Brand New IT and Business Processes with SAP S/4HANA

Products: Fire alarm systems, smoke detectors, early smoke detection systems

Employees: 903 (2020)

Turnover: 207 million euros (2020)

Website: www.hekatron.de

Tradition Meets Innovation: Hekatron

Hekatron is based in Sulzberg and ensures a high level of safety in private spaces, companies and public facilities. As a leading and highly innovative manufacturer in the area of fire protection systems, this family business has been successfully represented on the market for over 50 years. Its products include smoke detectors and alarm systems, speaking alarm systems and devices for early fire detection. The company set similarly high quality and innovation standards for its own IT landscape, which has to handle complex processes along the value chain in a secure and agile manner. The inventory led to a switch to SAP; together with NTT DATA Business Solutions, the company introduced the innovative SAP S/4HANA Business Suite. Hekatron was especially impressed by the expertise that the Bielefeld-based provider of comprehensive IT services brought in, starting in the presales phase, as well as by the structured project methodology One Method, which ensures safe project implementation.

A New Beginning with SAP S/4HANA on the “Greenfield”

Agile transformation in the world of IT and the appeal of freeing themselves from maintenance activities and investment bottlenecks are motivating companies to set up their system landscape in a sustainable way. Automation and clever innovations that increase company-wide performance are in great demand. By introducing SAP S/4HANA, Hekatron has taken digitalization to a higher level by means of modern technologies like AI and sophisticated functions. The greenfield approach enables new processes as well as the design of a suitable IT landscape based on existing master data. Day-to-day business operations can continue. NTT DATA also offered the right solution for industry-specific requirements; a suitable add-on ensures that EG RoHS guideline requirements are met. Add-ons such as the material short text generator or the order-confirmation cockpit reliably support the SAP ERP system. Thus, the stable system and the intelligent processes meet the industry’s complex IT requirements.

A Safe Project

Numerous challenges related to existing interfaces and cross-company processes for offsetting with affiliated companies have been successfully met in the course of the project. For example, ten external systems were connected and customer processing of manufacturer part numbers was implemented. Everything is available within one system. IT support is provided to different business units via numerous SAP modules (FI, CO, BPC, MM, QM, VC, SD, PP, PLM, EWM, CS & BC), from purchasing, production, quality management, warehousing, shipping and external trade, controlling and financial accounting to sales and customer service; modern technologies and functions serve to optimize those business units. An external shipping warehouse has also been integrated. Complete integration of the business areas such as accounting, controlling and logistics strengthens cross-departmental efficiency. The business also benefits from high master data quality. it.mds facilitates administrative tasks with pre-configured workflows, automatically fills in many master data fields according to defined rules, and reduces the time spent on manual administrative tasks by up to 95%.

Successful Implementation

Following the successful go-live, Hekatron benefits from a brand-new system landscape that uses highly specialized functions to create space for value-creating activities and well-founded decisions. Being pioneers in terms of secure IT set-up also means the company’s innovation cycles are accelerated; an upgrade to the latest version of SAP S/4HANA 2021 is being planned to ensure continued success and innovation over the long term.