The Client
The client is a global leader in sustainable environmental solutions, specializing in end-to-end solutions for water management, waste management and energy services across five continents. It needed to streamline its operations and was undergoing an SAP S/4HANA migration to enhance its digital backbone and operational agility.
Need for Change
The organization was operating with highly complex and fragmented business platforms, managed by multiple service providers and internal teams across diverse geographies. This complexity resulted in escalating operational costs, low system performance, and suboptimal user satisfaction. The existing landscape included numerous critical transactions, a wide user base, and a multitude of interfaces between systems, making integration and management increasingly challenging. As part of its SAP modernization journey, the organization aimed to address these issues by streamlining systems, improving performance, and enhancing user experience across regions.
In North America, the client’s legacy business units highlighted the limitations of disparate systems and processes. There was a clear need to modernize and harmonize operations, simplify the application landscape, and drive efficiencies in shared services, while ensuring seamless data migration and process standardization across multiple legal entities and business functions.
In the other regions, outdated on-premise platforms, manual interventions, and a lack of alignment with evolving technology roadmaps further underscored the urgency for modernization. The business required a simplified, standardized, and future-ready environment to support growth, reduce customizations, and enable efficient, integrated operations across multiple entities and languages.
Challenges
The organization faced significant hurdles due to complex and fragmented legacy systems, rising operational costs,
outdated technology, and the need to harmonize processes across regions. These challenges impacted efficiency, user
satisfaction, and the organization’s ability to scale, affecting key stakeholders such as C-suite executives, operations
teams, IT and application support, and quality assurance teams. To address these challenges, the organization initiated
an SAP S/4HANA migration, aimed at streamlining operations, modernizing its digital infrastructure, and enabling smarter
decision-making across functions.
Europe
- Complex business platforms struggled with high transaction volumes, dispersed users, and multi-system integration.
- Operations managed by several service providers and internal IT teams, leading to fragmented responsibilities, slower resolution, higher cost, and difficulty managing multi-service providers.
- Numerous interfaces with other systems, resulted in rising operational costs as the business grew.
- Existing on-premise platforms exhibited low performance and did not meet user satisfaction expectations.
North America
- Integrating legacy business units onto unified platforms for core functions like ERP, procurement, and travel management remains a major challenge.
- Harmonizing processes and management frameworks across all operations and maintenance activities is a significant challenge.
- Complexity in the application landscape, necessitating simplification for better efficiency.
- Driving greater efficiencies within shared service functions remains an ongoing challenge.
Japan
- Extended monthly closure cycles due to manual interventions and lack of automation.
- Legacy platforms running on unsupported operating systems and databases increased risk and maintenance overhead.
- Aligning technology environments with evolving product roadmaps was critical yet complex.
- Reducing customizations and simplifying the overall system landscape remained a persistent challenge.
- Meeting evolving corporate reporting standards required continuous adaptation and process redesign.
- Standardizing business operations and data flows across all regional group entities was an imperative but difficult to achieve.
LTIMindtree’s Solution
A comprehensive suite of cloud-based business solutions was deployed, including ERP, procurement, and travel management platforms. The transformation was guided by a detailed assessment using proprietary tools, resulting in a structured roadmap for implementation. As part of this initiative, an SAP S/4HANA migration was undertaken to modernize core systems and enhance integration across functions. The project followed a proven methodology and included multilingual knowledge-sharing sessions to ensure effective adoption and stakeholder engagement.
Europe
North America
Japan
Tech Stack
Tech Stack Details
| SAP S/4HANA | North America and Japan |
| SAP ECC | Client’s environment |
| AWS & Google Cloud Platform (GCP) | Cloud infrastructure |
| Fiori applications | User interface |
| Advanced smart forms | Sales invoicing |
| Automated test scripts | Regression testing |
| Digital training content | User enablement |
| Operations control center | Incident prevention and resolution |
| Comprehensive cloud-based business solutions | ERP, procurement, travel management |
| Multilingual knowledge-sharing sessions | Stakeholder engagement |
Benefits
The client’s SAP modernization journey delivered measurable benefits across all regions, driving productivity, reducing incidents, streamlining business processes, and enhancing user experience. The organization achieved significant operational improvements and set a strong foundation for future growth.
Europe
North America
Japan
Conclusion
This SAP modernization journey demonstrates how a global, multi-entity organization successfully modernizes and harmonizes its business operations. By migrating over 130 SAP instances to the cloud, implementing SAP S/4HANA across North America, and deploying a private cloud solution in Japan, the organization achieved significant gains in productivity, operational efficiency, and user experience. Key differentiators included seamless transitions, automation, and the use of proprietary tools for assessment and implementation. This case study illustrates how industry leaders can leverage a tailored SAP transformation can accelerate business outcomes for sustainable success.
Internal Quote
“Leading this multi-region SAP transformation, spanning our global operations on AWS, a North American S/4HANA deployment on AWS, and a Japanese S/4HANA RISE implementation on Google Cloud has been a defining milestone for our organization. By harmonizing processes and modernizing our platforms across these diverse environments, we have significantly improved productivity, operational efficiency, and user experience. The collaborative approach and expertise we brought to this initiative ensured seamless delivery with minimal disruption. This transformation has not only strengthened our digital foundation but also empowered us to innovate sustainably, operate smarter, and shape the future of water management with greater agility and purpose. “
– Director Enterprise Applications, Information Systems and Technology, NA
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