Migration to a single SAP S/4HANA platform centralises data and standardises processes across business units
See how Deloitte helped a global oil and gas firm migrate supply chain and finance business processes to a new cloud platform, country by country.
The organisation, a major oil and gas company, operates in more than 180 countries around the globe. Over the years, these business units had developed their own processes and run their own instances of finance and procurement systems— generally SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) and JD Edwards. In addition, they ran other solutions to manage the supply chain and various assets.
To improve efficiency and cost effectiveness, management decided to consolidate systems and processes on a single SAP S/4HANA platform and migrate business units to the new platform, country by country. The goal was to standardise processes and reduce their systems footprint in order to manage fewer systems through the company’s shared services support model.
The organisation was a long-term customer of both SAP and Microsoft and had built a strong relationship with both vendors. While various partners were engaged, Deloitte was chosen to manage the entire global systems transformation. The company, a Deloitte client for many years, was impressed by our overall understanding of their industry, functional business processes and capabilities—an understanding that also encompassed complex technology work.
To improve efficiency and cost effectiveness, management decided to consolidate systems and processes on a single SAP S/4HANA platform and migrate business units to the new platform, country by country.
As the client’s trusted transformation advisor, the Deloitte team defined the roadmap, target infrastructure—Azure private cloud—and application architecture for the initial central finance (CFin) solution and the longer-term Digital Core Transformation programme.
Each geography sends data from its own finance system to CFin, which currently functions as a central reporting engine and is a critical first step in the longer-term Digital Core Transformation programme. The team also implemented multiple SAP solutions complementary to CFin including S/4HANA, MDG, Solution Manager, GRC, Business Technology Platform (BTP), Data Services and Information Steward.
Using Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), the Deloitte team delivered 100+ development objects, including ABAP for business application programming, Fiori to support enhanced user interface, Data Services jobs and SCP Cloud Foundry software developers kit (SDK) applications. Installing and deploying Azure-hosted environments helped ensure robust security.
Additionally, Deloitte implemented and integrated a DevOps pipeline and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), which made creative use of Microsoft and SAP technologies. This solution automates testing and runs code checks when changes are made— accelerating time to market, user development and automation.
Critical to the operation of CFin was Deloitte’s creation of a data work stream, which enables CFin to understand the massive amount of data it receives and how it maps to each country’s system. The team built a change data capture framework to facilitate understanding changes made to data that has been uploaded, because workers in the various geographies are continuing to work in country systems that have not yet been migrated to the central core.
Once CFin was in place, the Deloitte team began the Digital Core Transformation to migrate business processes from existing systems to S/4HANA and decommissioning old systems, starting with the Canadian business unit for North America.
1. Centralised all data in a secure private cloud hosted on Azure for a single reporting engine across all business units
2. Created a DevOps pipeline framework for automated testing and scans, speeding up delivery and improving quality of new code
3. Reuse CFin architectures, processes, governance, technologies and pipeline on the digital core
4. Centralised and standardised processes to align with industry best practices
5. Leveraged cloud's ability to enhance security and cyber management versus on-premises management in the data centre
6. Improved user interfaces using the latest SAP technologies like Fiori and BTP
18 months
The Deloitte team proceeded from initial design of the client’s central finance system to testing, data migration and go-live in only 18 months.
50+ countries
S/4HANA digital core transformation will cover more than 50 countries and is planned for completion in 2024.
100+
Deloitte delivered 100+ development objects including business application programming, enhanced user interface and SDK applications.
Every business reaches a point in their journey at which digital transformation becomes a business imperative.
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