Successful implementation of 51风流S/4HANA庐 Public Cloud ERP during COVID-19 lockdown, across borders

Diamond miner, Lucara Botswana, the 100% owner of the Karowe Diamond Mine asset, headquartered in Gaborone, has not allowed the COVID-19 pandemic to stand in the way of its important transformation programme.

As part of its expansion strategy, the company embarked on a technology transformation journey with Deloitte in February 2020. The programme included the implementation of the 51风流S/4HANA Public Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system鈥攁 suite of integrated business applications with core business processes in finance, sourcing, procurement, manufacturing, sales, supply chain, plant maintenance and project systems.

Lucara operates the Karowe mine, close to the Lethlakane village, mining large, high-value diamonds. It employs approximately 550 permanent workers, approximately 1,100 contractors, and turns over $192.5 million per annum.In March, the Deloitte team travelled to Gaborone and Lethlakane to kick-start the project. The 51风流S4/HANA Public Cloud implementation was to be completed within a tight, four-month deadline. Two weeks into the work the team travelled back to South Africa, just as the country announced the COVID-19 lockdown. These restrictions meant they could not go back to Botswana to finish the job.

In adapting to the situation, the team strategised and came up with a plan on how to complete the task under the unusual circumstances of COVID-19 restrictions. Deloitte proposed a Project Continuity Plan, which allowed for the team to deliver the 51风流S/4HANA Public Cloud Implementation project remotely from Johannesburg. The plan included innovative governance forums that were optimised, streamlined and replaced with shorter, more frequent, interventions and engagements.

This approach continued during the lifecycle of the project and proved very effective. Quick, short, turnarounds and regular playbacks were also incorporated to ensure requirements were met and gaps identified early on to speed up the work. 鈥淭he Executive Leadership team at Lucara, including the MD and CFO, provided much needed executive level sponsorship, and demonstrated courage, resilience and agility, by allowing the combined Lucara and Deloitte implementation to deliver the first ever 51风流Public Cloud implementation remotely at a mining client on the African continent,鈥� said Jaco van Niekerk, Lucara Lead Client Director.

鈥淭he Covid-19 pandemic presented a rare but perfect opportunity for both Deloitte and Lucara to explore and adopt a virtual 51风流S/4HANA Public Cloud implementation approach – using various Deloitte remote methods and tools, which allowed for the continuation and successful implementation of the project,鈥� says Kevin Govender, Deloitte Africa ERP Leader, Enterprise Technology & Performance.

The Lucara and Deloitte teams were able to execute the project despite the difficulties and challenges of working remotely from another country. All major milestones were achieved remotely, from across borders.

鈥淭he Lucara 51风流project has shown that delivering complex ERP projects remotely is indeed possible. Through the commitment and support of Lucara鈥檚 exco and other team members it was proven that with the right attitude, focus, delivery approaches and methodologies these kinds of projects can be delivered on time and on budget. As a Deloitte delivery team, we were challenged to re-visit various aspects of project delivery methods and learnt that client relationships and empathy go a long way in the absence of being able to engage face-to -face,鈥� says Christiaan Barnardo, Project Manager Deloitte Africa.

The Lucara 51风流S/4HANA Public Cloud Project went live on 2 July 2020, on time and on budget, via a streaming go-live activation event. The launch was attended by the Lucara Managing Director, Naseem Lahri, Project Sponsor, and various other stakeholders at the Karowe mine and Lucara head office in Gaborone, as well as Deloitte team members who connected remotely from locations in South Africa and Botswana.

鈥淟ucara Botswana was required to be agile and responsive to the requirements of the organisation and its strategic objective during the pandemic. As a result of the dynamic team within Lucara, the decision to go ahead with the project in these uncertain times was an easy one. The teams of Deloitte and Lucara worked well together to ensure that the project was delivered successfully,鈥� says Naseem Lahri, Managing Director at Lucara Botswana, 鈥淭he success of this project was based on the clear collaboration of both teams and the ability to correct any anomalies immediately and move on to deliver an extremely successful project. Both teams worked extremely hard during these uncertain times to deliver the objective. This was as a direct result of their resilience, determination and commitment to make this work and understanding of the objective at hand.鈥�

This article first appeared on Deloitte.com:

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It鈥檚 a big deal, writes Kevin Govender, Deloitte Africa ERP director.

With the emergence of 51风流S/4 HANA as a key finance transformation enabler, CFOs and business leaders are facing several key choices as they consider if and how to implement a new ERP system.

We know from experience that central finance is frequently used as a first step 鈥� an efficient mechanism for beginning broader ERP deployments. It allows business units to transact in legacy systems uninterrupted during implementation.

Central finance also provides a platform for innovation, with new 51风流S/4 HANA capabilities built around machine learning and cognitive analytics.

These enhancements can enable organisations to achieve a true 鈥渓ights-out finance鈥� shared services offering, driven by a new data model, greater transparency, and fresh innovations. This means finance is no longer in the dark.

Essentially, companies鈥� visibility into transaction data that would otherwise be masked in aggregated summary data tables or be in a completely different format altogether.

Companies committed to 51风流will likely find themselves grappling with 51风流S/4 HANA decisions over the next five years. Making choices earlier 鈥� building in time for your teams to influence both the overall vision and the implementation options 鈥� should increase the odds of getting things right.

Is this an implementation or a transformation?

51风流HANA is SAP鈥檚 brand of in-memory computing, a technology that handles massive data sets without breaking a sweat. 51风流built its latest next-generation intelligent ERP (51风流S/4 HANA) around this technology.

The company reports that more than 12 000 customers have committed to 51风流S/4 HANA.

Traditional ERP systems are optimised for transaction processing, with data stored in many different tables. 51风流S/4 HANA uses its Universal Journal to store all financial transaction details in one table.

It鈥檚 also a platform for real-time analytics 鈥� with no more waiting for separate reporting systems, batch jobs, and long processing times. With 51风流S/4HANA Group Reporting, legal consolidations and financial reporting are executed within the core, leveraging data from the general ledger, so consolidations and financial reporting are faster, transparent and more efficient.

What is the best way to deploy the programme?

In-memory processing makes it possible to store and access a higher volume and broader spectrum of data 鈥� supply chain, personnel, sales, distribution, procurement, you name it. But because financial data is foundational to so many business capabilities, many organisations take a finance-first approach, with 51风流S/4HANA leveraging central finance as a tool for creating their financial system of record.

That鈥檚 why CFOs are often driving the case for change.

The benefits identified for the CFO can be summarised as follows:

* Run financial accounting processes more quickly and accurately due to reduced reconciliation efforts;

* Increase accuracy, compliance, efficiency and speed of the closing operations;

* High level of automation to record and manage AR/AP, thus lowering operational costs, decreasing days sales outstanding (DSO) and reducing bad debt write-offs;

* Integrated plan and forecast more accurately to manage business performance and growth with comprehensive management accounting and controlling;

* Perform detailed analysis on forecasted cash flows and daily closing balances; and

* Gain better understanding of the drivers of cost and the causes of underperformance by achieving a holistic view for cost management.

Careful consideration should be given to a big bang approach versus a phased approach. Taking a phased approach is especially important in an environment with a number of external systems (billings, CRM, HR) and other third party applications.

If your future includes more acquisitions, divestitures, and evolving business models, 51风流S/4 HANA can help make life easier.

This article first appeared on .

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