Successful SAP S/4HANA conversion in factory approach

Zollner Elektronik AG is one of the world’s leading providers of Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS), with headquarters in Zandt, Germany, and 25 locations across the globe. With around 13,000 employees and annual sales of EUR 2.497 billion, the company serves a wide range of industries, including automotive, medical technology, industrial electronics, and aerospace.

Future-proof and agile: established EMS provider migrates to SAP S/4HANA

The Zollner Group is one of the world’s leading EMS providers. Instead of developing its own products, Zollner Elektronik AG focuses on customized system solutions across a range of technologies and industries. With 25 locations worldwide, the company is a reliable partner to global corporations and mid-sized companies. To embed Zollner’s key competences of innovation and sustainability in the design of internal IT processes, the Group decided to switch to SAP S/4HANA, resulting in a high level of acceptance due to the early involvement of the specialist departments.

Minimizing implementation effort with a brownfield scenario in factory approach

The focus was on preparing for the digital future at an early stage. As a migration strategy, Zollner implemented the conversion in a factory approach in which parts of the services were implemented through the NTT DATA Factory in India both as a fixed price and also in Time & Material. This approach optimizes the transformation through partially automated in-house standard tools and processes, accelerates the project schedule through standardized results, and increases security and flexibility. SAP has been used for many years in areas such as finance and controlling, supply chain and global procurement, global engineering, marketing and sales, and quality management and has been integrated into international roll-outs. With the conversion, Zollner creates the basis for a future-proof transformation and benefits from the many process innovations that SAP S/4HANA offers and now makes usable for the company.

A stable and successful move towards the future. Benefiting from innovations with the SAP S/4HANA conversion

Migration requires careful preparation and a transparent strategy. Involving the specialist departments in the SAP S/4HANA process at an early stage by carrying out innovation workshops and presenting the new S/4HANA business functions ensured a high level of acceptance and resulted in the creation of a comprehensive migration roadmap accepted by all sides. Migrating SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA required a change from the Oracle database to the HANA database. Zollner completed the project successfully on time, on target, and under budget. In the Hypercare phase, there were virtually no problems at around 20 locations, e.g. in Germany, Romania, China, Tunisia, the US, and Costa Rica. Among other things, Zollner can now benefit from the introduction of new profit center billing, parallel accounting with ledger technology, effective data management, and the expansion of warehouse management, the production functions, and the external trade functions through SAP GTS.