DXC Tech­nol­o­gy has a 35-year part­ner­ship with SAP. Col­lab­o­rat­ing on inno­va­tions that include work for 850 cus­tomers in indus­tries such as health care, ener­gy and the pub­lic sec­tor, DXC recent­ly intro­duced DXC Fast RISE with SAP, lever­ag­ing its exper­tise, along with best prac­tice tools and accel­er­a­tors, to reduce the com­plex­i­ty and com­press the time­line for migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA. 

In opt­ing for the DXC Fast RISE with SAP approach, SAP users can achieve faster time-to-val­ue, sim­pli­fy their busi­ness, and low­er their total cost of own­er­ship, while reap­ing the myr­i­ad ben­e­fits of cloud ERP, from increased agili­ty to scalability. 

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to build on this jour­ney and accel­er­ate strate­gic part­ner­ships to bring val­ue to cus­tomers in the era of AI and cloud mod­ern­iza­tion. DXC’s focus is on help­ing to solve client chal­lenges and deliv­er out­comes with speed. 

As busi­ness lead­ers seek to adapt, move at speed, and rapid­ly scale to stay com­pet­i­tive in today’s inno­va­tion econ­o­my, IT mod­ern­iza­tion efforts are ris­ing to the top of every company’s agen­da. For orga­ni­za­tions with IT infra­struc­ture run­ning on SAP, one of the most high-pri­or­i­ty ini­tia­tives involves migrat­ing from lega­cy SAP ERP sys­tems to RISE with SAP S/HANA for busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and innovation. 

How­ev­er, the SAP ERP cloud jour­ney can be com­plex, time-con­sum­ing, and expen­sive, which pos­es a chal­lenge for both enter­prise cus­tomers and those in the mid-mar­ket sector. 

Deliv­er­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal IT ser­vices for glob­al com­pa­nies, DXC Tech­nol­o­gy is focused on design­ing and imple­ment­ing solu­tions that embed engi­neer­ing skills, AI and indus­try exper­tise to cap­ture oppor­tu­ni­ties in an expand­ing address­able mar­ket. With deep engi­neer­ing and indus­try exper­tise, the com­pa­ny is help­ing dri­ve mis­sion-crit­i­cal oper­a­tional excel­lence at scale with secu­ri­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty, per­for­mance, and compliance. 

An SAP Glob­al Part­ner, DXC pro­vides a spec­trum of SAP-based solu­tions to empow­er busi­ness­es to sim­pli­fy IT, mod­ern­ize appli­ca­tions, and accel­er­ate process­es. In con­ver­sa­tion with ASUG, Kei­th Costel­lo, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er and Glob­al SAP Lead at DXC Tech­nol­o­gy, dives deep­er into how DXC Fast RISE with SAP can trans­form the way com­pa­nies approach dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the unique advan­tages this ser­vice offers, and what he fore­sees for the future of SAP implementation.

This inter­view, which you can also down­load here, has been edit­ed and condensed.

Q: DXC is strate­gi­cal­ly more focused than ever on SAP. What does the growth of this busi­ness mean for your customers? 

DXC Tech­nol­o­gy helps the world’s most inno­v­a­tive busi­ness­es flour­ish in the era of AI, deliv­er­ing the ser­vices and solu­tions that cus­tomers depend on. Our engi­neer­ing and con­sult­ing experts are the enablers for help­ing clients unlock AI’s full poten­tial, man­age their most crit­i­cal work­loads and oper­a­tions, and put secu­ri­ty at the fore­front. We have more than 50,000 engi­neers and deep indus­try experts who under­stand our clients’ busi­ness process­es and are ded­i­cat­ed to deliv­er­ing suc­cess along­side near­ly 3,000 secu­ri­ty experts who ensure strong data gov­er­nance and integrity.

A sig­nif­i­cant part of this effort involves our con­sult­ing and engi­neer­ing ser­vices divi­sion. We have restruc­tured the com­pa­ny into two main parts: our infra­struc­ture busi­ness, and our con­sult­ing and engi­neer­ing ser­vices — where our SAP prac­tice resides. Our con­sult­ing and engi­neer­ing experts are the enablers for help­ing clients unlock AI’s full poten­tial, man­age their most crit­i­cal work­loads and oper­a­tions, and put secu­ri­ty at the forefront.

