Lenovo Uses SAP Solutions to Power a World-Class Supply Chain

Reading time: 5 mins

Key Takeaways

⇨ Lenovo's transformation from a hardware company to a global technology solutions provider as a service reflects a strategic shift to meet evolving customer needs and build ongoing relationships.

⇨ SAP's solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, play a crucial role in enabling Lenovo's digital transformation, supporting new business models, and driving growth in its non-PC business.

⇨ Lenovo's TruScale portfolio, encompassing infrastructure-as-a-service and device-as-a-service offerings, simplifies procurement, deployment, and management of technology solutions, driving efficiency and enabling access to new digital capabilities across various business areas.

Lenovo is also a customer of SAP! In this case study, learn how Lenovo leverages SAP to revamp the entire company with a new services-led business model.

Future-proofing and reinvention as a global as-a-service solution provider

For over three decades, Lenovo has been serving customers in 180 markets as the leading PC company in the world. But customers were telling Lenovo they needed end-to-end technology solutions so they could adapt to changing trends and economic conditions quickly. So, Lenovo decided to evolve from primarily a hardware devices company to a global provider of technology solutions as a service. Additionally, the company wanted to transition from a onetime transactional relationship with its customers to a pay-as-you-go model that requires it to build ongoing customer relationships as a provider of managed services. Lenovo calls it a “once in a generation shift.” The rapid evolution of a company known almost entirely for its computers, smartphones, and other devices required the development of a modern, cloud foundation. This would enable Lenovo to offer “as a service” at scale, across the globe.

With the support of SAP, Lenovo is able to launch this ambitious project of building a global platform to reshape the digital foundation of a business. This will help us transform from selling hardware devices on a onetime basis to a managed services provider, a transition which requires an entirely new business model and enterprise backbone.

Arthur Hu
Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Lenovo

Enabling continuous business transformation for customers

Lenovo’s digital transformation took place in its business operations as well as in the services and solutions it offers to customers. The company has partnered long-term with SAP on both fronts, using business operations and management solutions from SAP. Internally, Lenovo uses various SAP solutions to support tax, finance, compliance, and other essential requirements. Lenovo is transitioning to the cloud by implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, one of the variants of the RISE with SAP offering, and the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management solution. SAP offerings and solutions play a pivotal role in accelerating Lenovo’s digital transformation and enabling smooth day-to-day operations, billing system upgrades, subscription-based models, and procurement.

With SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, Lenovo has the flexibility to monetize its services with pay-as-you-go, subscription, consumption-based, outcome-based, and other models. For example, offerings can be based on power consumption, storage of gigabytes, utilization, and number of nodes in an installation. Lenovo discovered that SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management is not just about the back office. Product hierarchies had to be redefined to fit the new as-a-service world. Finance needed to update accounting for the managed services, such as revenue recognition and costing. Sales needed to be able to quote the new services. The company needed to be able to deliver optimal experience to customers with accurate and timely fulfillment and entitlement in addition to integrated customer invoices that included all required details. Now, Lenovo can provide customers with what they need by unifying workplace solutions in a single source. By integrating SAP Ariba solutions, Lenovo developed an intelligent, comprehensive procurement platform to help facilitate and manage customer access to Lenovo’s offerings with global data transparency while maintaining compliance across more than 180 markets.

On this digital foundation, Lenovo developed its TruScale infrastructure-as-a-service portfolio. TruScale encompasses what a business needs and makes it available from a single source: simplifying and optimizing procurement, deployment, and management of infrastructure, hardware, and licensing under one contract and one point of contact.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the consummate ERP software for large enterprises. When you’re a company like Lenovo – with 77,000 employees and customers in 180 markets – you can lean on this to cover day-to-day processes.

Arthur Hu
Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Lenovo

Driving growth with an as-a-service model on a digital foundation

Lenovo’s service-led transformation served as a catalyst for significant growth in its non-PC business, accounting for over 40% of group revenue. The digital platforms built on solutions from SAP play a crucial role in accelerating this digital transformation. With TruScale, the company offers customers what they need, driving growth and new revenue streams.

