SAP S/4HANA Implementation – For Inventory Management, Order To Cash, Procurement, Logistics, Financial Processes And Systems

Company Profile

One of the largest global consumer electronics, merchandise, and games software company with e-commerce and physical store sales. They have a global presence and sell in North America, Europe, APAC and ANZ.

Objective

Help the consumer goods company to migrate their legacy system to SAP S/4HANA for Logistics, Inventory management, Subscriptions, Merchandise management, Pricing, Procurement, Finance and Manufacturing processes in North America region.

Business Challenges

The client had legacy ERP software and multiple other software applications which were being used to run global operations. They were looking to roll out SAP S/4HANA based solution for their NA operations to cut costs, streamline business processes and perform consolidated reporting.

The client’s main goals were to build a scalable solution with standardized global business processes, real time analytics and inventory visibility, boost efficiency while reducing costs, support large volume of materials, optimized supply chain processes, streamlined financial processes, common & standard data framework with one version of truth and finally create a common foundation for future growth.

Solutions Implemented

Our team implemented SAP S/4HANA solution using SAP’s Activate methodology. Project preparation phase included defining the project charter, implementation plan, organization change management plan and project governance methodology.

The explore phase included demonstration of standard SAP processes, understanding the existing business processes & pain points, fit gap analysis, enhancement list, data migration methodology, and a highlevel system architecture diagram.

The realization phase included configuration of SAP S/4HANA for various business processes, functional & technical specifications for the identified gaps, security definitions and setup, integration with third party e-commerce system, WMS system and banks, Fiori applications setup and enhancements, SAC configuration for analytics, enhancements leveraging SAP BTP including CPI middleware setup.

The key objective to streamline and standardize the client’s business processes & data and achieve process improvements, for end-to-end Order/subscription to cash, procure to pay, Merchandise management, Inventory management, Manufacturing, Supply chain and Record to report processes was completed to client satisfaction. Organization change management that included periodic communication and proper training was also done, which led to increased user adoption.

Data migration of legacy data was a critical and complex part of the project, and it included data conversion plan, data mapping, data conversion rules definition, data cleansing & purging, data extraction and loading data using SAP BODS. Multiple mock data loads were performed the Test system. Unit testing, integration testing, performance testing and user acceptance testing was also conducted.

Project Highlights

• SAP S/4HANA, CPI, SAC, BTP implementation in North America
• Global template defined for future roll outs.
• Organization change management SAP Activate methodology was leveraged.
• Sales, Subscriptions, Logistics, Inventory mgt., Procurement, Manufacturing, Replenishment, Condition contract, Merchandise mgt, and Finance (AR, AP, GL, Assets, Treasury, Costing, Margin Analysis) business processes were implemented.
• Integration with WMS for logistics and inventory management using SAP CPI
• Migration of data from legacy systems with multiple mock loads
• Ecommerce portal integration to SAP Financial reporting including margin analysis was enabled.
• Interface SAP with banks for AR, AP, and Cash
• Large project delivered on time and budget.

Results

With the successful implementation of the SAP solution in North America, the client made a significant step toward its global vision of streamlined operations, cost savings and optimized business performance. They now have a scalable platform with standardized business processes which can be rolled out globally and will enable future growth.

Close collaboration between the client and our team members, as well as the use of offshore Delivery Center, helped speed the solution’s development and contributed to the project’s success.

A global large volume material master was a key business requirement that enabled easier customer ordering, buying from vendors, retail store ordering, logistics, inventory, and warehouse management operations. Streamlined and improved processes resulted in better communication across different departments and provided better visibility into the business, with all information integrated in one system. Improved supply chain processes resulted in reduction of inventory carrying costs and excess inventory, improved inventory availability in stores & distribution centers and increased customer satisfaction with faster deliveries to customers. Balance sheet, P&L, Tax, month end closing, and financial reporting were accurately generated from the system on a timely basis.

SAP analytics cloud enabled a common platform for all standardized reporting for sales, purchases, inventory, demand, and financials resulting in improved and quicker decision making across various departments and helped in identifying and eliminating bottlenecks. The solution will serve as a platform for deployment to other regions of the world and align with the client’s business strategy of organic growth and acquisitions

The integrated SAP solution helped the client in having a single unified system for field service, workshop repairs, plant maintenance and customer support that enabled quicker response times, faster and consistent issue resolution, reduced costs, efficient resource scheduling and overall service productivity improvements. Reporting in SAP BW provided monitoring and improvements in KPI’s like lower average response time, less repeat cases per equipment, reduced mean time to repair, higher MTBF, higher profitability per equipment and others. The system allowed the client to improve the availability and utilization of field engineers. It helped in tracking accurate costs for labor & parts and measuring service contract profitability. The system also served as a platform for future service initiatives and growth.