All of this is orga­nized into a five-by-five matrix, encom­pass­ing five indus­try focus areas — Finan­cial Ser­vices; Auto­mo­tive & Man­u­fac­tur­ing; Health­care & Life Sci­ences; Air­lines; and the Pub­lic Sec­tor — and five ser­vice lines. One of these glob­al ser­vice lines is our SAP busi­ness, which stands alone as it rep­re­sents a sub­stan­tial growth oppor­tu­ni­ty for us. Every client I engage with has strate­gic ini­tia­tives lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal capa­bil­i­ties, often involv­ing SAP, mak­ing this a tremen­dous growth prospect. 

Upon join­ing DXC in 2023, I con­sult­ed with sev­er­al lead­ing ana­lysts to iden­ti­fy our first-mover advan­tage and areas that dif­fer­en­ti­ate our ser­vices. Their feed­back high­light­ed the impor­tance of speed. While SAP invests heav­i­ly in accel­er­a­tors used wide­ly to de-risk projects, we empha­size speed in deliv­er­ing cus­tomer out­comes. Unlike com­peti­tors who allo­cate resources to lengthy blue­print and strat­e­gy phas­es, we focus on rapid deployment. 

Our pri­or­i­ty is to get clients into pro­duc­tive use swift­ly, mod­ern­iz­ing their exten­sive estates, includ­ing SAP and oth­er con­tent, and migrat­ing them to cloud or hybrid environments. 

This tran­si­tion allows them to take advan­tage of inno­va­tions in sim­pli­fy­ing process­es and opti­miz­ing data mod­els. In the process, we help clients under­stand and uti­lize the full func­tion­al­i­ty of SAP S/4HANA, often reduc­ing unnec­es­sary customizations.

Build­ing on a 35-year her­itage, DXC and SAP con­tin­ue to offer a proven approach to IT modernization.

Q: Tell us about a few spe­cif­ic cas­es in which DXC has deliv­ered sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness val­ue through SAP implementation. 

We recent­ly com­plet­ed a project in Aus­tralia with­in six months for White­haven Coal, a lead­ing coal pro­duc­er that sup­plies met­al­lur­gi­cal coal for steel­mak­ing in devel­oped and emerg­ing Asian economies. We imple­ment­ed sys­tems at two new­ly acquired White­haven Coal mine sites that allowed White­haven to dou­ble its size in record time. 

DXC rolled out SAP S/4HANA at the new mine sites, aimed at mod­ern­iz­ing the HR, Finance, Pro­cure­ment and Pay­roll func­tions with­in six months. We man­aged the full imple­men­ta­tion, includ­ing busi­ness analy­sis, orga­ni­za­tion­al change man­age­ment, and secu­ri­ty ser­vices. We tran­si­tioned a work­force of more than 2,000 and sys­tems run­ning over 150 appli­ca­tions onto the new plat­form, with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to production. 

For Ener­gy Har­bor, a large nuclear pow­er provider in the Ohio Val­ley area serv­ing mil­lions of clients, DXC exe­cut­ed a migra­tion from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA on RISE with SAP in nine months. The project helped accel­er­ate Ener­gy Harbor’s objec­tive to become one of the largest ful­ly inte­grat­ed retail providers of car­bon-free elec­tric­i­ty. In recog­ni­tion of this achieve­ment, Ener­gy Har­bor was award­ed the title of Pur­pose-Dri­ven Util­i­ty at the 2023 SAP Inno­va­tion Awards. I like to say this was Fast RISE before we even announced Fast RISE.

Dis­cov­er the val­ue of SAP S/4HANA with DXC Fast RISE with SAP.

Q: DXC intro­duced Fast RISE with SAP in ear­ly 2024, with the ambi­tion to deliv­er 12-month imple­men­ta­tion time­lines for enter­prise cus­tomers select­ing RISE with SAP S/4HANA. How does this ser­vice enable cus­tomers to achieve faster time-to-val­ue while reduc­ing complexity? 

