Imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA is a com­pli­cat­ed process, even under the best of cir­cum­stances. It requires a ded­i­cat­ed team and an incred­i­ble amount of orga­ni­za­tion and plan­ning. As huge swaths of the work­force have begun work­ing remote­ly in the face of COVID-19, many orga­ni­za­tions have need­ed to under­take their SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tions in com­plete­ly remote envi­ron­ments. While this is cer­tain­ly a shift from what com­pa­nies have done before, remote SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tions can be suc­cess­ful with the right part­ners, team, tools, and strategies. 

ASUG recent­ly sat down with Vince Siemens, cor­po­rate con­troller and SAP S/4HANA pro­gram direc­tor at Tom­lin­son Group of Com­pa­nies, and Nir Orbach, CEO of Illu­mi­ti. Tom­lin­son Group recent­ly com­plet­ed the lat­est leg of its mul­ti-phased SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion com­plete­ly remote­ly, with help from its sys­tem inte­gra­tor, Illu­mi­ti. In part one of this two-part arti­cle, Siemens and Orbach walk ASUG through the scope and time­line of the entire imple­men­ta­tion, the effects COVID-19 had on that time­line, and how the two orga­ni­za­tions worked togeth­er on this project. 

ASUG: Tell us about your back­ground and how your pre­vi­ous work expe­ri­ence helped you pre­pare for this remote project.

Vince: My back­ground has been a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from most. I’m actu­al­ly a cor­po­rate finance guy but was an SAP con­sul­tant in a past life. I left that to go back into cor­po­rate finance. Then Tom­lin­son Group took on this SAP project. I nev­er real­ly planned on doing a large part of a project, espe­cial­ly a sig­nif­i­cant go-live, remote­ly. Like what so many peo­ple have recent­ly expe­ri­enced, this was sprung upon me with about 24 hours’ notice. A com­plete­ly remote go-live was a new under­tak­ing for me. 

Nir: I start­ed many years ago as an SAP con­sul­tant as well. I was involved in imple­men­ta­tions and man­ag­ing some SAP projects in the 1990s. I found­ed Illu­mi­ti 20 years ago to offer a high-qual­i­ty, prag­mat­ic ser­vice to com­pa­nies. In the last 10 years, we start­ed to nar­row our focus to small­er seg­ments of indus­tries as opposed to tak­ing on projects from any indus­try. Con­struc­tion became one of the sec­tors that we decid­ed to focus on. 

ASUG: Vince, can you give us a high-lev­el overview of the Tom­lin­son Group and its tech­nol­o­gy land­scape before you moved to SAP S/4HANA? Why was this the best ERP solu­tion for you? 

Vince: Tom­lin­son Group is locat­ed in Ottawa, Ontario, Cana­da. Before we began using SAP S/4HANA, we were run­ning a small con­struc­tion point solu­tion, which is great if we were a small con­struc­tion com­pa­ny. In addi­tion to being a large con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, Tom­lin­son Group also has a sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices busi­ness. That includes own­ing and run­ning waste trans­fer sta­tions, land­fills, curb­side pick­up, roll-off bins, and a large indus­tri­al waste busi­ness. Tom­lin­son Group also has quar­ries, a ready-mix busi­ness, and aggre­gate sales in the U.S.

Our pre­vi­ous solu­tion would­n’t eas­i­ly allow for mul­ti­ple types of busi­ness. It focused on con­struc­tion. We had sev­er­al dis­parate sys­tems. It also would not allow us to eas­i­ly have busi­ness­es in both Cana­da and the U.S. In our pre­vi­ous solu­tion, we had to set up our U.S. busi­ness­es as addi­tion­al Cana­di­an provinces. So, Cal­i­for­nia and Michi­gan became new provinces of Cana­da. We had to fake the sys­tem out to get it to work. Cou­ple that with the fact that we are approx­i­mate­ly 10 to 15 times the size of orga­ni­za­tions that, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, the solu­tion was pre­pared to han­dle. We found we had their largest data­base and that scared us. Not hav­ing a prop­er scal­able ERP that could effec­tive­ly han­dle mul­ti­ple lines of busi­ness in mul­ti­ple coun­tries was becom­ing an imped­i­ment to growth. We’ve acquired mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies over the last sev­er­al years. It got to the point where we did­n’t feel we could acquire com­pa­nies at the rate we were with the sys­tem we had. 

