Community Short Facts - November 2022

White Paper on the S/4 Switchover

The software and consulting company SNP has published a white paper on S/4. "Since the launch of SAP S/4 Hana in 2015, we have dedicated ourselves as pioneers and thought leaders to the mission of making the change as simple, individual and effective as possible for SAP customers," says Gregor Stöckler, COO of SNP. "On this mission, we have already successfully implemented over 400 transformation projects to SAP S/4 Hana with our Bluefield approach together with our customers and partners." With the white paper, SNP wants to pass on the experience it has gained to SAP user companies, provide information on dos and don'ts as well as trends, and offer insights into concrete transformation projects to S/4.

Among other things, the IT experts have produced a meta-study of the current state of studies for migration to S/4, examining in particular the motivation, timing and approach. Particularly worth reading are the analysis of more than 2,000 SAP systems and the resulting advice on optimizations and modernizations of current SAP system landscapes, a guide to the software-based and flexible journey to S/4, and an assessment of the current transformation approaches.

“Since the launch of S/4 in 2015, we have been dedicated as thought leaders to the mission of making the change as easy as possible.“

Gregor Stöckler, COO, SNP

Managed security package

Cbs has partnered with SecurityBridge, the leading provider of an SAP security platform solution, to meet the growing demand for comprehensive and reliable SAP security services for existing SAP customers. Currently, security threats, wiretapping scandals and international industrial espionage are on the rise. The provision of services and data to internal and external consumers is putting companies' SAP system landscapes to the test. Cbs offers new security services based on the intelligent solution of the SecurityBridge platform. The goal is to increase customers' resilience to the threat of a cyberattack on critical SAP enterprise applications.

HR document processes

Centric has added a standard interface for DocuSign's electronic signature to its Document Builder. The product partnership between the two industry leaders enables customers to handle their SAP-integrated document creation up to the legally valid signature completely digitally. As a deep API integration, the DocuSign signature process is integrated into document processing with Document Builder. This enables HR departments to close a crucial digitization gap without any project effort and to process the creation of employment contracts, certificates efficiently and legally compliant. This brings a performance boost to document processing and makes the signature process more flexible and transparent for executives and HR managers.

Automated order processing

Esker, the provider of the cloud platform of the same name, announced that Suntory Beverage and Food Spain is now automating its order processing and customer service processes with Esker. The company is among the world's leading beverage manufacturers and is known for soft drink brands such as Schweppes, La Casera, TriNa and Sunny Delight. They turned to Esker to reduce manual processing and associated errors and increase efficiencies in their supply chain, which is aligned with the requirements of their distribution model.

Esker's order processing solution uses machine learning to cover repetitive, low-value-added order processing tasks through a secure, centralized, cloud-based platform. Esker Synergy AI automatically "learns" how to process customer orders, continuously improving its understanding of the data. As a result, the solution becomes more accurate and efficient over time. The goal is fully automated processing. With automated order processing, Suntory saved 3400 hours of administrative work in just one year and significantly reduced errors.

S/4 Integration for CAT 6.0

SAP partner T.con announced that its CAT 6.0 Manufacturing Execution System has been certified by SAP for integration with SAP S/4. Companies use the solution, available in the SAP Store, to digitize production environments using MES modules. More than two dozen companies around the world use the MES solution. Michael Karl, Product Owner MES at T.con: "The renewed certification proves that MES CAT is the optimal central building block for building a digitized production based on a fully integrated system. For our customers, the certificate signals investment security. It ensures that our software will also work with future SAP releases." A state-of-the-art user interface that gives workers intuitive access to information is one example of such an innovation. Due to open standard interfaces, MES CAT is ideally suited for setting up hybrid system landscapes in which mission-critical systems such as production control are mapped as on-prem systems. Here, factors such as fail-safety are in the foreground.

Carve-out with 22 SAP systems

Following the sale of Globus from the Migros Group, the company was faced with the task of completing the IT carve-out, i.e. the transfer of all Migros IT systems to new service providers. In total, around 75 percent of all IT services in the Globus system landscape had to be carved out, including the SAP systems, whose basis was rebuilt at Itesys. Retailsolutions from Switzerland acted as migration partner alongside Globus. A total of 14 SAP ERP systems and 8 Java-based systems were integrated into the environment of Itesys' new base provider.

The replacement process was implemented in several parts. First the BW, Portal and BO reporting systems, followed by the Retail and Pipe systems and finally the Finance and HR systems as well as the PO. Around 150 interfaces are the basis for data exchange between various internal and external systems, thus enabling the maintenance of operating processes and the continued smooth running of business processes.

Digitize service and maintenance processes

MobileX presented a service platform for digitizing field service and maintenance processes. With the offer in the subscription model, companies can start digitizing their field service and maintenance processes without an integration project. The cloud solution connects all parties involved, such as schedulers, technicians, service and maintenance managers, and subcontractors, and digitally maps all relevant processes, from order creation to scheduling of technicians, order processing on site, and documentation. The interface of the service platform is intuitive and user-friendly, so that employees can start using it without any training. The service platform is suitable for companies with ten or more technicians or maintenance staff.

The subscription model allows companies to know exactly what costs they can expect and saves them investments in the purchase of licenses, server infrastructure, updates, operation and maintenance. With the web-based solution, dispatchers plan the assignments of their field technicians or maintenance staff via planning board or map. They manage customer data, resources, material and technical objects. In doing so, they maintain an overview of the current status and receive feedback on the orders from the technicians or maintenance staff. By directly importing and exporting customer data, the service platform enables companies to get a quick start in the cloud without an integration project.

Terminology database

Many industrial companies consider the maintenance of master data to be time-consuming and insignificant. But up-to-date, well-structured, complete and unambiguous master data form an important basis for progress in digitization. Descriptions that can be traced back to master data are needed in many places in the company: They can be found in purchase orders from purchasing, as material short texts, in article descriptions or offers from sales, and are maintained by many hands in ERP systems. What would it be like if these texts were automatically generated from existing data? Software tools from Simus Systems can do just that.

They analyze designations, break down the existing terms into building blocks, recognize different spellings and qualify them according to frequent use. From this, a terminology database can easily be derived, which the term system passes on to the surrounding PDM and ERP systems. In the second step, the defined terms are used for rule-based, automatic text generation. Up-to-date, uniform and meaningful descriptions now appear everywhere in the company! What applies to German texts also works for translations. The automatic transfer into any foreign language saves international companies work and costs.

Into the S/4 Cloud

SAP partner SNP has successfully migrated Mykita, a high-end manufacturer of eyewear design based in Berlin, to the S/4 Cloud. In the project, which lasted over two years, Mykita transferred all of its global locations to the new SAP cloud solution at the same time. The company benefited from SNP's expertise from several completed migration projects. The project had a total volume of around 1.5 million euros. The aim of the project was to redesign selected processes at Mykita. In addition, the Berlin-based company wanted to modernize its historically grown, confusing IT landscape by introducing S/4 Hana.