Success story : Touring migrates to SAP S/4HANA in record time
About Touring
Touring provides assistance to its customers in their travels in Belgium and abroad. Touring also offers dedicated packages for companies. The assistance includes cars, but also bicycles, electric bikes, scooters, single-wheelers and scooters.
Its international network has assistance vehicles, helicopters and airplanes, specialized in breakdown services, medical or technical interventions. It also offers vehicle and travel insurance.
The company’s management called on S4IC in July 2020 to carry out the transition from its SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANAÂ Private Cloud Edition.
Alain Rivet, project manager, explains the challenges encountered.
Why did Touring opted for SAP S/4HANA and the private cloud? Why in 2020?
Essentially to lighten its structure, to ensure that it always has an up-to-date version of SAP and to take advantage of all the digital tools.
Touring’s business model is evolving. So is the way we communicate and offer our services. The migration to SAP S/4HANA is part of the company’s drive to become more digital.
Why is the approach neither a Brownfield nor a Greenfield?
Overall, Touring was happy with its SAP configuration and any changes to this configuration could have an impact on the peripheral systems. It was therefore not appropriate to start from scratch.
The objective was to keep the high-performance elements and implement the new SAP S/4HANA functionalities necessary for the evolution of the company’s strategy.
We werw therefore in a hybrid logic.
A migration in less than 12 months... What a challenge!
What contributed to the speed of deployment was the consistency of mindset and experience of the internal and external teams. Some would say that the personality of the conductor made the difference. We were cohesive and in sync.
Moreover, the data migration tools developed by S4IC were a big help. The use of these tools proved to be fundamental in terms of time and price.
How many people took part in this migration?
The S4IC team was not very large: 5 people in full-time equivalent for the duration of the project to cover the various business functionalities. In all, 14 different consultants were involved to offer the best possible expertise.
As far as the interns involved in the project were concerned, we did our best to reduce the impact: two members of the internal IT team had to give +/- 50% of their time and 7 Key-users gave +/- 15% of their time over the year to the project.
What were the challenges and successes related to this transition to SAP S/4HANA?
- Our first challenge was to distinguish between what needed to be transformed and what needed to be retained.
- The second challenge was to define a method to ensure the technical migration of the Brownfield part. SAP had not planned this approach for a migration to the Cloud.
- Our last challenge was to learn how to work with SAP Cloud, which is an international environment with a specific methodology and security rules.
The whole project took place in the middle of the Covid period, from the start to the GO Live, how did it go?
There was something unusual about the situation we experienced. Neither the management nor the staff of Touring met with our team. I was one of the only people they saw on rare occasions in their offices.
The health crisis showed us that a team can be successful by working 100% remotely. The team was recruited from within our network. Most of the members had known each other for a long time. So the trust was already there.
What steps are planned after the SAP S/4HANA GO Live?
Continue the digitalization, continue to adapt SAP to the evolution of the company and start the implementation of SAP for Insurance.
You want to learn more about the technical aspects of the migration?
Fill out the form and download the Touring Case Study!
Or contact us directly to get more details about this project?
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