In December, American timberlands company Weyerhaeuser outlined its strategic growth plan and financial targets, with CEO Devin W. Stockfish emphasizing the company’s position for accelerated growth through 2030. The strategy focuses on maximizing cash flow and shareholder returns, supported by its deeply ingrained focus on operational excellence, innovation and modernized technology platforms.
Technology transformation has been a central focus for CIO Rebecca Straka, who brings more than 30 years of IT leadership experience to the table. Since rejoining the company six years ago, Straka has led a comprehensive review of Weyerhaeuser’s SAP environment, aligning technology decisions with long-term growth, workforce readiness, cybersecurity, and modernization across all mill sites.
In an exclusive ASUG interview, Straka—who began her career at Weyerhaeuser as an IT intern—discusses the company’s SAP ECC-to-S/4HANA journey, the people and process changes required to support it, and how data and AI are shaping Weyerhaeuser’s next phase of growth. Straka will join ASUG members at the ASUG Executive Exchange 2026 Spring Summit.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
ASUG: When you returned to Weyerhaeuser as CIO, what were the biggest technology and organizational challenges you inherited?
Straka: Weyerhaeuser had changed significantly since I left. The company’s move to a real estate investment trust (REIT) model meant we had narrowed our focus to timberlands, wood products manufacturing, and strategic land solutions, selling off other non-core parts of the business. At the same time, the United States had gone through the Great Recession, which hit construction and remodeling hard. Weyerhaeuser also merged with another timber company during that period.
What these transitions created, over time, was a lack of sustained investment in technology. When I returned, there was meaningful technology debt across several different areas, and there was also what I would call workforce debt—gaps in the skills needed to run and modernize a complex, modern enterprise.
The challenge wasn’t just fixing systems. It was stepping back and asking: What capabilities do we need for the next decade? What skills do we have? Which ones do we need to build or bring in? We spent a lot of time early on focusing on people and organization alongside the technology itself. Those priorities had to move together.
ASUG: That reassessment ultimately led you to the SAP modernization program known as PROPEL. What was the strategic rationale behind that?
Straka: We started by asking a very simple question: Where do we want to be in 10 years, and what foundation do we need to get there?
We brought together SAP, Deloitte, our business leaders, and IT leadership, and we spent time upfront identifying the business initiatives that mattered most to Weyerhaeuser. From there, we mapped the opportunities with the greatest potential value—financially and operationally.
What became clear was that our legacy SAP environment was holding us back. Every time we talked about launching a new initiative, the answer was, “We need to fix SAP first.” That made it obvious that modernizing to SAP S/4HANA wasn’t just an enterprise project but also a prerequisite for growth. That work also surfaced the need for a much more deliberate data and integration strategy. SAP and Deloitte helped guide us through that planning. Today, the biggest difference is that when the business needs to move, we can move. That foundation has also positioned us well for the next phase of our AI journey.
ASUG: You’re now about a year and a half live on SAP S/4HANA. Looking back, what were the biggest challenges in moving from SAP ECC to where you are today?
Straka: One of the biggest challenges was the complexity of our ECC and Central Finance (CFIN) architecture. It was highly customized and interconnected. We worked closely with SAP and Deloitte to evaluate transition approaches. Ultimately, we decided on a greenfield approach.
That decision increased complexity and risk, particularly around go-live, but it was the right call. We were able to execute successfully, and it set us up for a much cleaner future state.
Another major challenge was customization. Over the years, we had built a lot of custom functionality into SAP. We made a deliberate decision to move as close to standard as possible and eliminated about 80% of those customizations. Some of what we had built genuinely improved our processes, so the challenge was preserving that value in the new environment without creating future upgrade or maintenance issues. That took discipline and thoughtful design.
Transportation was another area where reality diverged from planning. Given the scope of our S/4HANA move and our associated sales and marketing initiatives as part of the overall program, we had hoped to lift and shift our existing transportation module. That wasn’t feasible. We ended up implementing SAP’s Advanced Transportation Management module later in the program. That required additional talent, new operating models, and more change management, but it’s now live and delivering value.
ASUG: Talent and skills come up repeatedly in transformations of this scale. What were the biggest people challenges you faced?
Straka: Skills were absolutely a challenge—especially around leading a program of this size and complexity. This effort touched about 6,500 people and required deep expertise across business process design, change management, and modern SAP architecture.
There were skills and experience missing in our organization to manage the complexity of this effort. To address it, we made a few strategic hires—leaders, architects, and functional analysts who had run large SAP transformations before. That experience mattered. They brought not only technical and business process knowledge but also “war wounds,” hard-earned lessons about what works, what doesn’t, and how to effectively partner with a systems integrator. We also leveraged our system integrator, Deloitte, and SAP for their in-depth skills.
