The first two weeks of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence have walked atten­dees through the vital pre­lim­i­nary steps nec­es­sary to get­ting any SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion project off the ground. Dur­ing week three of the event, the focus turned from devel­op­ing a strat­e­gy and plan to the actu­al exe­cu­tion of an SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion. A com­pli­cat­ed and time-con­sum­ing under­tak­ing, this process is only suc­cess­ful if SAP cus­tomers have done their home­work and put the time into devel­op­ing and plan­ning the implementation. 

Dur­ing the penul­ti­mate week of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence, atten­dees heard from cus­tomers who have com­plet­ed their own SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion jour­neys and experts who gave prac­ti­cal advice on how to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the exe­cu­tion and deliv­ery of one of these projects. Here are some of the high­lights from the third week of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Experience. 

Cus­tomer Sto­ry: Mer­cedes-EQ For­mu­la E Team 

The week kicked off with a pre­sen­ta­tion from Lau­ra Goodrick, CFO of the Mer­cedes-EQ For­mu­la E Team, and Uwe Grigoleit, SVP of go-to-mar­ket for SAP S/4HANA. The two talked about the Mer­cedes team’s adop­tion of SAP S/4HANA.

Goodrick said that tech­nol­o­gy like SAP S/4HANA has been ​“key” to keep the team func­tion­ing, which is a lean orga­ni­za­tion. One of the things that helped the orga­ni­za­tion out was the fit-to-stan­dard approach, which increased the speed of not only the imple­men­ta­tion itself, but also sys­tem inno­va­tion. Grigoleit said that this allowed the team to ​“fit busi­ness process­es into stan­dards deliv­ered with the solu­tion,” which helped increase the speed of the imple­men­ta­tion. This was incred­i­bly help­ful giv­en the lean size of the team.

From a func­tion­al­i­ty stand­point, SAP S/4HANA has been ben­e­fi­cial to the Mer­cedes team because of how usable and intu­itive the solu­tion is. The orga­ni­za­tion has mechan­ics who lever­age the sys­tem to order parts, so an ERP solu­tion with ​“no bar­ri­ers” was cru­cial for the Mer­cedes team. 

What Makes for a Suc­cess­ful SAP S/4HANA Implementation? 

On the first day of the exe­cu­tion and deliv­ery ses­sions, audi­ences heard from SAP about some of the key parts of a suc­cess­ful SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion project. Christo­pher Williams, region­al head of embed­ded sup­port, glob­al ser­vice and sup­port at SAP Amer­i­ca, and

Vineet Tya­gi, retail and fash­ion lead for north­east Amer­i­ca for cus­tomer suc­cess at SAP, joined Thomas Wail­gum, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at ASUG, for a Q&A ses­sion about the best prac­tices nec­es­sary for exe­cut­ing an SAP S/4HANA project. 

Both Tya­gi and Williams agreed that defin­ing the scope of a project is vital to exe­cut­ing one of these imple­men­ta­tions. ​“Defin­ing the scope is all about tak­ing a deep look at the project,” Williams said. 

He empha­sized that cus­tomers should have a con­crete idea of a project’s out­comes, while also being pre­pared for any sur­pris­es that might arise dur­ing the exe­cu­tion. Williams also high­light­ed the impor­tance of mas­ter data man­age­ment, say­ing that hav­ing an effec­tive data strat­e­gy is one of the most impor­tant aspects of this phase. Yet, many cus­tomers begin design­ing their data strate­gies far too late in the process­es. Williams encour­aged atten­dees to begin work­ing on their data strat­e­gy ​“upfront and first,” while get­ting exec­u­tive buy-in on data con­ver­sion. Addi­tion­al­ly, he said it’s impor­tant to work close­ly with sys­tems inte­gra­tors on this strat­e­gy. If cus­tomers don’t take the data strat­e­gy seri­ous­ly, it could throw off the entire project time­line and cause you to miss go-live dates. 

Mean­while, Tya­gi encour­aged atten­dees to focus on inte­gra­tions nec­es­sary for the imple­men­ta­tion, also cov­er­ing impor­tant areas to keep in mind dur­ing exe­cu­tion: appli­ca­tion design, solu­tion acti­va­tion, and solu­tion configuration.

