Implementation of the SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud

Three historically grown companies with 120 company codes. Over 165 processes to be revised or redesigned. More than 60 interfaces and over half a million transaction data to be migrated.

These are just a few of the facts and figures that show the dimension of this greenfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition at Veolia.

About five years ago, the German company of the globally active group had already started planning the entire reorganization and harmonization of the company and the move to SAP S/4HANA.

Initially, the company still had the goal of moving from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA in the public cloud (formerly: Multi Tenant Edition), i.e., to a very lean, very flexible SaaS solution from SAP.

"With the move to SAP S/4HANA, we wanted above all to simplify our entire architecture and our processes," says Matthias Frische, Project Manager SAP S/4HANA Implementation at Veolia Germany. "It was therefore clear to us that a purely technical changeover would not be enough to achieve this."

"Rather, we have to take the opportunity to reposition ourselves with SAP S/4HANA in many areas - including a uniform accounting system, a new control concept with completely new FI/CO objects and a uniform chart of accounts, the SAP Fiori user interface, changed roles in the organization or even a virtually merged IT organization."

Decision for the private cloud

In 2020, Veolia commissioned GAMBIT Consulting with a conceptual design and the implementation of SAP S/4HANA. The GAMBIT experts designed the rollout and began implementation in the fall of 2021.

In the run-up, Veolia's managers had opted for a different cloud operating model. Accordingly, the three existing and historically grown SAP ECC systems were no longer to be merged in a public cloud, but in an SAP S/4HANA private cloud system (as "Extended Edition").

The scope of the Private Cloud Edition corresponds to the on-premise solution of SAP S/4HANA. The solution thus combines the functional scope and expandability of classic "on-premise" operation with the advantages of a modern cloud solution. The Private Cloud Edition is operated and hosted by SAP.

High complexity

The consolidation of the systems and the necessary process harmonization at Veolia proved to be the greatest challenges in this project due to the high level of complexity.

After all, the 120 companies in the three business lines alone had to be brought into line in terms of processes. In addition, Veolia owns various minority interests in companies - especially in the municipal sector - which will also access the newly set up or revised processes in the future. "It was a project like we don't experience every day, even as experienced SAP consultants," says Fabian Fröhlingsdorf, Project Manager and Principal Consultant at GAMBIT.

"It was highly exciting because of the requirements and the initial situation. And it was enormously appealing to me personally because we implemented a modern target architecture in the private cloud here, with which Veolia is now permanently positioned flexibly."

Keep the core clean

The high level of flexibility in digital system architectures with SAP S/4HANA results primarily from the "keep the core clean" approach - in other words, by keeping the core of the SAP S/4HANA system virtually free of changes and modifications.

In contrast to what was common in the past, all necessary developments and applications are therefore no longer implemented directly in the core of the system today. The code of the core thus remains untouched.

All necessary applications and individual enhancements are connected to the core system - for example as side-by-side developments or business apps - via appropriate API interfaces.

Developments via SAP BTP

"At Veolia, we implemented this in exactly the same way. For example, we connected two business warehouse systems and two human resources systems as well as around 50 existing environment systems to SAP S/4HANA via SAP Cloud Platform Integration. We also developed via the SAP Business Technology Platform," explains Fabian Fröhlingsdorf.

To simplify and harmonize business processes, the project team relied on SAP Best Practices. The Best Practices are preconfigured, integrated and immediately available business processes.

With the help of a fit-gap analysis, the consultants first tested in detail how high the proportion of Veolia's business processes is that can be covered by SAP best practices. In total, around 165 processes were revised or newly set up on the basis of the best practice standards.

Much praise for the go-live in the organization

After three successful test migrations and two one-and-a-half-month test phases, the go-live finally took place in January 2023.

Following the completion of the productive data migration and a two-day validation phase by the business unit, all users were activated in mid-January after the business units had gone live.

"We received a lot of praise for the go-live, which - despite the usual restrictions to be expected in a project of this magnitude - went very well all in all," says Matthias Frische. "Thanks to the entire project team and here especially to the GAMBIT team for a great performance and the fantastic support during this project, which is so important for Veolia."