When Brown-Forman faced the daunting task of modernizing its decades-old SAP ECC system, the company had a pivotal decision to make.
Having run on ERP software from SAP since May 1, 1999, this Louisville, Kentucky-based 155-year-old global spirits company—which produces, markets, and sells fine quality spirits, including brands like Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve—has been carrying the weight of 20 years of legacy customizations and homegrown developments. The choice: start fresh while spending significant time and effort on a greenfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA or build on existing investments by taking a more measured brownfield approach.
Once Brown-Forman’s team opted for brownfield, one immediate challenge involved determining how best to automate the painstaking process of code remediation. Rather than purchasing a tool and handling fixes internally, Brown-Forman selected a systems integrator (SI); the code remediation tool presented by this SI was able to remediate around 80% of the company’s code without direct human interaction.
Kelly Lewis, Director of SAP Applications at Brown-Forman, will speak at a Nov. 3 Executive Exchange session during this year’s ASUG Tech Connect conference in Louisville. Lewis played a crucial role in Brown-Forman’s successful S/4HANA conversion.
Now, with the company in a foundational phase of its three-year roadmap focused on transforming user experience, strengthening data quality, and preparing for intelligent automation and cloud innovation, Lewis is focused on deploying SAP Fiori, improving master data for analytics readiness with SAP Business Data Cloud, and evaluating emerging technologies like Joule and SAP Build to simplify and scale operations.
Lewis recently sat down with ASUG Executive Exchange to discuss the business drivers behind the company’s move to S/4HANA, lessons learned, and advice for organizations embarking on similar business transformation initiatives.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Q. What were the most compelling business drivers that ultimately justified the move from your legacy ERP system to S/4HANA?
There were several different factors that all companies face with the move to S/4HANA, specifically the looming SAP deadline to decommission ECC and the fact that it wasn’t going to get less expensive to migrate. When we kicked off our project 3 years ago, it allowed us to be in the driver’s seat and get the best resources from our SI partner, because we hadn’t waited until the last minute, with more companies competing for those expert resources.
Q. What were the key factors in choosing a brownfield conversion over a greenfield implementation for your S/4HANA journey?
Because we have so much of our business running through SAP—and we are a global company in over 170 countries—the greenfield approach seemed like a project that would have never ended. We would have loved to attempt a greenfield implementation, but the costs and project timeline for such a business-critical application were the deciding factors.
Q. How did you balance the need to preserve customizations with the opportunity to simplify processes during the conversion?
With the move to S/4HANA, we focused on the changes we had to make: the FI conversion, converting rebates to Condition Contract Management (CCM), and other database table changes. We knew we were changing a lot already and wanted to minimize risk to successfully make the transition to S/4HANA, which would then enable us to have a platform to realize process gains at a later date.
Q. What were the biggest challenges in harmonizing global data, and how did you ensure consistency across diverse regional markets?
This is something we are still working towards fully completing, but we’ve made great strides so far. We’ve devoted resources to a master data management (MDM) tool that we have integrated with all our enterprise applications. We’ve kicked off projects in multiple regions, working with our business to harmonize all our customer master data and leveraging AI to reduce our internal workload. We’ve also created a data governance council with both IT and the business that provides the needed governance, data owners, and stewards across our global organization.
Q. What lessons have you learned from managing e-invoicing compliance across diverse regions, particularly in highly regulated markets?
This has certainly taken up a lot of our team’s time over the past few years. We have e-invoicing compliance solutions in around 10 markets, with more in-flight and upcoming next year. We’ve implemented several different global partners in different regions, and even though each country has unique requirements, we have standardized our SAP solutions as much as possible.
Q. Looking back, what would you identify as the most significant success of the implementation, and what would you approach differently if you could start again?
We performed a 12-month prototype prior to initiating the project. This allowed us to know upfront where we would need to spend extra time solutioning and testing. We also piloted SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) at the time, and from that were also able to make the decision to remain on-premise for this first migration. We certainly are evaluating a move to RISE in the next three to five years, as SAP has matured in this space.
Q. How do you see this S/4HANA platform positioning Brown-Forman for future AI and advanced analytics innovation?
We see the move to RISE providing us with the capabilities we need to change how users interact and utilize SAP. With large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI, we see the future looking vastly different than running reports and using transactions or Fiori apps to perform daily work.
Q. What advice would you give to other organizations embarking on similar technology and business transformation initiatives?
- Buy-in from the top of the organization is key.
- Be prepared to pivot. We had to do this several times throughout our 18-month project.
- Don’t treat data as an afterthought. Understand the new data architecture and start cleansing early.
- Test as much as possible—including third-party integrations—in mocks. We had eight total migrations: sandbox, development, quality assurance, production, plus four mocks, and nine rounds of total testing, with five user acceptance testing cycles.
- Have a comprehensive communication plan.
- Ensure third-party providers are aligned with your timeline.
- Celebrate and reward!