You may recognize the name Hunter Douglas if you have the company’s blinds in your home. Hunter Douglas actually invented the aluminum blind in 1946. But it’s come a long way in innovating the simple shade, adding unique designs, energy-efficient features, and technologies such as voice-controlled and automated window coverings. Today, it’s also a leading manufacturer of architectural products such as sun control solutions, ventilated facade systems, and suspended ceilings.

Change Management Across a Decentralized Group

In reality, Hunter Douglas Global is made up of 132 small- and medium-sized companies operating in 100 countries around the world, with dozens of locations in North America alone. This structure has led to disparate, disconnected legacy systems that prevented the company from having visibility over its inventory. Adding to this challenge, the window covering business is as diverse as the windows around us—very few products are standard, and most are completely custom.

To turn this situation around, the company is taking all of its North American sites through an ambitious greenfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA on the cloud, which includes Sales and Distribution, Financial Accounting and Controlling (FICO), Warehouse Management, Integrated Business Planning, Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence, and Business Intelligence. After the implementation, Hunter Douglas hopes to bring efficiencies such as reducing its scrap and remakes, as well as decreasing obsolete inventory.