On the change side, we used a “two-in-the-box” model, pairing external change-management consultants with internal business leaders. That combination worked extremely well. The external perspective brought structure and best practices; the internal leaders brought credibility and deep knowledge of how Weyerhaeuser works.
We had strong executive leadership commitment that supported the program and helped clear the pathway for the various hurdles a program of this size encounters. Key people were dedicated to the program — moved out of their day jobs and into the program. Additionally, three executives led the overall program representing IT, Sales, and Finance/Enterprise. That level of leadership engagement made a real difference.
ASUG: Which business outcomes are you most proud of so far?
Straka: First and foremost, we went live successfully against the metrics we’d set. On day one, we could see inventory, take orders, process and fulfill those orders, ship product, and collect payments—end to end. We could also see those transactions flow cleanly into our analytics. That’s table stakes, but it’s not a given on projects like this.
We also set clear targets around operational efficiency and margin improvements. The operational efficiency was defined in hours saved, and we’re meeting those goals. In areas like transportation, we’re already seeing margin improvements take hold and grow.
From a leadership perspective, I’m especially proud of how the team worked. These are hard projects. People get tired. But there was a true “one team” mindset—across IT, the business, SAP, Deloitte, and other partners. That spirit has carried forward into other major initiatives, which is a lasting benefit of the program and company.
ASUG: What leadership principles mattered most in keeping a transformation of this scale on track?
Straka: It starts with putting the right leaders in place and making sure they’re supported. As I mentioned, key leaders were dedicated to the program, which provided two benefits. First, the program benefits from people with vast company knowledge and relationships. Secondly, it gave some of our best and brightest significant career opportunities. After going through a program like this, there isn’t much they can’t do going forward. Other leadership principles that were important included “Wearing the Big Weyerhaeuser Hat” and acting with urgency.
More broadly, it’s about building complementary leadership teams and creating a culture where people believe, “We can do this together.” That mindset, combined with the right skills and leadership principles, makes an enormous difference when challenges arise.
ASUG: Weyerhaeuser processes roughly 260,000 transactions per day. How do you ensure reliability and resilience in the new SAP environment?
Straka: We’ve taken a very intentional approach to stabilization and support. We continued with Deloitte’s managed services and retained several team members who had been a part of the original program, particularly from their India-based delivery teams. That continuity matters.
We also established a formal ERP stabilization program focused on ticket resolution, automation, and continuous improvement. In parallel, we used SAP MaxAttention during our first major upgrade to ensure we had additional oversight and support.
A key success factor was our focus on controls. We worked closely with internal and external auditors throughout the program. As a result, we’ve had a very clean SOX posture, which is critical for confidence and stability as we continue to evolve the platform.
ASUG: What advice would you give peers about maintaining stability and talent continuity with systems integrators?
Straka: Treat them as part of your team. We invested time building real relationships—visiting teams in India, bringing people to the U.S., and working side by side. That investment pays off.
Today, when we’re on a call, you don’t think about where people are located or who they work for. You just know they’re part of the team. And when things get hard—and they will—that connection makes it much easier to ask for help and get results.
ASUG: How is Weyerhaeuser approaching AI and advanced analytics?
Straka: We are making significant investments in AI, machine learning, and data analytics. About 18 months ago, we brought in an executive leader to lead and build our AI and data program. The first order of business was to assess where we were, meet with business leaders, and help define a clear roadmap — process, technology, approach, and skills.
That work resulted in a strategy built around four pillars. The first pillar is foundation. It includes literacy, change management, and governance. The second focuses on business solutions, including transportation and sales. Industrial AI and Geospatial are our other two pillars. Each has a roadmap that is built out with business leadership and aligned to growth plans. Data is critical to all of this work and is a fundamental part of our enterprise AI program, from analytics to data science to technology.
AI is embedded in our 2030 growth strategy, and SAP plays a critical role.
ASUG: Can you share an example of how improved data and analytics are driving operational excellence?
Straka: One of the biggest shifts has been trust in the data. Through the ERP transformation, we now have certified data sources—data that has gone through quality checks and governance and can be relied upon.
That’s enabling better decision-making across manufacturing reliability, customer insights, and supply-chain optimization. Whether it’s route optimization or identifying new business opportunities, having a single, trusted source of truth changes the conversation from debating the data to acting on it.
ASUG: Finally, what have you learned about securing stakeholder buy-in for large technology transformations?
Straka: Engagement is everything. We spent a lot of time with senior leadership, extended business leaders, the board, and our auditors to make sure there was shared understanding and confidence.
The feedback we’ve received has been positive—not just because we went live successfully, but because we did so with strong controls and without major disruption. Most importantly, the business now sees technology as an enabler rather than a constraint. We’re no longer stopping initiatives to fix the core. That’s opened the door to what comes next.