Technological innovations lead to major transformations in industries with significant impact on business models, operations and productivity. The constant demand for connected business processes and networks is the new reality for any organization. There is a growing demand for innovation, real-time data analysis, and faster response time.
Organizations using legacy ERP systems have often customized their ERP systems over time to suit their current business reality. These customizations, however, are not only costly to implement and consume lots of resources to maintain, but they also slow down the business agility and growth potential when facing new challenges and market impacts. Moreover, organizations face challenges during upgrades due to the complexities they have built by customization. Consequently, these organizations are pushed on the path of no growth with a very slow / zero adoption of new features and innovations.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud helps customers to achieve a competitive advantage by leveraging ground-breaking technologies.
Moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud offers companies the “once in a lifetime” opportunity to redesign processes and systems.
In the following example, let me describe the highlights and experiences of Macmahon Holdings Limited’sDigital Transformation journey with SAP Cloud ERP.
Founded on August 5, 1963, Macmahon Holdings Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and offers the complete package of mining services throughout Australia and Southeast Asia. Macmahon manages mines for some of the world's largest mining companies, with the capacity to tailor its mining services to meet the specific needs of each of its clients.
As the business changed along with its customer requirements, Macmahon aimed to improve business agility by increasing visibility across its operations – a task which was not possible within their legacy environment. As a result, the company established a unified business operations platform based on SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors to provide a single source of truth across all its markets. Nowadays, decisions are based on real-time information, enabling the contractor to respond faster to customer enquiries.
Macmahon was able to obtain considerable quantitative and qualitative benefits with the implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It was able to achieve more efficient finance and HR processes, eliminating duplication of effort and resulting in significant time and cost savings. A simplified IT environment with the consolidation of multiple finance and HR solutions and a cloud-based approach reduced the IT maintenance time by 15%.
Through the digitalized business process, it has made considerable savings by centralizing and streamlining the process. They now spend 85% less time on period-end closing and were able to reduce working capital expenses by A$ 5 million.
Another customer who went through the digital transformation journey is Viridian Glass, Australia’s largest glass processor. It has a history of delivering quality services and innovation for home and buildings.
When the company was acquired in 2018, its new parent company had limited time and budget to accomplish a split into three separate businesses with their own systems. In addition, this was an opportunity to adopt intelligent technology for its upstream and downstream manufacturing activity across Australia and New Zealand; the previous, highly customized ERP system made it challenging for staff to learn and alter the system.
Viridian implemented SAP S/4HANA Cloud on a modernized platform, providing a more user-friendly experience and driving consistency and efficiency across different functions, departments, and regions. With the SAP Cloud Platform, Viridian assures business continuity by seamlessly connecting its old architecture into the new.
Viridian adopted the SAP Activate Methodology to successfully transition from different systems and to maintain user experience, enabling the alignment of the solution’s capabilities with the business’s needs. The rapid implementation has put the business on track to achieve significant ongoing cost savings, with the customer anticipating an annual cost saving of A$ 5 million.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud enabled Viridian Glass not only to localize a platform for its business units but also to make them ready for the future.
I hope these success stories are inspiring for many to adopt new technologies and evaluate the opportunities of the Digital Transformation – from adopting agile business processes to driving efficiencies with next generation methodologies. The journey of these customers is a clear sign for the benefits that can be achieved with the Digital Transformation led by our SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast
As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA”. This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we help you to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.
openSAP microlearning’s for SAP S/4HANA
Just a couple of months ago, we launched openSAP microlearning’s for SAP S/4HANA as an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearning’s that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business, like Finance and Manufacturing & Supply Chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, Extensibility, User Experience, and Upgrade Management. We are continuously adding new microlearning’s to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.
Your voice matters!
If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community – now fully integrated with SAP Community. The community brings together SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers, partners and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your SAP S/4HANA Cloud journey.
For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:
- The power of best-in-class and Next Practices business content for a modern ERP Blog Post
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud: The Intelligent ERP Link Collection Blog Post
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation Content here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
- SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community here
- SAP Activate Community here
- Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
- Help Portal Product Page here
Follow us via @Sap and #S4HANA, or myself via @SDenecken
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