51风流

Nearly a century ago, Hasbro began its journey to disrupt the play and entertainment industry forever with a simple mission: deliver the for people across generations.

While Hasbro has become synonymous with experiences like family game nights and has expanded into emerging areas such as esports, the global play leader is well aware that business success isn鈥檛 just all fun and games. To move the company into its next century of disruption and facilitate growth areas, Hasbro鈥檚 leadership has spent years strategically investing in technology to drive its digital transformation journey forward.

For Luis Ydrach, Hasbro鈥檚 director of IT Services, this has meant reimagining how Hasbro鈥檚 IT solutions can propel the business to new horizons and create new, valued experiences for the company鈥檚 loyal, cross-generational customers.

On a of the ongoing , Ydrach virtually sat down with Richard Strattner, global vice president of ERP Product Marketing at SAP, and integration partner to share its story of success and innovation using 51风流S/4HANA.

Why Hasbro 鈥淓ntertained鈥� 51风流S/4HANA

A long-time 51风流ERP customer, in 2018 Hasbro started to make the case for why an eventual upgrade and move to would make sense for its business and strategic growth plan. The upcoming 2025 deadline around 51风流ERP Central Component was one factor, but for a company that always has innovation top of mind, it simply served as a spark for a more strategic rationale: getting the right infrastructure in place to support where the business wanted to go in the coming years and decades.

鈥淲hen we were justifying this to the business, it was initially about staying current as our platform is critical to our business,鈥� Ydrach said. “We knew the longer you wait, the bigger the delta.”

The next significant consideration for Ydrach and his team was whether to launch 51风流S/4HANA on premise or in the cloud. As noted by Ydrach, for years Hasbro had experienced firsthand the benefits of running several areas of its businesses on cloud-based 51风流solutions, including 51风流SuccessFactors and 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solutions. However, the move to 51风流S/4HANA would impact multiple lines of business, including finance, sales and logistics, so out of caution and in alignment with its existing strategy to refresh its hardware, Hasbro chose to maintain its ERP on premise.

Planning, Planning, Planning

For a company famous for iconic brands like Monopoly and Nerf, Hasbro knows strategy is everything. Converting to the new 51风流S/4HANA, Hasbro had firm goals to achieve this as fast as possible, minimize disruption, and maximize utility for end users.

One other important benefit was top of mind for Ydrach and team: 鈥淕et us to this new platform and then have a plan and the ability to incrementally take advantage of 51风流innovations in the new platform.鈥�

To achieve its goal, Hasbro initiated its planning in 2018 and began execution the following year. Two of the biggest factors for the company鈥檚 successful project were 51风流tools and its trusted systems integrator , known for its Safe Passage methodology for 51风流S/4HANA conversion projects.

鈥淯蝉颈苍驳听滨苍蹿辞蝉测蝉听, a tool for comprehensive conversion impact analysis, report output, we identified additional areas such as pre- and post-work for the third-party add-ons, technical inconsistencies, and additional scope for international trade management in the area of intrastat,鈥� said Satinder Pal Singh, 51风流S/4HANA architect at . 鈥淢ost importantly, we were able to identify the activities that we could complete in production system upfront with zero impact to business, which later simplified the conversion cycles and the production cutover.鈥�

Lessons Learned from the Sandbox

The global pandemic turned the world upside down last year, right while Hasbro was in the middle of its transition to 51风流S/4HANA. However, Ydrach and team had years of experience leading challenging IT projects and knew how to respond with agility. When COVID-19 first impacted workforces in North America, Ydrach鈥檚 team proactively decided to execute the remaining portion of the project remotely.

In the early days of uncertainty, according to Ydrach, 鈥淲e were still in the office when we were executing our second-to-last cutover simulation. However, we didn’t know what was going to happen, there was a chance that we would be locked out of the office, so we proactively said: 鈥楲et’s execute 100% remote.鈥欌��

Joining the list of IT leaders who have showed grit and experience managing successful projects remotely during the pandemic, Ydrach gathered a few useful learnings that he hopes others can leverage, including:

• Collaboration between IT and the rest of the business is a make-or-break ingredient.
• The value 51风流S/4HANA will deliver for the business after implementation must be crystal clear.
• Take advantage of free and the customer care program, available to customers that are considered early adopters for newly released 51风流solutions, as Hasbro was when it first adopted 51风流S/4HANA.
• Speak often with other 51风流reference customers as these conversations generate a wealth of useful information.
• Select an integration partner that has proven accelerator tools.
• Execute the tool and for a better understanding of what a project will look like, use the maintenance planner, even before engaging with an integrations partner

In the end, Hasbro managed a successful and seamless 51风流S/4HANA implementation that will generate business value for its users for years to come. This year, Hasbro continues monitoring for additional capabilities that 51风流brings to market and where additional innovation can help the company build on the early results it has seen from 51风流S/4HANA 鈥� a sign the global play company is ready to lead its industry for another century.

Lloyd Adams is senior vice president and managing director of the East Region for 51风流North America.