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Rémy Cointreau migrates SAP to S/4 Hana on Google Cloud
Cloud-based deployment speeds up scalability and provides integration with Salesforce and e-commerce systems
Rémy Cointreau, the company behind Cointreau liquor, Mount Gay rum and Rémy Martin cognac, has updated its SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) to S/4 Hana running on Google Cloud.
The drinks company has upgraded its SAP Business Warehouse, Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO) and SAP’s supply chain planning tool to S/4 Hana on Google Cloud.
The year-long project was led by oXya, the SAP consulting business of Hitachi Group, which provided end-to-end consulting around migration, from initial planning and advice around operating SAP in the cloud to delivery and implementation.
Google Cloud Professional Services (PSO) was used to run an SAP Healthcheck. Google said this helped identify the areas for improvement.
According to Google, PSO delivered recommendations, suggested ways to improve efficiencies, and checked that the environment was being implemented according to best practices for SAP on Google Cloud.
Sébastien Huet, CTO at Rémy Cointreau, said business users are already reaping benefits from the cloud deployment. “One of the key improvements is the ability to analyse live data,” he said. “That was not the case in the past. Previously, there was a 24-hour lag between the time the data came in and the moment it could be analysed. This is especially important on the production-management side, where every hour counts.”
The company is also using Google Cloud to connect its SAP backbone to key software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce and its e-commerce platform to improve visibility across the business. Huet added: “We can pull data in from multiple sources via integration and analyse it in a matter of days. We don’t need a three-month project to see value.”
According to Huet, the Google Cloud makes it faster and easier to adjust the technical operating environment. For instance, if a team needs to start performing a new resource-heavy analysis, Rémy Cointreau can expand capacity to meet demand within minutes, he said. The team can also roll back capacity so that it is only using the resources it needs.
“After going live with Google Cloud, we decided to upgrade memory to improve SAP performance,” said Huet. “Typically, this type of update would take five weeks. Now it’s five minutes.”
Read more about S/4 Hana
- The AWS approach for migrating SAP systems to the public cloud doesn’t emphasise a move to S/4 Hana but enables customers to go at their own pace.
- Understanding the benefits and limitations of S/4 Hana Cloud versions is essential to making the right choice. Here are some factors for consideration.
Huet said the company is now exploring how it can incorporate other Google Cloud services into its IT environment to process SAP data, to improve how it serves its customers.
Rémy Cointreau has started a proof of concept using Google BigQuery to support a traceability effort, which is particularly complex on a 100-year-old cognac. By connecting BigQuery to enterprise systems including SAP and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the company aims to aggregate data more efficiently and perform traceability more quickly and accurately.
“Google Cloud got the proof of concept for BigQuery running quickly,” said Huet. “It took a few days to decide exactly how we wanted to connect the data, but then the environment was online almost instantly. We are impressed with the speed at which we can get new technologies working in our environment.
“The strategic alliance between Google Cloud and SAP made us confident they were the right choice for us as companies that combine innovation with smart partnerships.”
