Upon joining Woodstream Corporation, a portfolio of brands that offer a variety of innovative pest solutions, environmentally friendly products for home, lawn, and garden, and eye-catching birding accessories, in June of 2021, CIO Melissa Oldfield found an organization still operating with desk phones, minimal use of collaboration tools, and a reliance on Citrix-based remote desktops for basic email and application access. Core business operations were running on a 35-year-old AS400 ERP system with green-screen interface technology that predated the widespread use of business email. As a result, the system could not store email addresses, making mass communication with suppliers nearly impossible.
Oldfield quickly identified key pain points for Woodstream: deep-seated technical debt, a lack of process discipline, and a heavy dependence on Excel-driven workarounds. Comprehensive transformation was not just necessary, it was urgent. Recognizing the scope and timeline required for a major ERP upgrade, Oldfield immediately began building the business case and conducting a thorough assessment to identify the right platform for Woodstream’s future state.
At the same time, as the company emerged from the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, she prioritized the rapid deployment of modern collaboration tools. Establishing these capabilities early in a wider-scale transformation was critical not only for improving daily operations, but also for supporting the people, processes, and materials needed to drive a successful ERP transition. The company’s transformation took 21 months and was completed on budget.
Oldfield recently sat down with ASUG Executive Exchange to discuss Woodstream’s migration to SAP S/4HANA and lessons learned along the way. She explained why true digital transformation—beyond workflow automation—is “about fundamentally rethinking how we operate to drive meaningful impact and sustainable growth.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
What were the most significant business challenges you addressed when migrating to SAP S/4HANA? What was your business case for implementation, and what have been your biggest successes to date?
Like many organizations, we found that change management was our most significant challenge. Our user base, many of whom had long tenures with the company, was deeply familiar and comfortable with legacy systems such as AS400 and Excel. This familiarity made it difficult to shift mindsets and re-imagine our processes through the lens of digital transformation.
True digital transformation is not simply about automating existing workflows—it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we operate to drive meaningful impact and sustainable growth. This kind of transformation requires deep process change, which is inherently complex and often met with resistance.
One of our key oversights was underestimating the support required during go-live. We maintained the same resource levels within our warehouses, which left our teams overwhelmed during a period that demanded additional capacity and support. In hindsight, bringing in temporary resources would have been critical to managing the learning curve associated with adopting SAP and ensuring a smoother transition.
Our business case for implementation included standardizing and streamlining our processes, enhancing business insight for decision-making, mitigating risk, and being more scalable for our intended business growth. Since implementation, we have met our benefit commitment for productivity and for inventory optimization. We are continuing to optimize SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) to further improve our sales and operational planning (S&OP) processes for accurate forecasting and supply planning.
How long did the migration take, and were there any takeaways you would like to share? What challenges have you faced during the SAP S/4HANA implementation, and how did you overcome them?
After selecting SAP and securing funding approval, our initial implementation of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) spanned 21 months. One of the primary challenges that had an impact on our timeline was securing the right mix of external expertise and sufficient internal resource support.
In retrospect, we should have invested more time upfront in assembling a knowledgeable team that could effectively partner with our business. Equally important was ensuring we had the right internal resources dedicated to the implementation from the start.
As the project progressed, we were faced with difficult—but necessary—decisions to replace certain team members with individuals who were a better fit for the demands and goals of the implementation.
After a successful implementation, what plans or goals do you have for your team in 2025?
Our focus for 2025 is simplification. Over the years, our technology landscape has expanded with numerous legacy applications. Now that we are operating within an integrated ERP environment, we have the opportunity to decommission these outdated systems.
As we retire legacy applications, we’re also streamlining our security architecture, toolsets, and infrastructure. This strategic simplification is enhancing our efficiency as an IT organization while reducing costs to ensure we remain fit for purpose.
In parallel, this effort gives us the space to stabilize our new SAP environment and the end-to-end business processes it supports. 2025 represents a pivotal moment to reset, realign, and lay the groundwork for future initiatives that will enable continued business growth and innovation.
In coming into the organization, what allowed you to succeed from a change-management perspective, and what empowered you to help Woodstream break down any pre-existing silos?
We benefited from strong leadership support and active engagement from our executive team throughout the implementation. From the beginning, they recognized this transformation as a strategic, enterprise-wide initiative—one that would demand commitment, collaboration, and hard work across the entire organization.
