Southco: 1 of 3 In The World Ever Attempted SAP ECC 6.0 To S/4HANA

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Southco leaps forward converting global manufacturing operations on SAP ECC EhP0 to SAP S/4HANA on AWS Cloud across 23 countries simultaneously.

Savantis led Southco’s SAP ECC 6.0 EhP0 to S/4HANA 2021 conversion program from SAP license sale to transition strategy and proof-of-concept to full global big-bang deployment and managed services supporting manufacturing operations across 23 countries in North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

SAVANTIS DELIVERS SOUTHCO END-TO-END SAP SERVICES

TRANSITION STRATEGY
Savantis led Southco IT executives through the SAP Readiness Check evaluation process that culminated in the selection of the SAP S/4HANA system conversion strategy. Savantis then developed key technical, functional and change management roadmaps and plans that produced the program estimates to complete for budgeting and funding requests. Business outcomes—System evaluated. Approach selected. Roadmaps created. Estimates developed. Strategy delivered.

PROOF-OF-CONCEPT
To prove fit for purpose, Savantis migrated a copy of Southco’s SAP ECC 6.0 EhP0 SP11 production environment to AWS Cloud. The POC needed significant updating and patching before claiming victory and was instrumental in demonstrating Savantis’ technical skills and AWS Cloud capabilities to execute the move. Business outcomes—Confidence instilled. Strategy confirmed. Cloud delivered.

SAP ALM – SOLUTION MANAGER 7.2 IMPLEMENTATION
A key early program success factor was to reimplement to the latest version of SAP ALM: Solution Manager 7.2 SP14 to support the program and act as the single source of the truth for the SAP application. Savantis implemented the new Solman instance, migrated all the as-is system documentation and assets, refreshed all the deliverables and reassigned them to the new S/4HANA business process hierarchy, then implemented the new ALM scenarios to support the program, including risk and issue management, test suite, and ChaRM-lite. Business outcomes—System documented. Project managed. Testing and defects resolved. ALM delivered.

CLOUD ENABLEMENT
Given the instability and risks of the obsolete hardware, out-of-maintenance software and database components, and aging co-location datacenter, it quickly became apparent the program’s initial focus needed to be on replatforming the hardware and updating the application components on the cloud. This initial phase paid dividends to the future phases by enabling a rapid and agile cloud-based SAP instance strategy. Business outcomes—SAP ECC cloud migration AWS go live with less than 3 days of Hypercare. Global SAP platform stabilized. Risks mitigated. Under budget. Quality delivered.

DATA SERVICES & ARCHIVING
Common with every SAP S/4HANA transition, data cleansing, harmonization, and archiving was required. Savantis led numerous teams to complete the Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) master data cleansing and harmonization, Financial general ledger and asset accounting transactional data cleansing, and comprehensive SAP Data Archiving to reduce the as-is database size from 6TB to 3TB. Business outcomes—SAP Data Archiving relives 3TB of historical data from production, reducing conversion complexity, time, and cost. Transactional data cleansed. Master data harmonized. Data archived. On budget. Quality delivered.

CUSTOM CODE REMEDIATION
As with every SAP S/4HANA transition, custom ABAP code developed to support custom reports, interfaces, conversions, enhancements, forms and workflows must be adapted to meet the new S/4HANA platform and in-memory HANA database requirements. Southco’s 9,000+ custom ABAP objects were remediated and adapted by Savantis’ global S/4 center of excellence. Business outcomes—Southco’s 9,000+ custom ABAP code objects adapted and remediated.
ABAP custom code remediated. On budget. Quality delivered.

S/4HANA SYSTEM CONVERSION
Savantis led Southco’s global S/4HANA 2021 conversion program, including managing and remediating all SAP simplification item change impacts. It also featured modifying system add-on and bolt-on integrations, including Sovos that facilitates Brazilian statutory reporting. Business outcomes—SAP S/4HANA 2021 go live with just two weeks of Hypercare. Global SAP S/4HANA platform delivered on-schedule, on-budget and on-quality.

AWS CLOUD HOSTING & SAP MANAGED SERVICES
Savantis is Southco’s selected managed services partner that supports the AWS cloud infrastructure and the ongoing technical basis outsourcing requirements accountable for ongoing support, monitoring and maintenance of the new SAP S/4HANA platform. Business outcomes—Cloud delivered. S/4HANA conversion delivered. Southco transformed.

What did SAP say about Savantis?

Working throughout the engagement lifecycle with the SAP Regional Implementation Group (RIG), SAP’s global specialty implementation group commonly engaged on high-risk projects, Savantis ran a “green-light” program from beginning to end and at no time went into formal escalation. The one of only three, ever attempted globally, SAP ECC 6.0 EHP0 system conversions was a complete success. The Savantis-led Southco AWS Cloud and SAP S/4HANA conversion program was also showcased at the SAP Board level in Q4 2022.