SAP gives Lenovo’s IT team the agility to quickly iterate and offer new capabilities to support new requests from the business. Since SAP provides the plumbing and best practices built in for supporting an as-a-service business, this gives Lenovo the capability to quickly meet the needs of the business and have a direct impact on creating new revenue streams.

Using solutions from SAP, Lenovo continues to reshape its digital foundation and transition from just a hardware provider to a cloud services and solution company. Lenovo’s TruScale portfolio includes Device as a Service, providing a wide range of digital workplace solutions, and Infrastructure as a Service, providing data center solutions, flexible payment options, and reliable equipment to enhance business operations. The shift to a unified system streamlines processes, eliminates the need for multiple incompatible systems, and enables access to new digital capabilities across areas such as payroll, human resources, regulatory compliance, and procurement.

Lenovo Retail and Infrastructure Solutions unify the power of hardware, software, and services to power in-store operations from point-of-sale (POS) and edge applications to large enterprise data center applications including the SAP S/4HANA Retail solution. Lenovo’s award-winning Scan-n-Go Self-Service Kiosks, integrated with the SAP Customer Checkout application, provides rich POS functionality for a range of business scenarios including retail, merchandise, catering, and sports and entertainment. The integrated solution handles sales, returns, payments, and discounts, helping businesses run more efficiently and continuously transforming and improving retail operations from customer experiences to in-store operations.

In the process of taking our portfolio and offering it as a service, SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management helped us evolve to a pay-as-you-go service model, providing the technology capabilities that underpin our business model transformation.

Arthur Hu
Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Lenovo

Continuing transformation on the as-a-service journey

With the SAP technologies that Lenovo is bringing to bear with its service-led transformation, its portfolio is creating excitement and momentum. Customers, as well as internal users, are giving the company feedback, saying they want to be next in line. They want to see what’s next, and they want first access to the next capabilities and the next set of opportunities that become available.

Want to know more about Lenovo?

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Vendors Mentioned

Key Topics Discussed

Lenovo Uses SAP Solutions to Power a World-Class Supply Chain

Key Takeaways

⇨ Lenovo's transformation from a hardware company to a global technology solutions provider as a service reflects a strategic shift to meet evolving customer needs and build ongoing relationships.

⇨ SAP's solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, play a crucial role in enabling Lenovo's digital transformation, supporting new business models, and driving growth in its non-PC business.

⇨ Lenovo's TruScale portfolio, encompassing infrastructure-as-a-service and device-as-a-service offerings, simplifies procurement, deployment, and management of technology solutions, driving efficiency and enabling access to new digital capabilities across various business areas.

Future-proofing and reinvention as a global as-a-service solution provider

Enabling continuous business transformation for customers

Driving growth with an as-a-service model on a digital foundation

Continuing transformation on the as-a-service journey

Want to know more about Lenovo?

More Resources

Modernizing Your Warehouse: Embracing SAP EWM and STRM for Efficiency and Growth

Caterpillar Replaces Previous Voice Solution and Achieves 32% Increase in Productivity

Serialization in the Supply Chain for a Deeper Analysis to Identify Bottlenecks and Issues

Creating Inventory Policies Backed by Your SAP Data

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Vendors Mentioned

Key Topics Discussed

Lenovo Uses SAP Solutions to Power a World-Class Supply Chain

Key Takeaways

⇨ Lenovo's transformation from a hardware company to a global technology solutions provider as a service reflects a strategic shift to meet evolving customer needs and build ongoing relationships.

⇨ SAP's solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, play a crucial role in enabling Lenovo's digital transformation, supporting new business models, and driving growth in its non-PC business.

⇨ Lenovo's TruScale portfolio, encompassing infrastructure-as-a-service and device-as-a-service offerings, simplifies procurement, deployment, and management of technology solutions, driving efficiency and enabling access to new digital capabilities across various business areas.

Future-proofing and reinvention as a global as-a-service solution provider

Enabling continuous business transformation for customers

Driving growth with an as-a-service model on a digital foundation

Continuing transformation on the as-a-service journey

Want to know more about Lenovo?

More Resources

Featured Insiders

Become a Member

Upcoming Events

Sign Up for the SAPInsider Weekly