The DXC Fast RISE with SAP ser­vice enables cus­tomers to rapid­ly unlock the exten­sive val­ue of SAP S/4HANA. In stream­lin­ing the imple­men­ta­tion process, the ser­vice is designed to enable not only speed but also scal­a­bil­i­ty, so that clients can adapt and grow as their needs evolve, with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion. These three fac­tors — speed, adapt­abil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty — make it pos­si­ble for cus­tomers to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the total cost of own­er­ship asso­ci­at­ed with SAP adoption. 

The con­cept behind DXC Fast RISE emerged from those ear­ly dis­cus­sions I had with ana­lysts and clients, and the thought process began with a key ques­tion: How can we assess whether a client is ready to achieve sig­nif­i­cant goals with­in a year or less? Doing so would require the client to be com­mit­ted to mov­ing quickly. 

The pro­gram is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant when cer­tain con­di­tions are in place. For instance, many of our clients are engaged in merg­ers and acqui­si­tions (M&As) and need to act swift­ly to pre­pare for an acqui­si­tion. At Ener­gy Har­bor, M&A activ­i­ty was near-cer­tain­ly ahead, so they had to act quick­ly to be ready. 

Oth­er clients may be plan­ning to spin off a busi­ness. In this sit­u­a­tion as well, strate­gic suc­cess is con­tin­gent on hav­ing the tar­get oper­at­ing mod­el in place with­in, say, eight months. This allows clients to spend the remain­ing months real­iz­ing the val­ue of the acqui­si­tion or divesti­ture. We encounter these sce­nar­ios repeatedly. 

Anoth­er seg­ment of clients that ben­e­fit from rapid SAP imple­men­ta­tions and migra­tions are in the mid-mar­ket. Despite their small­er size, many of these com­pa­nies have lev­els of com­plex­i­ty that are sim­i­lar to those in place at larg­er orga­ni­za­tions. These can be com­pa­nies in the $2 – 4 bil­lion range, com­pa­nies that don’t have the lux­u­ry of extend­ed time­lines. Often, lead­ers at these orga­ni­za­tions have eval­u­at­ed SAP S/4HANA but have elect­ed not to imple­ment all its func­tion­al­i­ties upfront, opt­ing instead to rapid­ly migrate their exist­ing sys­tems to S/4HANA, where they can opti­mize and fine-tune them to then deter­mine what trans­for­ma­tions are tru­ly necessary. 

That is not to say that we don’t see demand for DXC Fast RISE from big­ger cus­tomers. Sev­er­al large clients have approached us to accel­er­ate the mod­ern­iza­tion and opti­miza­tion of recent­ly acquired divi­sions. Recent­ly, we worked on a $600 mil­lion rev­enue divi­sion that was grow­ing at 4%, and the lead­er­ship team set a goal of increas­ing that growth to 50%. 

Oth­er cas­es involve a divi­sion­al migra­tion from ECC to S/4HANA, which is used as a tem­plate for broad­er trans­for­ma­tion across the com­pa­ny. These clients often tell us they’ve already spent over a year work­ing with one of our com­peti­tors on blue­print­ing and are now won­der­ing if we can help them bypass that and achieve their goals faster.

Con­nect with Kei­th Costel­lo on LinkedIn.

Q: What is the imple­men­ta­tion method­ol­o­gy that enables DXC Fast RISE?

First, we begin by con­duct­ing a DXC Fast RISE assess­ment for our clients. This involves eval­u­at­ing the extent of cus­tom code that needs reme­di­a­tion, the lev­el of inte­gra­tion required, and the num­ber of busi­ness process­es tar­get­ed for optimization.

If a client seeks to over­haul their entire oper­a­tion, that’s not typ­i­cal­ly a fast project. How­ev­er, if the focus is on opti­miz­ing two or three key process­es — whether in finance, sup­ply chain, or anoth­er area — we can deliv­er rapid results, enabling our clients to real­ize val­ue quickly.

