Var­i­an Med­ical Sys­tems oper­ates out of more than 62 loca­tions world­wide and employs more than 10,000 essen­tial work­ers who keep the fight against can­cer at the fore­front of their day-to-day work. In 2017, Var­i­an set out to trans­form its busi­ness from being a glob­al leader in radi­a­tion ther­a­py to expand­ing to what it calls its ​“Can­cer Oper­at­ing Plat­form” by 2022. 

The goal is to pro­vide ser­vice to more than 6 mil­lion patients seek­ing life-sav­ing treat­ment. Var­i­an plans to do this by using key trends and inno­va­tions in radi­a­tion ther­a­py, advanc­ing new treat­ment options, and increas­ing access to care across the globe.

ASUG spoke to Nagara­jan Nal­la­iah, SAP tech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er at Var­i­an, who walked us through the ini­tial con­ver­sion to SAP S/4HANA in 2017 and the most recent upgrade to the 1909 release. We dis­cussed the busi­ness case, chal­lenges faced dur­ing the upgrade, and lessons learned through­out the project. Nagara­jan has been respon­si­ble for the SAP land­scape at Var­i­an and was tasked with plan­ning and exe­cut­ing an upgrade from SAP S/4HANA 1709 to SAP S/4HANA 1909. 

Sharon: Which release of SAP S/4HANA did you orig­i­nal­ly go live with in 2018? And why did you decide to adopt SAP S/4HANA?