Learn more about Flori­da Crys­tals’ trans­for­ma­tion journey. 

Giv­en recent talks at the ASUG Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) Alliance and ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange Sum­mit, Karthik Nee­lamegam bal­ances his every­day job as Senior Direc­tor, Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture, with oppor­tu­ni­ties to share updates on Flori­da Crys­tals’ SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form progress.

Flori­da Crys­tals is part of Amer­i­can Sug­ar Refin­ing (ASR Group) with farm-to-table glob­al oper­a­tions in sug­ar­cane farm­ing, milling, and refin­ing, as well as man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing, and dis­tri­b­u­tion. It is known for Domi­no Sug­ar prod­ucts and oth­er brands.

ASR Group first moved onto SAP R/3 in 1995 and lists moves to S/4HANA finance in 2015; S/4HANA pub­lic cloud in 2017; and S/4HANA 2020 this year among its accom­plish­ments. ASR Group also uses SAP Ari­ba, SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, Suc­cess­Fac­tors, and Con­cur among sev­er­al third-par­ty SaaS appli­ca­tions in its enter­prise architecture. 

In the inter­view below, Nee­lamegam recaps what prompt­ed Flori­da Crys­tals to explore and imple­ment SAP BTP, includ­ing some of the chal­lenges and ear­ly results. The inter­view is an edit­ed ver­sion of an email-based conversation.

What were the organization’s ini­tial impres­sions and why the inter­est in SAP BTP?

Our ini­tial impres­sion was it appeared to be a rebrand­ing of exist­ing ser­vices. But the more we learned about its capa­bil­i­ties and the ongo­ing addi­tion­al ser­vice offer­ings that are part of BTP, the more excit­ed we became about it.

What were the busi­ness dri­vers for BTP?

We want­ed greater agili­ty and sup­port for the inter-depen­dent ecosys­tem. We saw greater prod­uct matu­ri­ty and, of course, the oppor­tu­ni­ty for more effec­tive cost management.

What were the tech­nol­o­gy dri­vers for change?

We saw the oppor­tu­ni­ty for a greater vari­ety of ser­vices and a sys­tem that sup­ports oth­er tools and tech­nolo­gies. For instance, we can run SAP Data Intel­li­gence and many dif­fer­ent apps on dock­er con­tain­ers. Here are some notable ser­vices we are cur­rent­ly using: SAP HANA Cloud DB, SAP Doc­u­ment Man­age­ment Ser­vice, SAP Launch­pad, SAP Mobile Ser­vices, SAP Data Intel­li­gence, SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, and SAP API Management.

What were the busi­ness case key factors?

Orig­i­nal­ly the busi­ness case was built around mov­ing away from sub­scrip­tion licens­ing mod­el into con­sump­tion based. The risk was described in terms of shelfware.

What stake­hold­ers were involved in the BTP decision-making?

The VP Strat­e­gy & Archi­tec­ture, IT Tow­er Leads, the CIO, and the controller.

What fac­tors played into lead­er­ship buy-in?

BTP capa­bil­i­ties, cost, and tar­get state archi­tec­ture played a key role in deci­sion-mak­ing and get­ting buy-in. In my opin­ion, these are foun­da­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties for the enter­prise, like Out­look, MS Office, and Net­work­ing, etc., so oth­er busi­ness func­tions’ buy-in are not that crit­i­cal so long we don’t dis­rupt exist­ing ser­vices and con­tin­ue to offer more ser­vices in a more rapid man­ner. Again, this is based on how your oper­at­ing mod­el is designed.

Are there par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties with BTP?

Some of the key capa­bil­i­ties like Inte­gra­tion suite devel­op­ment oper­a­tions from BTP are not mature as pro­duc­tion-grade prod­ucts. This matu­ri­ty is crit­i­cal for clients to use BTP and grow oth­er­wise their cus­tomers lose trust.

Did your sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy and goals relate to this project?

Not real­ly at this time, but I see quite bit of poten­tial as our com­pa­ny goes ahead with CSR (Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty) and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives. I have not found a bet­ter use case yet, but I believe, based on ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange pre­sen­ta­tion, we could lever­age SAP to sup­port our organization’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

What is the cur­rent state of implementation?

We have about 20+ ser­vices in pro­duc­tion. Notable ones are SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, SAP Data Intel­li­gence, and SAP HANA DB. 

What are the ini­tial results/​benefits? What are the pro­ject­ed longer-term ben­e­fits and results?

We have suc­cess­ful­ly moved 70% of all our on-premise-based inter­faces run­ning on PI (SAP Process Inte­gra­tion), MII (SAP Man­u­fac­tur­ing Inte­gra­tion Intel­li­gence), and BOBJ (SAP Busi­ness Objects Busi­ness Intel­li­gence), etc.

Explore this SAP BTP Con­tent Col­lec­tion for more curat­ed SAP BTP con­tent, includ­ing cus­tomer case stud­ies and insights from SAP experts.