S/4HANA Fashion Migration Assessment for a Leading Global Travel Luggage Brand

Client Profile

The client is a well-established global leader in the travel luggage industry, operating in over 100 countries with a vast network of retail stores, e-commerce platforms, and distribution partners. As a trusted name in travel gear worldwide, the company offers a wide range of products including luggage, backpacks, and travel accessories. With a strong global presence, the company strives to enhance operational efficiency, improve customer experiences, and adopt cutting-edge technology to support growth.

Objective

The client aimed to migrate from its legacy SAP AFS system to SAP S/4HANA Fashion, focusing on improving business processes in the Supply Chain, Order to Cash, and Finance. The goal was to optimize operations, reduce technical debt, and improve data management while leveraging SAP S/4HANA’s capabilities for a more integrated, scalable, and cloud-enabled platform. The company sought to address duplicate and missing data issues and ensure a smooth transition to an efficient system for improved reporting and analytics. Additionally, the organization required a roadmap aligning with regional deployment strategies across multiple geographies.

Key Challenges

• 125 company codes across 5 regions with a variety of business models and legacy systems.
• Significant master data duplication and missing key elements across customer and material records. 
• Inefficiencies in supply chain operations, including limited inventory visibility, high costs, and inaccuracies in stock management. 
• Custom-developed processes, such as intercompany and procurement, requiring optimization to align with SAP S/4HANA standard capabilities. 
• Complex financial processes, including multiple ledgers, cumbersome closing cycles, and outdated profitability analysis methods.
• Legacy systems like SAP WM are reaching end-of-support deadlines. 
• An analytics roadmap was needed to address SAP BW/BOBJ end-of-support and ensure seamless interim global reporting during the S/4HANA rollout.
• Decades of technical debt, including duplicate custom objects, inactive roles, and inefficient configurations.

What We Did

To address these challenges, Applexus conducted a thorough 8-week SAP S/4HANA Fashion migration assessment using the CeleRITE toolset, an AI-powered platform for comprehensive and accelerated S/4HANA transitions, addressing both technical and business challenges.

• CeleRITE Technical Setup: The technical teams from both sides collaborated to set up the system connections and authorizations between CeleRITE and the client’s sandbox environment. 
• Configuration and Code Assessment: Evaluated active/inactive processes, identified and categorized custom code and Z-objects, and analyzed code usage. 
• Data Quality Evaluation: Applexus assessed the state of data quality and the volumes of data to be migrated, identifying critical gaps and opportunities for improvement. 
• Access Control Review: Analyzed active and inactive roles, with the goal of optimizing access control during the migration. 
• Workshops & Validation: Conducted SAP workshop sessions with the client’s global IT team, validating processes and aligning regional functional scope to support the migration. 
• Roadmap Development: Based on the findings, Applexus proposed multiple deployment options and developed a set of expected business benefits and roadmap for the migration along with an estimated ROM project cost model.

Key Findings

• Technical Landscape Optimization: CeleRITE identified opportunities to address decades of technical debt and optimize custom code. 
• Business Process Improvements: Migration to S/4HANA would enable improved financial processes, streamlined supply chain operations, and enhanced reporting capabilities. 
• Data Quality Enhancements: CeleRITE cleansing tools can simplify data cleansing and reduce duplication, resulting in better master data quality. 
• Authorization Streamlining: Over 11,000 custom roles were analyzed; 74% of these were inactive and can be removed, significantly simplifying role management. 
• Deployment Strategy: A hybrid approach or selective transition was recommended to achieve faster returns on investment through regional rollouts.

Key Outcomes

• Selective Transition to S/4HANA: Applexus CeleRITE's selective migration approach and roadmap effectively balanced budget constraints and business benefits, empowering the senior leadership to proceed with the S/4HANA transformation.
• Accelerated Migration with CeleRITE: With CeleRITE’s automated tools, 63% of active code issues and 50% of identified RICEFs can be remediated automatically, significantly reducing effort and migration timelines. 
• Reduced Technical Debt: Transitioning to SAP S/4HANA Fashion will eliminate unnecessary custom objects, consolidate processes, and address decades of technical debt, paving the way for a more streamlined and future-ready system.
• Improved Data Quality: CeleRITE’s data cleansing tools will simplify the removal of duplicates, ensure critical data fields are populated, and reduce material master complexity, resulting in more reliable and accurate data. 
• Enhanced Process Efficiency: Leveraging S/4HANA Fashion’s standard functionalities, such as advanced supply assignment, segmentation, and real-time financial close, will streamline operations and reduce manual efforts. 
• Optimized Reporting and Analytics: Upgrading to BW/4HANA will provide faster data ingestion and harmonized reporting, enabling better business insights and decision-making. 
• Simplified User Management: Rationalizing custom roles and removing inactive users will strengthen compliance, improve governance, and simplify access control processes. 
• Strategic Global Rollout: A phased, region-based deployment approach will minimize disruption, optimize resource allocation, and ensure smoother adoption across 43 countries.