Once the assess­ment is com­plete, we lever­age DXC’s part­ner­ships with spe­cial­ized firms that offer accel­er­a­tion capa­bil­i­ties. For exam­ple, to enhance our abil­i­ty to exe­cute effi­cient­ly, we have col­lab­o­rat­ed with smartShift for code reme­di­a­tion and Syni­ti for data migration.

Our sweet spot lies at the upper end of the mid-mar­ket and the low­er end of the enter­prise spec­trum. We take a very pre­scrip­tive approach in our upfront qual­i­fi­ca­tion process, work­ing close­ly with SAP to align with their mar­ket strat­e­gy. Our col­lab­o­ra­tion is tight­ly inte­grat­ed, and SAP is ful­ly sup­port­ive of this approach.

We focus on indus­tries where we have deep exper­tise, includ­ing auto­mo­tive and man­u­fac­tur­ing, finan­cial ser­vices, health­care and life sci­ences, air­lines, and the pub­lic sec­tor. For these clients, the key con­sid­er­a­tions are when and how to migrate. When large com­pa­nies approach us about DXC Fast RISE, they’re not look­ing for pro­longed, dis­rup­tive trans­for­ma­tions. They want the process to be seam­less, qui­et, and unin­ter­rupt­ed. As I men­tioned, in some cas­es, we part­ner with firms that might oth­er­wise be seen as com­peti­tors because they have areas of spe­cial­iza­tion that bring imme­di­ate val­ue to the client.

“We take a very pre­scrip­tive approach
in our upfront qual­i­fi­ca­tion process,
work­ing close­ly with SAP to align with
their mar­ket strat­e­gy.” — Kei­th Costel­lo, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er
and Glob­al SAP Lead at DXC Technology

Q: How does DXC lever­age its tal­ent and its indus­try-spe­cif­ic exper­tise to tai­lor SAP solu­tions for clients?

With more than 50,000 engi­neers on our team and deep indus­try expe­ri­ence, our engi­neer­ing exper­tise is unpar­al­leled. Our tech­ni­cal skills are sec­ond to none, and we excel in exe­cu­tion. We’ve demon­strat­ed this capa­bil­i­ty on the largest scales, suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing imple­men­ta­tions with­in tight time­lines. It’s our engi­neer­ing strength and tech­ni­cal exper­tise that make this possible.

We’re also com­mit­ted to deep­en­ing our indus­try knowl­edge. As part of this effort, we’re active­ly hir­ing pro­fes­sion­als with spe­cif­ic indus­try expe­ri­ence into our SAP busi­ness. These are indi­vid­u­als who can, for exam­ple, walk into an auto­mo­tive or man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny and imme­di­ate­ly pin­point their crit­i­cal busi­ness chal­lenges in detail.

Q: How can clients bal­ance the need for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing cus­tomiza­tion with the ben­e­fits of stan­dard­iza­tion in SAP implementations?

Our clients often face chal­lenges with cus­tom add-ons that are deeply inte­grat­ed into their exist­ing SAP imple­men­ta­tion. These cus­tom solu­tions are often viewed as crit­i­cal com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­en­tia­tors, influ­enc­ing aspects like pric­ing — or how they oper­ate on a com­mod­i­ty exchange, as an exam­ple — that is tai­lored to very spe­cif­ic needs and circumstances.

While these cus­tomiza­tions are seen as key to their com­pet­i­tive edge, they’re usu­al­ly writ­ten by peo­ple no longer with the com­pa­ny. With the peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand the cus­tomiza­tion gone, few orga­ni­za­tions are will­ing to trust any­one else to touch these applications.

When our cus­tomers encounter such a sit­u­a­tion, they need to mod­ern­ize the code­base by extract­ing an under­stand­ing of the orig­i­nal designs and poten­tial­ly rebuild­ing them with­in the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) frame­work, where they can be ful­ly sup­port­ed by SAP and tight­ly inte­grat­ed into cus­tomers’ future-state envi­ron­ments. DXC has both the deep indus­try exper­tise com­ple­ment­ed by the SAP tech­nol­o­gy knowl­edge to help cus­tomers nav­i­gate through the mod­ern­iza­tion process effi­cient­ly and effectively.