SAP S/4HANA Go-Live in the Time of COVID-19 

Week three of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence also fea­tured a num­ber of SAP cus­tomers walk­ing atten­dees through their exe­cu­tions. Lead­ers from Teru­mo Amer­i­c­as Hold­ing Corp. walked atten­dees through the company’s July 2020 remote go-live. Pre­sent­ing were Kalyan Bal­sub­ra­man­ian, group CIO and VP of IT; Rick Lar­rieu, VP of glob­al IT appli­ca­tions and infra­struc­ture; and Sung Yang, VP of busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and SAP pro­gram executive.

“We didn’t expect COVID-19 to come in the mid­dle of the pro­gram,” Bal­sub­ra­man­ian said. Because of the dis­rup­tion caused by the virus, Teru­mo had to push its ini­tial go-live plans from April to June. 

Bal­sub­ra­man­ian empha­sized the impor­tance of ensur­ing your data man­age­ment — a recur­ring theme through­out the ses­sions this week — is tak­en care of, not­ing that this por­tion of the SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion process is ​“what gen­er­al­ly makes or breaks a pro­gram like this.” Teru­mo had 14 rounds of data cycles, includ­ing con­ver­sions, mock-ups, and testing. 

Accord­ing to Yang, one of the best things Teru­mo did was estab­lish a cen­ter of excel­lence at the begin­ning of the project, where­as most com­pa­nies cre­ate one towards the end of the SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion. Yang also not­ed that get­ting exec­u­tive buy-in for change man­age­ment was also cru­cial to the suc­cess of Terumo’s imple­men­ta­tion. ​“You need to have exec­u­tive buy-in,” he said. ​“If exec­u­tives are not endors­ing a project, change is going to be hard.”

Anoth­er key to Terumo’s suc­cess was its team. When asked about the biggest lessons learned from the project, Lar­rieu not­ed that the team ded­i­cat­ed to the imple­men­ta­tion was incred­i­bly help­ful. ​“This is not an under­tak­ing you can do part-time,” he said, before say­ing that full-time resources were a necessity. 

The Do’s and Don’ts of an SAP S/4HANA Implementation 

Atten­dees heard from even more cus­tomers dur­ing the last ses­sion of the week, which focused on tips for SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion suc­cess from pro­fes­sion­als who have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed their projects. John Aus­tria, SAP S/4HANA pro­gram man­ag­er at Esri; Ale­jan­dro Reyes, IT project direc­tor at AES; and Sharon Schuringa, VP of infor­ma­tion solu­tions at Maple Leaf Foods, field­ed ques­tions about their respec­tive journeys. 

Schuringa told atten­dees to not ​“ignore any one part” of the imple­men­ta­tion process, encour­ag­ing them to assem­ble the right team filled with the right peo­ple, find the nec­es­sary resources, and seek out help from SAP to make the project suc­cess­ful. She also said that the ear­li­er you start your project, the better. 

Aus­tria said one of the rea­sons the Esri imple­men­ta­tion — part of which was remote — was suc­cess­ful was because the team was proac­tive about test­ing. Esri went through mul­ti­ple test cycles, with 250 peo­ple being involved at the peak. He also encour­aged atten­dees to con­duct sys­tem cutover plan­ning, which Esri did eight times. Despite that, the team still hit a few issues dur­ing the 72-hour cutover time, using all 11 hours of con­tin­gency time. 

All three speak­ers also spoke about the impor­tance of effec­tive­ly mar­shal­ing IT resources. Aus­tria talked about the impor­tance of engag­ing with good part­ners (Esri part­nered with Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers on this project) and engag­ing with the busi­ness team dur­ing the process. Schuringa dis­cussed how Maple Leaf start­ed with a core project team, before expand­ing to a total team of 75 peo­ple inter­nal and exter­nal resources.

Con­tin­ue learn­ing how to guide your orga­ni­za­tion through a seam­less SAP S/4HANA adop­tion jour­ney by view­ing the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence on demand. Sign up today to access. Please note, on demand con­tent will be exclu­sive to ASUG mem­bers after Thurs­day, April 24.