The switch from SAP R/3 to S/4HANA at a well-known manufacturer of high-quality power tools had come to a standstill. In the meantime, a year and a half of conversion work had already passed without any significant success. The biggest changes were expected in production planning, logistics and sales. At this point, the interim manager was brought on board to drive forward the implementation of SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) as a sub-project manager.
Lack of resources and poor master data identified as obstacles
In the analysis, the interim manager identified several reasons for the delayed implementation of SAP. For example, the company had not released enough staff for the migration. The sales employees assigned to the migration (key users) were deliberately barely involved in the department - but without the close communication that is essential for a smooth system change. This lack of communication had led to wrong decisions in customizing the new SAP system and was one of the main reasons why the changeover had fallen far short of expectations.
In addition, there were no process descriptions for the entire sales department and the adjacent departments such as service, production planning, logistics and shipping. The poor master data quality and numerous special programs (Z programs) in the old system proved to be further challenges.
Project team expanded and key user function taken over
In the first step, the interim manager managed to increase the previously five-person export project team by one full-time employee within two weeks in consultation with the HR department. In order to meet the still ambitious new schedule, the interim manager took on the key user role in export himself. In addition, he intensively involved the key personnel of the entire department and the system house in the design of the processes and developed communication structures that ensured that all stakeholders had access to the relevant information at all times. In this way, the interim manager succeeded in harmonizing and accelerating the project work - even without dedicated SAP knowledge.
Master data quality checked and improved - data transferred to the new system
After the interim manager had reorganized and realigned the project team, he turned his attention to the next challenge: the poor master data quality. To this end, he formed several teams to check master data such as missing or incorrect article weights, customs numbers and codes for dangerous goods classes and to enter them into the new system.
Thousands of Z programs from the old system mapped in the SAP standard
Over the years, the company's developers had written several thousand programs for the old system that were not available in the SAP standard. These so-called Z programs, whose processes even veteran employees of the company no longer knew, were not to be transferred to the new system. As far as the processes were comprehensible, the interim manager was able to transfer the majority of these programs to the SAP standard in collaboration with the company's IT department and the system house. In the end, only a few special cases remained, for which the system house developed a small number of new Z programs.
Successful conversion to SAP S/4HANA after 36 months
18 months after the start of the mandate, the entire system was successfully tested and implemented. The work of the interim manager contributed significantly to the fact that the SAP migration led to a measurable increase in productivity. In addition, the use of the S/4 system significantly streamlined sales in international processing.