Leadership was fully aligned on the importance of this effort and demonstrated their support in tangible ways. They secured the necessary funding to ensure the program was properly resourced and helped drive alignment across departments. One of the most impactful contributions was their willingness to identify and pull respected, knowledgeable individuals from various business functions to participate in the core implementation team. This helped to ensure that the solution was shaped by those who understood our processes best.
In addition, the executive team played a key role in reinforcing the importance of end-user involvement. They actively supported the prioritization of business users’ time for key activities such as testing, training, and user adoption efforts—ensuring that critical milestones were met and that employees had the space and support to engage meaningfully with the transformation.
Their consistent involvement helped to maintain momentum, instill accountability, and build a sense of shared ownership across the organization.
What key lessons have you learned along your journey that you wish you had known at the start of the implementation?
In hindsight, I recognize that I should have invested more time in educating the organization on the importance of change management. Helping teams understand not just the what, but the why, behind the change would have laid a stronger foundation for long-term success. More deliberate training and collaboration—centered on how to think differently and challenge long-standing ways of working—would have empowered our teams to embrace change rather than resist it.
Promoting a growth mindset and embedding a culture of continuous process improvement should have been more central from the beginning. Had we focused more intentionally on driving impact and delivering value through improved processes, we would have seen greater alignment and engagement across the organization.
I also wish I had dedicated more time upfront to building the right team. In my eagerness to get started—knowing how long and complex an ERP implementation can be, I moved too quickly through one of the most critical aspects of the project: people. Assembling a team with the right mix of expertise and ensuring they had the time and capacity to fully engage in the effort was something I underestimated. Ultimately, success depends not just on technology, but on the people who bring it to life.
How does AI play a role in your strategy?
With the implementation of SAP and Microsoft 365, we now have foundational tools and an integrated ERP system that positions us to leverage the benefits of AI. AI should not be treated as a standalone initiative or project; instead, it must be embedded within our business functions, influencing how we operate, make decisions, and innovate.
We must continue to explore opportunities within our SAP core and IBP to enhance intelligence in finance, supply chain, and customer service. Additionally, we need to integrate the use of Microsoft Copilot across Teams, Excel, Outlook, and Power BI into our daily practices.
For every new technology initiative aimed at solving business challenges or growth, it is essential to ensure that AI is a key component of the solution.
Tell us about the executive and stakeholder landscape through this transformation — the board and the CEO. Where were the executives at the start, during the process, and where are things now? What did that journey look like?
What really separated this implementation—and helped drive much of our success—was the level of leadership support I had. It was more than I’ve ever had on any project. Right from the start, I sat down with the CEO and outlined how I thought we should approach it. I explained the major roles we needed from a business process ownership standpoint, the importance of an initial assessment, and the fact that it was going to require investment. I was very clear about what we needed and why — and he was fully supportive from the beginning.
Because of that early buy-in, it was easy to bring in other key leaders like the VP of Supply Chain, the CFO, and the VP of Sales. We immediately set up a steering committee that included them all, and they stayed highly engaged and supportive throughout. I didn’t have to do a lot of arm-wrestling, which was fantastic. They understood the magnitude of what we were undertaking and how critical it was to where we wanted the organization to go. I made sure every ask was reasonable and backed by a strong case, and they were genuinely ready to support the effort.
Creating a culture of innovation is so important within organizations — what strategies have you found most effective in encouraging employees at all levels to contribute innovative ideas and how do you ensure those ideas are heard and acted upon?
In our industry, innovation is essential to staying competitive and driving long-term success. Over the past year, we've recognized the need to sharpen our focus and enhance our delivery in this area. To support this, we've taken several meaningful steps: we've made innovation a core company value and embedded it into our performance management framework; we've established a dedicated innovation leader and team; and we've launched a company-wide program to encourage, capture, and reward innovative ideas across the organization.
We are excited to have you join us at the ASUG Executive Exchange session at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference. Would you like to share any additional insights you plan to discuss at the session?
I am excited to participate as well! In that session, we will have the opportunity to go deeper into some of the learnings I mentioned above. The session is largely focused on overcoming challenges and finding excitement in digital transformation; insights into AI, change management, and S/4HANA adoption; and leadership lessons from driving SAP success.