BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGES & SOLUTION APPROACH IN SAP ECC & SAP S4HANA SYSTEM LANDSCAPE OPTIMIZATION FOR DIVESTITURE DRIVEN CARVE OUT

Enterprise business systems are complex and cumbersome. Optimization of already established structures is often the biggest challenge for a company where SAP is already implemented. Every client wants to standardize, harmonize and consolidate the various business processes and the system landscape to not only manage the complexity effectively and efficiently but also drive business value. Digital evolution is forcing manufacturing companies which have built highly complex SAP systems over decades to SAP S/4 HANA in quest of being more agile with cloud-based business models and leveraging in memory capabilities. Manufacturing organizations often have heterogeneous organizational structures , business processes, data created over decades of organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions, spin offs, divestiture which necessitates changes in the existing landscape and processes. And these transformational changes are time sensitive and extremely challenging, often daunting if done without an in depth understanding of the existing system landscape and implication of any changes planned in the existing system or the “to be” system. This could broadly be categorized as a change management initiative where we don't want to jeopardize the existing stable state of the organization but at the same time, we want to transform the system landscape impacting from grass root to the top. This paper highlights the challenges faced by organizations when considering changes to the system landscape due to business transformation initiatives with a focus on Divestiture driven carve outs with a focus on SAP system landscape in manufacturing industry.