Successful SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Implementation for a Manufacturing Company

A leading mid-sized manufacturing Company which makes metal products with global operations in US, European and Asian countries, faced significant operational challenges due to its outdated ERP system. The inefficiencies of the legacy system resulted in fragmented business processes, difficulty in accessing real-time data, and manual handling of critical functions such as Finance, Inventory, Sales, and Production. Recognizing the need for a modern solution, the Company decided to implement SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud. For this critical transformation, initiative the Company partnered with Accrete Consulting Solutions, renowned for their expertise in ERP implementations.

Challenges

The primary challenge the Company faced included inefficient and siloed business processes across departments that often led to delays and errors. The legacy system’s inability to provide real-time data, inaccurate master data, lack of automation and long processing times led to broken processes and hindered effective decision-making. Lack of proper demand and supply planning between Sales, Manufacturing and Procurement resulted in either excess or supply shortage. Manual and erroneous invoicing resulted in frequent reconciliation calls with customers and delayed customer payments. The existing reporting and analytics capabilities were inadequate, preventing the Company from gaining valuable insights into their operations.

Objectives

The Company had the following objectives for their digital transformation journey

• Improve strategic capabilities through a platform for innovation that will enable growth
• Create a single version of truth on master data and business transactions
• Streamline and automate business processes to reduce manual intervention and improve accuracy & efficiency
• Enable real-time access to data and analytics, facilitating improved and timely decision-making.
• Enable a more customer-centric organization via improved consumer experience
• Seamless integration across all departments to create a more cohesive and efficient operations
• Use SAP best practice processes with a clean core and limited enhancements using SAP BTP
• Create a template which can be rolled out globally to all legal entities and acquisitions.

Project Scope

The implementation project, led by Accrete, covered a broad scope of Company’s global operations. This included key areas such as Order to Cash, Materials Management including Procurement, Production Planning, and Quality Management, Finance, Controlling, Inventory Management, Asset Maintenance and Engineering. Integration with third party systems like E-commerce, Coupa, Salesforce, Vendor Invoice Mgt, PLM, Credit Card, Banks and Taxes were in scope. An essential part of the project was also the comprehensive data migration from the legacy system to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud.

Implementation Approach

The project was implemented using SAP Activate methodology with SAP ALM being the supporting tool for the methodology. The discovery phase consisted of high-level business process workshops across different departments with the key stakeholders. The discovery phase resulted in defining the scope, roadmap, timeline and cost.

The project kick-off was done in Prepare phase, which also included setup of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, BTP, IAS, SAC, and ALM, Team onboarding, Workshop schedule publishing, and preparation for workshops using best practices in SAP ALM. The Accrete team conducted Fit-to-Standard workshops and demoed SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud to showcase its capabilities and developed missing process flows in the Explore phase. This phase also included capturing business requirements, defining user stories, identifying any gaps, design of integration with third party systems, security role definition and data objects to be migrated. Organization change management activities planning was done in this phase.

In the Realize Phase, sprints were conducted for user stories, along with configuration and Key user extensions in SAP S/4HANA, development of enhancements, forms, workflow and integration using SAP BTP. This phase also involved developing dashboards & reports in SAP SAC, setup security roles and data migration of master and transaction data to SAP S/4HANA using Data migration cockpit (DMC). RAID log, test cases, defects and project tasks were tracked in SAP ALM. Manual and automated Unit testing, string testing, Integration testing and User acceptance testing (UAT) that were critical components of this phase, were performed in SAP ALM.

The final Deploy phase focused on preparing for go-live, which included final data migration and cutover activities. Extensive user training sessions were conducted to ensure smooth adoption of the new system. Post-go-live support was provided to stabilize the operations and address any issues. SAP ALM was used to provide support after Go-live as well as monitoring integrated systems.

Implementation Approach

The successful implementation of SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud resulted in significant improvements for the Company as listed below:

• Business processes were streamlined and automated, substantially reducing manual efforts and associated errors.
• Real-time data access and analytics became a reality, empowering management with timely insights for more strategic planning and insights.
• Improved customer experience with timely and accurate order confirmation and invoicing.
• Advanced Production planning and execution saw notable improvements, leading to cost savings and optimized resource utilization.
• Harmonization and detailed documentation of business processes and operations enabled efficiency and growth.
• Enhanced visibility, transparency, and value in supply chain operations.
• Enabled accurate financial reporting, faster month end closing and profitability analysis.
• Scalable platform with standardized business processes which can be rolled out globally that will enable future growth.

Results

The newly deployed CRM solution helped streamline, automate and improve customer response time, repair Turn Around Times (TAT) and Customer satisfaction. Entitlement validation during Complaint/RMA creation reduced revenue leakage. Improved productivity and reduction in manual processes increased operational efficiency. The system helped in tracking cost for labour & parts and measuring service contract profitability. The solution will serve as a platform for deployment to other divisions in the company and future acquisitions.