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At a glance
Industry
Manufacturing
Location
Global, with HQ in Belgium
Challenge
Modernize and migrate a legacy SAP ECC applications environment to S/4HANA to support future business growth.
Success Highlights
- Project delivered in under 12 months with no surprises or setbacks
- 40+ country operations gain a modern ERP backbone to support business growth
- 6,000+ users benefit from a new digital core
Our approach
A target of 12 months was set for the whole environment to go live on S/4HANA. Throughout, Cognizant, Etex and SAP worked in partnership to ensure a smooth and successful project delivery with all parties working together to anticipate, address and resolve any issues.
Delivering a successful modernization
The modernization involved first developing a thorough understanding of the SAP environment. A full system readiness analysis was conducted to understand which aspects of the environment would need remediation prior to the move. A conversion plan for the migration was then created, using best-practice processes and frameworks.
To de-risk the project, a six-cycle migration was planned. The cycles started with the sandbox environment, being the lowest-risk, and progressed through to the production environment. Each cycle involved Etex, Cognizant and SAP working together to convert to S/4HANA, implement mandatory simplification items, make custom code corrections and migrate the data. The learnings from each cycle were applied in subsequent cycles, in readiness for seamless cut-over and go live.
As part of our end-to-end approach, Cognizant also implemented a best-practice test management strategy that Etex can use for future business transformation projects.
All six cycles were completed as planned, with Etex going live on S/4HANA in a single weekend at the end of the <12-month period.
Business outcomes
The smooth, on-time migration to S/4HANA allowed Etex to start benefiting from SAP S/4HANA features in a little over a year—a rapid timeframe for a full modernization of a complex legacy SAP ECC environment. Specific outcomes achieved to date include:
- Next-generation platform to enable business growth: Etex now benefits from a modern ERP backbone that will support the company in areas like finance, warehouse management, transportation and HR. It now has a foundation to deploy embedded AI use cases to drive further business value.
- A new ERP backbone for 100+ plants in 40+ countries: Etex operations around the world benefit from a new digital core that sets the foundation for an enhanced user experience in S/4HANA.
Throughout, the collaborative effort between Etex, SAP, and Cognizant facilitated coordination and ongoing external benchmarking. This has been fundamental for the successful execution and establishment of the groundwork for the digital transformation journey.