There are many reasons companies make the transition to SAP S/4HANA. One of the most common reasons is that users want to upgrade their ERP system, while minimizing the changes associated with that process that could affect day-to-day business.

ASUG recently sat down with Otto Baskin, director of information technology at Wellborn Cabinet, a family-owned residential cabinet company based in Ashland, Alabama. He recently oversaw the company’s transition from its old SAP R/3 ERP system to SAP S/4HANA. We talked about the reasons Wellborn Cabinet upgraded, why a new system was vital for the company, and how the company’s IT team overcame some of the roadblocks of their brownfield implementation.

Jim: You have been on SAP S/4HANA for less than six months. How has that experience been so far?

Otto: Overall it has been really good. However, it is better in some areas than in others. We use Variant Configuration (VC), as we sell configurable cabinets. It's one of the more complicated VC models around, very code-intensive. So while SAP S/4HANA is much faster in some areas than what was in our old ERP system, some areas, like VC, are not. VC is actually about the same speed as it used to be.