Arm­strong World Indus­tries has com­plet­ed 13 acqui­si­tions since 2020, while also migrat­ing to S/4HANA and mod­ern­iz­ing its 20-year-old ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ment. The com­pa­ny inte­grates two to three new busi­ness­es annu­al­ly; with cus­tomized inte­gra­tions impos­si­ble at that scale, Arm­strong need­ed some­thing most acquir­ers don’t: a play­book it could run 13 times consistently.

“At that pace, you can’t treat each acqui­si­tion as a one-off, or you’ll end up with many dif­fer­ent ERP sys­tems,” said Julie K. Walk­er, Senior Direc­tor Enter­prise Appli­ca­tions and IT Strat­e­gy. ​“The most impor­tant thing is to have a strong, reusable foun­da­tion with core SAP mod­ules, con­sis­tent data, and clear integration.”

Walk­er start­ed at Arm­strong in finance, where tech­nol­o­gy meant accu­ra­cy and effi­cien­cy — get­ting the num­bers right and the process­es fast. She became a sub­ject mat­ter expert dur­ing Armstrong’s ini­tial SAP imple­men­ta­tion, moved to IT devel­op­ment, and even­tu­al­ly took over lead­er­ship of all enter­prise applications.

Her pro­gres­sion through finance, devel­op­ment, and appli­ca­tion man­age­ment shaped how she thinks about trans­for­ma­tion today. Tech­nol­o­gy, as she sees it, is no longer sup­port­ing the busi­ness. It’s dri­ving it.

New cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, new oper­a­tional mod­els, and the abil­i­ty to absorb acqui­si­tions with­out slow­ing down are what tech­nol­o­gy enables at Arm­strong now.

The 3‑Step Playbook

Arm­strong treats SAP as the hub of its entire dig­i­tal archi­tec­ture. Every down­stream inte­gra­tion, from ana­lyt­ics to process intel­li­gence to cus­tomer-fac­ing tools, flows from that core. Get­ting an acquired com­pa­ny onto SAP unlocks the full plat­form ecosys­tem; leav­ing them off it cuts them out entirely.

The inte­gra­tion sequence is the same each time.

1. Sta­bi­lize the new enti­ty and imple­ment cyber­se­cu­ri­ty tools to bring it up to Armstrong’s secu­ri­ty standards.
2. Con­nect the enti­ty to Armstrong’s SAP instance and core platforms.
3. Only after that con­nec­tion is secure does Arm­strong lay­er in mod­ern­iza­tion and optimization.

Walk­er con­sid­ers skip­ping that inte­gra­tion ​“leav­ing val­ue on the table,” weak­en­ing the busi­ness case that jus­ti­fied the acqui­si­tion in the first place.

“Inte­grat­ing acqui­si­tions is impor­tant because it’s how we unlock the full val­ue of what we’ve bought. Inte­gra­tion isn’t just com­bin­ing oper­a­tions; it’s cre­at­ing a stronger, scal­able Armstrong.”

She frames com­mon plat­forms as a col­lab­o­ra­tion enabler. When employ­ees across acquired enti­ties share the same sys­tems, they know who to call and how to work togeth­er — a dimen­sion of inte­gra­tion gets lost when the con­ver­sa­tion focus­es only on sys­tem consolidation.

The play­book stan­dard­izes the tech­nol­o­gy. But each acquired com­pa­ny arrives with its own work­flows, its own process log­ic, and its own way of doing things. SAP alone doesn’t reveal where those dif­fer­ences lie.

“When you’ve done 13 acqui­si­tions, you quick­ly real­ize that you need a com­mon way to see process­es and to com­pare them, and to decide where we stan­dard­ize ver­sus where we allow flex­i­bil­i­ty,” explained Walker.

Sig­navio, SAP’s busi­ness process intel­li­gence plat­form, will fill that gap. Arm­strong plans to use it to map how each acquired busi­ness oper­ates, iden­ti­fy gaps with its core SAP mod­el, and pri­or­i­tize what needs to change first.

Walk­er sees it as far more than ​“just a doc­u­men­ta­tion tool.” It’s the mech­a­nism that makes the inte­gra­tion play­book repeat­able, giv­ing her IT team a con­sis­tent method­ol­o­gy for eval­u­at­ing acqui­si­tions rather than start­ing from scratch.

Look­ing ahead, she’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in automat­ing rou­tine process analy­sis and build­ing inte­gra­tions that scale. Her goal is to move Sig­navio from a diag­nos­tic tool to one that accel­er­ates action.

What Fin­ish­ing S/4HANA Made Possible

The dis­ci­pline behind that stan­dard­ize-then-build play­book traces back to Armstrong’s S/4HANA migra­tion, which fin­ished in 2022, five years ahead of the 2027 deadline.

Walk­er calls it her favorite ini­tia­tive Arm­strong has under­tak­en, one where IT and the busi­ness were ​“row­ing in the same direc­tion” from the start, with com­plete sup­port from senior lead­er­ship. Com­plet­ing the migra­tion ear­ly gave Arm­strong some­thing most com­pa­nies still work­ing toward 2027 don’t have: room to maneuver.

“We knew it was behind us, and that it opened the doors to opti­mize any­where we want­ed to,” not­ed Walk­er. ​“We didn’t have to wor­ry about a loom­ing deadline.”

That free­dom let Arm­strong pur­sue sup­ply chain opti­miza­tion, advanced ana­lyt­ics, and the M&A inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties the com­pa­ny now depends on.

But the mod­ern­iza­tion that fol­lowed has brought its own chal­lenges. Arm­strong is migrat­ing an ana­lyt­ics envi­ron­ment that accu­mu­lat­ed over more than two decades in SAP BW toward plat­forms like SAP Data­s­phere and Data­bricks while intro­duc­ing AI tools.

