SAP
Hershey’s outsources SAP roll-out to Accenture
US chocolate maker has signed up Accenture to support its SAP Hana S/4 implementation
Chocolate manufacturer The Hershey Company has contracted outsourcing giant Accenture to roll out SAP’s S/4Hana enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as part of a programme to make manufacturing and supply more efficient and better understand what customers want.
The company wants to reduce its costs and increase sales through the in-memory version of SAP’s Business Suite ERP platform technology.
“This will enable us to increase competitive advantage and support our growth ambition through greater collaboration and innovation, as well as service delivery built around the needs of our customers,” said Terry O’Day, chief product supply and technology officer at Hershey’s.
“We selected Accenture for its understanding of our industry, technology credentials and proven track record in delivering enterprise transformation at scale,” he said.
Hershey is a long-term SAP user, with its first implementation of SAP’s R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) package, in 1999.
It retained SAP despite initial troubles, when a $112m (£72m) ERP project caused order processing problems that hampered the company's ability to ship products to retailers at one of the busiest times in its business cycle. The problems caused the company to fall short of its third-quarter sales target by $100m (£65m).
Three years later and after consolidating the processing of more than 95% of its revenue and business transactions within a single system and increasing consistency, visibility and real-time access to critical business information, it upgraded mySap.com.
Read more about SAP Hana S/4
- Research sponsored by SAP consultancy Centiq finds SAP customers maturing their use of SAP Hana and S/4 Hana.
- SAP has announced 2017 cloud revenues of €3.769bn, 16% of its overall revenue of $23.461bn. This is a 2% increase in cloud, as a proportion of overall, revenue over 2016.
- SAP's new plan to extend on-premises ERP human capital management support from 2025 to 2030 is raising eyebrows.
In the UK, a recent study carried out by research firm Coleman Parks for SAP consultancy Centiq found that users are pushing forward with more sophisticated uses of the supplier’s Hana database and its S/4 Hana ERP system.
The Centiq state of SAP Hana 2018 report is said to “demonstrate SAP Hana’s importance to businesses as a catalyst for innovation” and revealed “90% of projects are driven by internal business strategy teams”.
