The Company

Founded in 1943, the client is an American automotive components original equipment manufacturer and an aftermarket ride control and emissions products, manufacturer. They are one of the world’s largest pure-play powertrain companies serving OE markets worldwide with engineered solutions addressing fuel economy, power output, and criteria pollution requirements for gasoline, diesel, and electrified powertrains. Currently using SAP ECC 6 EHP 8, they wanted to move to SAP S/4HANA. To conform with SAP best Practices, they needed to analyze their existing landscape, study the impact of moving to SAP S/4HANA, and generate a project plan for their SAP S/4HANA System Conversion which would involve the right timeline, effort, and resources. KTern, an automated Digital Workspace built on the SAP Activate framework to automate and manage SAP S/4HANA Conversions from start to finish, was leveraged to complete the SAP S/4HANA Readiness Assessment.

In order to optimize and improve internal business processes, the client wanted to migrate to a modern integrated business platform, SAP S/4HANA. After comparing multiple products, tools, and services, they finally chose KTern to fulfill their requirements.

Business Situation and Challenges

1. The customer was facing several process constraints with the antiquated SAP ECC system in place, which was highly inflexible in addressing their current business needs.
2. The automotive components manufacturer worked along with their system integrator to define the business case for the move to S/4HANA.
3. To build the best plan possible, they realized that a lot of insights on the “as-is” system where needed.
4. Estimates stated that it would take almost two months to complete and build a solid business case.
5. The search was for automation-driven assessments to reduce the cost, time and effort required.
6. The client wanted data-driven test catalog setup and plan their UAT timelines accordingly.

KTern’s Solution

KTern was connected to the client’s sandbox system and an automated assessment was performed to illustrate the technical, functional, and business process impact of moving from ECC to S/4HANA. They assessed their current SAP ECC system to determine the implications of the move to S/4HANA and the impact on current functionalities and associated system data. 1. Automated Landscape Assessment 2. Automated Business Process Assessment 3. Automated Custom Objects Assessment 4. Business Transformation Assessment 5. Roadmap, timeline, and effort estimation

KTern-Driven Benefits

1. Cost and effort savings due to reduced resource deployment
2. Faster testing preparation with data-driven accuracy
3. Huge time savings due to the elimination of configurations and manual work
4. Improved collaboration and efficiency among all project stakeholders