The sequenc­ing is crit­i­cal: Arm­strong isn’t sim­ply replac­ing one ana­lyt­ics plat­form with anoth­er, but shift­ing how it mod­els data, how teams access insights, and how quick­ly the orga­ni­za­tion can move from ques­tion to answer. That requires new skills and mind­sets as much as new tooling.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges is sim­ply the weight of his­to­ry,” said Walk­er. ​“We’re mod­ern­iz­ing more than 20 years of BW — decades of reports, cus­tom log­ic, and ways of work­ing that peo­ple are deeply famil­iar with. Help­ing teams let go of the old while build­ing con­fi­dence in the new takes time and a lot of communication.”

Armstrong’s approach has been to let peo­ple expe­ri­ence new plat­forms before ask­ing them to com­mit. The com­pa­ny ran proofs of con­cept exten­sive­ly in 2025, giv­ing teams hands-on time with new tools so they could see the val­ue firsthand.

When peo­ple under­stand the rea­son­ing and can see steady progress, ​“the com­plex­i­ty becomes man­age­able,” she noted.

AI Mea­sure by Out­comes, Not Hype

When asked how Arm­strong mea­sures AI ben­e­fits, Walk­er doesn’t see the need for a new framework.

“We haven’t changed how we mea­sure ben­e­fits. It’s exact­ly the same. This allows us to stack up those AI ini­tia­tives against all our oth­er ini­tia­tives,” she explained.

Arm­strong eval­u­ates every project — AI includ­ed — on whether it reduces time spent on man­u­al tasks, improves deci­sion speed, or sur­faces insights not pre­vi­ous­ly vis­i­ble. Con­sis­ten­cy enables apples-to-apples com­par­isons when lead­er­ship allo­cates resources.

While eval­u­at­ing projects, a clear pat­tern sur­faced: AI projects stalled when data wasn’t ready. Lega­cy data struc­tures and uneven data qual­i­ty across sys­tems meant that some areas of the busi­ness could sup­port AI imme­di­ate­ly, while oth­ers couldn’t.

Arm­strong now con­ducts a data readi­ness assess­ment before approv­ing any AI ini­tia­tive, eval­u­at­ing qual­i­ty in rel­e­vant source sys­tems, and iden­ti­fy­ing what needs cleans­ing or restruc­tur­ing before a mod­el can deliv­er real value.

“We’ll actu­al­ly cre­ate a data cleans­ing project before we even start the AI ini­tia­tive,” explained Walk­er. At the same time, Arm­strong pur­sues AI in areas where data is already clean, deliv­er­ing vis­i­ble wins that sus­tain exec­u­tive sup­port while longer reme­di­a­tion work pro­ceeds elsewhere.

Inter­nal­ly, the company’s Data-Dri­ven Deci­sions Com­mit­tee became the AI Com­mit­tee after the team noticed a shift. Engage­ment had been dif­fi­cult to sus­tain when the focus was pure­ly ana­lyt­ics, but it surged once AI entered the conversation.

The com­mit­tee expand­ed beyond ana­lysts and IT lead­ers to include gov­er­nance, legal, HR, and busi­ness unit rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Walk­er sees no con­tra­dic­tion in the rebrand: ​“AI starts with good data,” she said, so stake­hold­ers under­stand that ana­lyt­ics remains the foundation.

Man­ag­ing the Gap Between Ambi­tion and Readiness

Across every front of Armstrong’s trans­for­ma­tion, Walk­er applies the same prin­ci­ple: pair trans­paren­cy about con­straints with vis­i­ble evi­dence of progress, and nev­er let either hon­esty or opti­mism crowd out the other.

“The hard­est part isn’t the tech­nol­o­gy,” she said. ​“It’s man­ag­ing the expec­ta­tions that come with mod­ern­iz­ing some­thing the orga­ni­za­tion has relied on for decades.”

Foun­da­tion work, she empha­sized, almost always takes longer than the ​“appetite for results.” Her advice to peers is direct: explain ear­ly and often why cer­tain steps take time, where data readi­ness is a bar­ri­er, and what’s need­ed to unlock the val­ue every­one is eager to see. Arm­strong has tried to bridge what Walk­er calls ​“the art of the pos­si­ble” with oper­a­tional reality.

The com­pa­ny host­ed an AI Day where ven­dors demon­strat­ed capa­bil­i­ties, then paired those demon­stra­tions with hon­est assess­ments of what would be required to imple­ment sim­i­lar solutions.

Arm­strong is also expand­ing its use of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP). Walk­er sees BTP as a way to stream­line project deliv­ery, with code gen­er­a­tion as one area of focus. The com­pa­ny is still ear­ly in eval­u­at­ing the AI cred­its includ­ed in its Sig­navio con­tract, work­ing through SAP’s pub­lished use cas­es to deter­mine where those cred­its can deliv­er prac­ti­cal value.

When Walk­er presents at SAP Sap­phire this year, she’ll cov­er S/4HANA, ana­lyt­ics mod­ern­iza­tion, Sig­navio, and AI — rep­re­sent­ing the full span of Armstrong’s trans­for­ma­tion agen­da. That breadth reflects how Arm­strong approach­es trans­for­ma­tion: not as a set of dis­crete tech­nol­o­gy projects, but as a sin­gle dis­ci­pline applied con­sis­tent­ly across every initiative.

The com­pa­ny focus­es on build­ing repeat­able play­book for M&A inte­gra­tion, holds AI to the same ben­e­fit met­rics as every oth­er invest­ment, and com­mu­ni­cates trans­par­ent­ly about why foun­da­tion work takes time. As Arm­strong con­tin­ues acquir­ing two to three com­pa­nies a year, that dis­ci­pline is what pre­vents growth from cre­at­ing fragmentation.