Successful SAP S/4HANA Go-Live

Greenfield project establishes a stable basis for international digitalization

Munich, October 16, 2024: Hochland, one of the largest private cheese producers in Europe, has successfully completed its SAP S/4HANA greenfield transformation in Germany togehter with valantic. Since the go-live, the company has been working as a pioneer in its industry with the new business software and complementary solutions for supply chain planning, transport logistics, analytics, and business process management. The international rollout is currently underway and is expected to be completed by 2027. The digital consulting, solutions, and software company valantic has assisted with the entire transformation as a consulting and implementation partner.

Hochland has been working successfully with SAP ERP software for 25 years. The cheese producer used the migration to S4/HANA for a fundamental modernization with a greenfield transformation: Hochland worked with valantic to review, adjust, harmonize, and re-establish the existing system and process landscape with numerous in-house developments and stand-alone solutions to keep it close to the standard. This created a stable, sustainable, and internationally harmonized technological basis for the further digitalization of the group.

Greenfield transformation as the path to future architecture

The comprehensive review was the prerequisite for exploiting the diverse possibilities of SAP S/4HANA. For this purpose, the valantic team not only provided the required SAP and process expertise, but also specific industry knowledge thanks to many years of project experience with dairies. The joint project team created the basis for a stable and sustainable overall architecture, as Jürgen Brunner, Head of IT at Hochland, emphasizes: “The networking of our systems and data in the Digital Core opens up a new SAP world, the potential of which we can now use step by step with the toolbox of the SAP Business Technology Platform.”

The new solution is now running smoothly at the German locations, the largest in the group. “We are proud that despite the greenfield approach, we have managed to get our SAP S/4HANA system off the ground on schedule and within budget. This is also due to our partner valantic and the results-oriented cooperation of the entire project team,” says Jürgen Brunner.

End-to-end process thinking established in business

In the project, international experts from Hochland and the participating project partners worked together to define standards, set up new processes end-to-end and map them using the SAP Signavio BPM solution. The digital process library supports both the AMS organization and experts in the fields that Hochland has established in the course of the project in order to shift process responsibility from IT to business. As Global Process Owner and Local Process Owner, they oversee established business processes and adapt to new requirements, with the IT department acting as an enabler.

The international team also paved the way for the international rollout of the solution, which is expected to be completed by 2027.

Benefits for the entire value chain

In Germany, in addition to the advantages of innovative SAP S/4HANA functions, the added value of the additional implemented solutions is already clearly noticeable. For example, in the area of business intelligence. Here, thanks to the SAP Analytics Cloud, which was built on the existing SAP business warehouse, Hochland can use additional specific analysis functions and reports.

SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) supports the company’s supply chain planning and ensures transparency all along the supply chain. SAP IBP simplifies the coordination of all business units involved in planning. Numerous processes that were previously controlled manually now run automatically in SAP Transportation Management, including transport planning and the commissioning of freight forwarders.

Daniel Wächter, member of the management board at valantic, underscores the importance of this: “The topics of the digital supply chain and logistics are essential for manufacturing companies. We are pleased to be able to assist with this transformation project at Hochland end-to-end.”