helps with internal audit and compliance.
In SAP, a customer can take on different partner functions. The sold-to party places the order, while the payer is responsible for settling the invoice. Other functions include ship-to (where goods are delivered) and bill-to (where invoices are sent). For many small businesses, one entity holds several roles. Creating them together at onboarding means the customer can trade immediately, without further setup.
Several foundations should be ready: • A documented credit policy with clear approval thresholds • Access to a credit data provider through an API • Agreed field mapping between the web form and SAP customer objects • Defined data ownership and approval roles • Cleansed existing customer data, so new records are not matched against poor data • Integration between the website or e-commerce platform and SAP Gaps in any of these tend to cause delays more often than the technology itself.
Time and labor savings are only part of the picture. Other useful measures include time to first order, the share of applications that become active accounts, form abandonment rate, error and rework rates, and bad debt or days sales outstanding for newly onboarded customers. Capture baselines before the project so improvements can be shown clearly. Also track how freed capacity is used, since redeploying staff to higher-value work is part of the benefit.
A solution built natively on SAP Business AI Platform runs as a side-by-side extension rather than inside the S/4HANA core. This can keep it separate from core upgrade cycles and fit the Clean Core approach. SAP MDG can be deployed embedded in S/4HANA or as a separate hub, with different trade-offs in customization, effort, and infrastructure. The right choice depends on your landscape, internal skills, and long-term roadmap, so compare both options against your own requirements.