Tom­lin­son Group went on a very detailed ERP sys­tem selec­tion process, as Nir can attest. We made all the ven­dors jump through what seemed like a hun­dred hoops and do detailed demos. It came down to the big three ERP solu­tion providers. The selec­tion com­mit­tee — which includ­ed me, sev­er­al exec­u­tives, and some oper­a­tional employ­ees — all agreed eas­i­ly on SAP S/4HANA. It was unan­i­mous that this was the solu­tion that not only could meet our future growth, but that also real­ly focused on the con­struc­tion side of the house. We knew it could meet our needs. We decid­ed also to go with an on-premis­es solu­tion in pri­vate host­ing. Over time, we’ve evolved into a hybrid solu­tion and we’ll con­tin­ue to go in that direc­tion. SAP con­tin­ues to grow in our indus­try which is a huge advan­tage and helps solid­i­fy we made the right choice. 

ASUG: With that in mind, can you dis­cuss the scope of the project? Tell us about the time­line and how it changed because of the effects of COVID-19. 

Vince: We orig­i­nal­ly had a high-lev­el scope — ​“put in a black box” — as we say. We looked at risk mit­i­ga­tion long before COVID-19. With the huge scale of what we want­ed to imple­ment we knew we had to phase the imple­men­ta­tion out orga­ni­za­tion­al­ly. We were pre­pared for this as it was such a huge change for our orga­ni­za­tion. From a func­tion­al­i­ty scope, we’ve brought in a lot of what SAP has to offer. We have imple­ment­ed the core SAP solu­tions like SAP Finan­cial Account­ing, SAP Con­trol­ling, SAP Mate­r­i­al Man­age­ment, SAP Pro­duc­tion Plan­ning, and SAP Sales and Dis­tri­b­u­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, we are run­ning con­struc­tion cen­tric items like SAP Project Sys­tem cou­pled with SAP Com­mer­cial Project Man­age­ment. We’re also run­ning a lot of SAP Fiori items, SAP Pay­roll, and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors. We are look­ing to bring in more.

From an imple­men­ta­tion stand­point, we did an ini­tial imple­men­ta­tion that went live in spring 2018 when we went live with three of our rep­re­sen­ta­tive busi­ness­es. First was one of our con­struc­tion com­pa­nies — they were a result of three acqui­si­tions, pulled togeth­er as one com­pa­ny that was prime for one col­lec­tive sys­tem. Sec­ond was one of our major aggre­gates busi­ness­es that also sells to the U.S. That would cov­er our quar­ry oper­a­tions as well as for­eign sales. Final­ly, we want­ed to pick a busi­ness that had a spe­cif­ic oper­a­tional sys­tem that would be inter­faced with SAP. For this, we picked our ready-mix business.

We went live (with SAP S/4HANA ver­sion 1610) and it was very suc­cess­ful. We knew we were going to roll out over a num­ber of years, with the plan for the final con­struc­tion roll­out to end in spring 2021. Every spring, we’ve brought on new con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, our aggre­gates busi­ness, and our asphalt busi­ness. We’ve also done sev­er­al upgrades, going from SAP S/4HANA ver­sion 1610 to ver­sion 1709, and then ver­sion 1809. We’re tar­get­ing to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA ver­sion 2020 this sum­mer, which is where we are at now. 

We’ve rolled our imple­men­ta­tion out very strate­gi­cal­ly. With each roll­out, we bring on addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty and fur­ther enhance the solu­tion we have in place. We are far from the black box we had planned to start with. As I said ear­li­er, one of the big fac­tors of this strat­e­gy was to mit­i­gate the risk to the orga­ni­za­tion. SAP was a huge change. Between SAP Fiori apps and anoth­er tool we’re using, we have about 30 apps. Many of our field users were using paper. Now, they’re enter­ing things on their iPhones and iPads. We real­ly had to move them along and they have embraced this. 

