The client is a leading US-based manufacturing services company with global operations. It delivers comprehensive design, manufacturing, supply chain, and product management services.
The client’s legacy ERP system was heavily customized, with a growing 70TB database, that led to slow transaction speeds. They wanted to upgrade their ERP into a scalable, available, and responsive system that would keep pace with the dynamic needs of their growing business and new acquisitions.
Key Challenges
- Global ERP instance is used by multiple lines of business (with their own IT teams), which made it difficult to achieve lean system activity as many projects were already approved. It also required as small a freeze period as possible
- The legacy ERP solution was enhanced with over 30 COTS add-ons to support specific business requirements (both SAINT and package-based). To minimize business impact during the transformation, it was important to confirm that the add-ons would work seamlessly with the new system
- Many core processes were enhanced with custom code to ensure differentiation. The compatibility of these processes with the S/4HANA data model had to be assessed. Alternatively, another alternate as-is solution that ensured zero business impact had to be evaluated
- The ERP system was used for medical activities of one line of business, and hence required detailed auditing of the project activities and its impact on the cutover schedule
- S/4HANA standard conversion and cloud migration to AWS was merged into one deployment with a cutover period spanning less than 48 hours
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The Solution
Due to the system size and stringent cutover duration, the nZDT solution was adopted for standard conversion. Infosys used a fail-first approach that ensures all unknown gaps are identified in the first conversion cycle itself. The system was migrated out of the hosted data center to AMS. A total of 6 conversion cycles were planned before the actual production cutover.
Infosys leveraged its best-in-class ‘Safe Passage Conversion Methodology’ along with SAP nZDT solution to manage a weekend-long cutover supported by certified tools and accelerators from Infosys S4 Move Tools to successfully convert the system from ECC to SAP S/4HANA. This ensured repeatable success across mock cycles and reduced dependency on the team.
Standardization, automation, and extension of the business value chain
- Infosys S4 Conversion Factory improved effectiveness and efficiencies through multiple cycles. Infosys-certified tools were used to simplify the conversation and migrate and reconcile data
- Infosys led the cutover and managed all customer products, datacenters, and teams. These were optimized to ensure no slippage during the final cutover
- Deep understanding of SAP conversion tools (SUM and ATC) helped in efficient planning for exceptions
- Risk-based testing plan across the multiple lines of business enabled optimal coverage while adhering to the schedule
Benefits
Saved cost and time by retaining the current ERP template while modernizing the SAP system
Increased efficiency with a cloud-based target system that is 85% leaner (with 10TB persistence)
Replaced many HANA Side-car solutions with S/4HANA capabilities thus enabling real-time data availability too to customer
Improved overall business performance by accelerating critical business processes and transactions by 200 times
