Well Brewed

SAP partner SNP implemented the project remotely in just twelve months. This was made possible by a selective data migration approach and a proprietary data transformation platform. The family-owned brewery from the heart of Stuttgart had been working successfully with an SAP solution for over twenty years. However, the system landscape was no longer technically up-to-date: "We didn't want to get stuck on the ECC that was being phased out, we wanted to move with the times and be a pioneer for German breweries"says Tanja Drews, Head of IT and Organization at Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu. For this reason, the brewery decided to migrate to S/4 Hana.

One-Step-Approach

Three options were evaluated for Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu to implement S/4. The greenfield approach was ruled out because the brewery had a lot of Abap in-house developments in the Z namespace. And a step-by-step migration with various preliminary and sub-projects was not a viable solution for Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu either. The runtime would have been too long and the project too expensive. 

Instead, the brewery decided to carry out the conversion to S/4 in a "one-step approach". This made several upstream, time-consuming and costly preliminary projects obsolete and combined several sub-projects: For the transformation project, the master data was harmonized, all technical updates were carried out, a new chart of accounts and the new general ledger were introduced, the switch to the Hana database was completed, and S/4 was introduced. In addition, the new SAP system is now Unicode-capable. "We wouldn't have an SAP solution today if we hadn't been able to do the transformation selectively and in one step. It was the only chance for us to keep SAP".explains Tanja Drews.

The advantages for the brewery: prefabricated content and standardized processes significantly reduced the project effort for the migration. The project began in February 2020. The SAP partner implemented the transformation project completely remotely and during ongoing business operations. The go-live of the SAP solution was not only on schedule after only twelve months, but also within budget.

"Since our go-live, the new S/4 system has been running smoothly from the start. We conducted intensive tests in advance and let our users continue to work with the old interface. And the 30 or so interfaces also worked immediately."Tanja Drews is extremely satisfied.

The project team also integrated the SAP Business Technology Platform. The BTP also runs a cloud solution for excise and beer tax that is particularly important for the brewing industry. The solution enables Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu to analyze tax-relevant movements of goods, calculate beer tax and make the forms available to the tax authorities.

"Dinkelacker-Schwaben Bräu is one of the first breweries in Germany to successfully work with S/4"explains -Thilo Nagler, Managing Director at the SAP partner. Tanja Drews adds: "We have made the leap to S/4 Hana and created the optimal foundation for our successful future."