What was inter­est­ing was that our team worked remote­ly gen­er­al­ly two to three weeks at a time and then would come in for a week. When COVID-19 came along, we were super lucky in that our team and the tools we were using to man­age the over­all scope and project were set up to where we could have a remote team. When COVID-19 hap­pened, it was­n’t the pure imple­men­ta­tion that made us ask our­selves ​“can we go live?” We were orig­i­nal­ly going to go live with this par­tic­u­lar part of the imple­men­ta­tion on April 1, 2020. When we looked at this sit­u­a­tion, the team was ready to go, and both the imple­men­ta­tion and test­ing were going well. We start­ed hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions in Feb­ru­ary and March where we acknowl­edged we were ready to go. 

The issue was actu­al­ly cen­tered around train­ing. We were going to bring on about anoth­er 150 users but had no place to train them. At Tom­lin­son Group, we have sub­stan­tial train­ing facil­i­ties, includ­ing a con­fer­ence cen­ter. We could nor­mal­ly train employ­ees there, but we couldn’t have peo­ple togeth­er. Know­ing the con­sul­tants and our team could­n’t be onsite, we decid­ed to delay this part of the imple­men­ta­tion by a month just so we could train people. 

With that deci­sion made, we had to fig­ure out if our field guys would be com­fort­able with Skype and if the tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture was there. For­tu­nate­ly, we just had to rejig some things. I’m real­ly hap­py to say this: COVID-19, from a pure tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion stand­point, had no impact. We were already set up for this sit­u­a­tion. It’s strange because it’s been almost a year since our func­tion­al con­sul­tants have seen our inter­nal sub­ject mat­ter expert team. But there is an infra­struc­ture in place. Every team mem­ber, includ­ing my project man­ag­er and myself, talk on a dai­ly basis. Unbe­knownst to us, we were ready for this to hap­pen. And that’s some­thing we’re real­ly proud of. We had some hic­cups on a few of the train­ing pieces, where you have peo­ple who you don’t real­ize are not get­ting the train­ing as well as they should. But we were able to recoup pret­ty quick­ly. I’m proud of how the full Tom­lin­son Group and Illu­mi­ti team car­ried on sta­tus quo. We weren’t all togeth­er for the go-live, as we always were. But the go-live was a non-event. We set up Skype meet­ings and war rooms, and we tran­si­tioned over and went live with no real hiccups. 

ASUG: What steps were required to shift your remote imple­men­ta­tion? What chal­lenges came up and how did you go about address­ing those challenges? 

Nir: As Vince just said, we were fair­ly well-pre­pared. We did increase the num­ber of touch­points with peo­ple to make up for the fact that we were now com­plete­ly remote. We want­ed to be in touch with peo­ple more fre­quent­ly in small groups. To make the calls more per­son­al, we encour­aged video calls when­ev­er pos­si­ble. That was done to make up for our hall­way con­ver­sa­tions that we just would­n’t have. Some­times you pick up things in those hall­way con­ver­sa­tions. We imple­ment­ed those touch­points and over­all slight­ly tighter project man­age­ment to stay on top of how every­body was doing, ensure they were get­ting what they need­ed from their coun­ter­parts, and make sure every­one was ulti­mate­ly work­ing well togeth­er as a team. We were for­tu­nate in that we were already used to work­ing in a remote envi­ron­ment, at least part of the time. 

ASUG: Nir, can you give us a broad overview of Illu­mi­ti and the ser­vices it offers its cus­tomers? Why was the part­ner­ship between your two orga­ni­za­tions such a great fit and how did it pos­i­tive­ly affect the over­all imple­men­ta­tion project? 

