When preparing to transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA, there are a few things to consider. In this piece, we uncover those key steps and objectives to prepare based on learnings from a company who took on this journey.

160 years ago, Greene Tweed was formed as a company that distributed hardware in New York City using horses and carts. Since that time, they have evolved and grown into an industry leader in sealing technology and solutions. In 1999, this company adopted SAP ECC to manage its business, customizing the SAP solution to meet its needs. They’ve since added integrations to other systems, too. Today, the company is beginning its journey to move from its ECC system to S/4HANA. This decision and project took three years to move from idea to action. I recently interviewed Kathy Junod, Head of Information Technology, to talk about how the organization prepared itself for the move to S/4HANA. 

Preparing to Transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA

1. Assessing the Need 

When Kathy first joined the company, she quickly noticed that the current system (approaching the end of its support cycle) would not be able to support the planned growth of the business. Clarkston Consulting was brought in 2021 to perform an IT assessment with recommendations, which included moving up to S/4HANA. The assessment confirmed and documented that the existing system would limit the company’s growth opportunities in the future. Kathy also leveraged the Clarkston’s SuccessCheck Methodology – a methodology leveraged to pulse check a project or initiative – to survey the organization.  

Sean W.: How did you organize your observations and team members’ feedback? 

Kathy J: I used the Clarkston SuccessCheck Methodology as a reference because, in essence, it’s a giant survey. We talked to the Clarkston folks and the business delivery leads, and after speaking with everyone, brought the results back. I then developed an action plan, and we’ve since completed a few actions based on that SuccessCheck. 

I do think one of the key readiness pieces is to hear from as many voices as possible and from all levels of the organization. One of the things that you almost expect to get feedback on during any project that you’re doing is that enough voices aren’t being heard, right? Any and all feedback is good, as we need to hear “the good, the bad, and the ugly” so we can make the right decision. For example, do we upgrade, or do we go through with a new implementation? We won’t know if we missed something if we aren’t hearing from everyone. 

2. Gaining Alignment 

It’s often that the IT team is the first to identify and propose upgrades to S/4HANA in companies. Kathy’s challenge was to build stakeholder support across the business since this would be a large project impacting the entire company. She first reached out to the Finance team and, using the results of the SuccessCheck assessment, was able to show how the S/4HANA move would solve many of their current pain points and remove the need for many customizations since basic functionality in S/4 provided the function(s). Kathy coordinated a S/4HANA Finance Tour so that the team could see a demonstration for themselves. As a result, the IT stakeholders and finance stakeholders were now aligned.  

Sean W.: Now that leadership is aligned, what was the next challenge? 

Kathy J: We’ve now made that transition, which is great. In the beginning, when we were just starting to get rolling, we had people who have never been through this type of process before. So, we asked ourselves: How do you get people at the project leadership level, and the next level down, and the level below that to see and understand? It’s like they’re going up a roller coaster and can’t see the other side but we’re asking them to trust that we’re going to take them down and land safely on the other side of that. We were on that roller coaster, but we were bringing in Clarkston – the 3DX team – so we had the CRM support and we knew, “Okay, we’ve got this.” As a company that tended to do everything ourselves and didn’t traditionally embrace the support of consultants, this was a major shift for us.  

3. Identifying Business Process Owners 

Kathy was building a consensus, not by changing minds, but instead by taking the time to help her peers see what she saw and come to the same conclusion – “turn the lights on,” if you will. To do that, she brought in external subject matter experts (SMEs) to help. Kathy also engaged with HR since she knew that an effort of this nature would require changes to business processes that in turn would impact the organization. In some cases, business process owners were not known.  

Sean W.: How did you action the need for identifying/assigning process owners? 

Kathy J: At that point, we had the business delivery leads, which each functional area has a link into. So, they were just starting to get empowered and take on that role. But we were leaning on them to now identify who the person or persons responsible are for each one of these functions, such as the warehouse business process owner or the supply procurement business process owner. That’s how we started to put it all together and identify what our goal was when we went into that walkthrough. We had someone that could represent each of our business domains and then ensured that within our teams, we had somebody who understood each area of the business at each one of those tables. 

4. Considering the Change Impacts 

For the business, they would need to see the change impacts and the value in process improvements before supporting and adopting the changes. Open-door sessions were set up to attract these business users and stakeholders. Once inside, more lights went on.   

Sean W.: How did you guide the team out of their silos and look at end-to-end (cross- functional) business processes and hand offs? 

Kathy J: We had to ask ourselves a number of questions to understand the change impact. Can we get product out the door? Who does supply planning or planning? Do we understand what’s happening at the order level and who the customer service people are that are putting in orders? Do they really understand the implications of supply chain and the supply crisis that was going on? Do they really understand planning? From manufacturing picking off orders and executing those orders, do they understand what’s in the plan? What if they do an order that is offside of that plan? How does that then affect the rest of the organization? Much of the business still operated in silos, so that would have to change. 

5. Taking the Next Steps 

Data and data maintenance were also areas that caused the business pain, and with the planned growth, would only get worse over time. Those stakeholders – the data gatekeepers – were engaged and educated so that they could also champion the move to S/4HANA. Support for the SAP move was across the business, and the project was funded and has begun.  

Sean W.: Most companies have data inconsistencies; how did you approach understanding the current state of your data? 

Kathy J: The other light bulb was the data, specifically, once we really started to look at our data and how it flows from process to process, like lead to cash or order to cash and all those things in between. We had to figure out not only the condition of the data and the governance of that data, but also how it tied in as it moved processes and how could we measure it. We needed a data strategy that supported the measurements we wanted to use. 

Supporting the ECC to S/4HANA Journey 

Some might think that three years is a long time to decide, but a company with a 160-year history doesn’t make snap decisions. The organization needed that time to be ready as a complete company.  Working as a change agent from within, Kathy also used that time to prepare the organization and establish foundational business process lead roles that would be needed for the project and, more importantly, for the business to use as centralized processes are established.  

Change moves at different speeds for different organizations, and Clarkston was proud to support Kathy and the Greene Tweed organization on their journey to S/4HANA.