Conversion to State-Of-The-Art SAP Technology

The SAP system used at the Bertelsmann Foundation was to be shut down at the end of 2019. Among other things, this meant that a replacement for financial accounting had to be found. As a modern foundation that is open to innovation, the Bertelsmann Foundation was therefore looking for an IT service provider that would fit in with them and could also provide appropriate impetus and advice. The solution offered had to be integrated into the existing system landscape, but also have openness for innovations and future developments.

Particularly against the background of further automation and increased efficiency of processes and workflows, a transformation of the system and process landscape in favor of a higher degree of automation was explicitly desired. The competent and professional implementation of all necessary and expedient services related to the financial accounting system and the corresponding system hosting as well as application management tasks, while at the same time keeping costs economically justifiable, were in the foreground. In the end, Arvato Systems' competence was convincing for this project.

In several project workshops, the customer had the opportunity to outline his requirements in a structured manner and define the necessary adjustments with the experienced SAP consultants from Arvato Systems. Then, through a very smooth Unicode conversion with gradual adaptations of the existing programs, the international standard of character representation was followed. Thus the basis for the next steps was laid. This was followed by a sandbox conversion to gain initial experience (for example, how the in-house and third-party products used "react"). At the same time, the customer experienced his first contact with the new system world and the current standards implemented there (such as the mapping of the business partner). The next step was the test system conversion, which involved working with existing data and focused on interface testing. After six months of intensive project duration with an international team, several successfully mastered challenges, and customized solutions, the system could be migrated smoothly to S/4HANA thanks to closely coordinated detailed planning.