Nir: Illu­mi­ti focus­es on all of the SAP ERP solu­tions. We sell SAP Busi­ness One, SAP Busi­ness ByDe­sign, and SAP S/4HANA. SAP S/4HANA is by far the largest part of our busi­ness. Cou­pled with that, we also sell and ser­vice ana­lyt­ics solu­tions and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors as key addi­tion­al ele­ments. We focus on a small group of indus­tries so we can be the best with­in those indus­tries, have mar­ket-lead­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, and obtain com­pe­tence and expe­ri­ence ref­er­ences. We can increase the pre­dictabil­i­ty of our projects and help reduce risk for our clients as a result of that. 

In the case of Tom­lin­son Group, con­struc­tion was a ver­ti­cal that we had select­ed before we were in the sales cycle with the com­pa­ny. We’d had a cou­ple of oth­er imple­men­ta­tions and some intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that we had built as indus­try accel­er­a­tors. What was great for us about the part­ner­ship with Tom­lin­son Group was that the organization’s busi­ness was big­ger than the past work we had done in the con­struc­tion sec­tor. It was big­ger not only from a size per­spec­tive, but also in terms of the breadth of the organization’s busi­ness units. It was a very excit­ing project for us, and it also allowed us to sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that we had with­in the con­struc­tion sector. 

We pro­vid­ed our ini­tial tem­plate with­out costs as part of an agree­ment to col­lab­o­rate and enable Illu­mi­ti to incor­po­rate some of the Tom­lin­son Group enhance­ments, made to fit the con­struc­tion sec­tor, into our tem­plate going for­ward. That was ben­e­fi­cial for us and the entire con­struc­tion sec­tor that we sell to. We cre­at­ed a very nice win-win sit­u­a­tion that was advan­ta­geous for both orga­ni­za­tions. Some­thing that has real­ly helped us is that we’ve had Vince’s expe­ri­ence with pri­or imple­men­ta­tions. When project man­agers on the client side can come to the table with that expe­ri­ence, then there’s an under­stand­ing of the process that is dif­fer­ent from com­pa­nies that don’t have that back­ground. That helped us col­lab­o­rate right from the get-go in a way that cement­ed a very good part­ner­ship between Illu­mi­ti and the Tom­lin­son Group. 

We both agreed, from the begin­ning, to prin­ci­ples we hold very dear­ly: trans­paren­cy and open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This allowed us to open­ly dis­cuss chal­lenges or issues we had with the oth­er par­ty and resolve them quick­ly. That’s also helped us over­come some chal­lenges ear­ly on and avoid repeat­ing them. This has helped us have a pret­ty smooth run of mul­ti­ple imple­men­ta­tions as we’ve brought the var­i­ous busi­ness units with­in the Tom­lin­son Group live on SAP. 

Vince: I agree with Nir. Hon­esty, trans­paren­cy, and the view that our orga­ni­za­tions are part­ners in this project have been cru­cial. We’ve devel­oped a part­ner­ship cul­ture through­out this project. When I was on the con­sult­ing side, my goal was always to have my client want to be a ref­er­ence for me. I’m hap­py to say I’ve been a ref­er­ence for Illu­mi­ti and SAP on sev­er­al occa­sions, which gives cre­dence to the fact that we’re good part­ners togeth­er. You learn from each oth­er’s mis­takes. If there’s an issue, we raise it. If there’s a prob­lem, I know I can speak to any­one on Nir’s team — or Nir him­self — and we can address it and move on. After my years of con­sult­ing expe­ri­ence, I know this is a spe­cial con­sult­ing and client rela­tion­ship that we have in place. And it’s reflect­ed in the suc­cess of the pro­gram so far. 

In part two of this arti­cle, we’ll dis­cuss the spe­cif­ic func­tion­al­i­ties that were imple­ment­ed as part of this remote project, the strate­gies and tech­nolo­gies Tom­lin­son Group and Illu­mi­ti lever­aged to stay on track, and advice the two orga­ni­za­tions have for com­pa­nies about to embark on sim­i­lar projects. 

Want to con­tin­ue the SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sa­tion? Make sure to attend the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence. Across four weeks in March, these ses­sions will help atten­dees be suc­cess­ful in every part of their SAP S/4HANA jour­ney, with each week focus­ing on a dif­fer­ent phase of the process.