I am not opposed to cus­tomiza­tion — in fact, I rec­og­nize its impor­tance — but it must be done intel­li­gent­ly and in align­ment with SAP’s strat­e­gy. These sys­tems must be inte­grat­ed into mod­ern­iza­tion and ongo­ing main­te­nance ini­tia­tives, and they must adhere to patch­ing and upgrade process­es to stay cur­rent with cer­tain releas­es. If you’re deploy­ing the prod­uct in a dif­fer­ent way, the con­ver­sa­tion might shift slight­ly, but long-term sup­port­a­bil­i­ty remains a key consideration.

Q: How does DXC stay ahead of the curve with SAP inno­va­tions around gen­er­a­tive AI, and how do you incor­po­rate new SAP fea­tures and tech­nolo­gies into your ser­vice offerings?

DXC has built AI capa­bil­i­ties with a focus on how we can solve the big chal­lenges across auto­mo­tive and man­u­fac­tur­ing, finan­cial ser­vices, health­care and life sci­ences, air­lines and pub­lic sec­tor — both with solu­tions devel­oped by our indus­try experts and engi­neers, and by lever­ag­ing the exper­tise and work of third par­ties. We now have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rapid­ly expand this core capa­bil­i­ty by co-inno­vat­ing with SAP in a unique way to bet­ter sup­port our clients.

Since I joined DXC, SAP has expand­ed its AI use cas­es from around 800 to near­ly 1,400. They’re rapid­ly inno­vat­ing, and after meet­ing recent­ly with Philipp Herzig, SAP’s Chief AI Offi­cer, it’s clear they are accel­er­at­ing their pace of devel­op­ment. The key ques­tion now is how can we sim­pli­fy this increas­ing­ly com­plex AI oppor­tu­ni­ty to help clients iden­ti­fy the solu­tions so AI can deliv­er impact in their busi­ness, from pro­duc­tiv­i­ty to oper­a­tional effec­tive­ness, increas­ing speed to mar­ket and cre­at­ing bet­ter prod­uct expe­ri­ences. While ensur­ing every solu­tion meets nec­es­sary secu­ri­ty, gov­er­nance and com­pli­ance, respon­si­bil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty standards. 

We’re approach­ing this with an indus­try-first mind­set, start­ing with auto­mo­tive and man­u­fac­tur­ing, where we have clients eager to co-inno­vate with DXC and SAP. There is an immense oppor­tu­ni­ty to help these clients iden­ti­fy solu­tions for their spe­cif­ic indus­try needs from exist­ing use cas­es and then move quick­ly to cap­i­tal­ize on the most promis­ing AI capa­bil­i­ties to dri­ve busi­ness growth.

Vis­it the DXC Tech­nol­o­gy website.

About DXC Technology

DXC Tech­nol­o­gy (NYSE: DXC) helps glob­al com­pa­nies run their mis­sion-crit­i­cal sys­tems and oper­a­tions while mod­ern­iz­ing IT, opti­miz­ing data archi­tec­tures, and ensur­ing secu­ri­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty across pub­lic, pri­vate and hybrid clouds. The world’s largest com­pa­nies and pub­lic sec­tor orga­ni­za­tions trust DXC to deploy ser­vices to dri­ve new lev­els of per­for­mance, com­pet­i­tive­ness, and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence across their IT estates. Learn more about how we deliv­er excel­lence for our cus­tomers and col­leagues at DXC​.com.

About ASUG

ASUG is the world’s largest SAP user group. Orig­i­nal­ly found­ed by a group of vision­ary SAP cus­tomers in 1991, its mis­sion is to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. ASUG cur­rent­ly serves thou­sands of busi­ness­es via com­pa­ny­wide mem­ber­ships, con­nect­ing more than 130,000 pro­fes­sion­als with net­work­ing and edu­ca­tion­al resources to help them mas­ter new chal­lenges. Through in-per­son and vir­tu­al events, on-demand dig­i­tal resources, and ongo­ing advo­ca­cy for its mem­ber­ship, ASUG helps SAP cus­tomers make more possible.