Petrol station retailer EG Group opts for Rise with SAP to fuel growth

EG Group, a petrol station and food retailer founded in Blackburn, is looking to improve its operations with a move to Rise with SAP on an SAP private cloud, alongside an implementation of the SuccessFactors HR system from the same supplier.

EG was co-founded as Euro Garages by brothers Mohsin Issa and Zuber Issa in 2001. It owns and operates more than 6,200 forecourt sites in 10 international markets in Europe, the US and Australia, with around 50,000 employees. It has 62 retailer brands active on its sites, including grocery and food outlets.

In a joint statement, the brothers said: “We have engaged SAP to deliver a powerful, cloud-based platform, which will help drive transformation, automate business processes, enable our teams to succeed and, more importantly, further enhance decision-making.”

SAP launched the Rise “business transformation as a service” package in January 2021. It is a subscription service that packages managed cloud infrastructure and managed services into one contract, and is based on the supplier’s flagship S/4 Hana enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, based on its high-speed database Hana.

According to a statement from SAP, the move to Rise will give the retailer an “agile and single digital core platform” to help it scale its dynamic business and “a universal ERP template to onboard acquisitions onto”, allowing EG Group to remain agile and responsive to business and consumer needs.

“This new core platform will provide financial reporting insights into all its businesses utilising SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Group Reporting,” it added.

EG has, through acquisition, acquired many different ERP systems across countries on different versions and templates. Its acquisitions list is long, including Asda and the Leon fast food chain in the UK, and Esso in Germany. It also bought the largest KFC franchisee in March 2020.

This, according to the statement, has created “challenges in sourcing real-time data and visibility to make business decisions” but “SAP will help to remove this complexity and provide EG Group with real-time consistent data”.

In an interview with Computer Weekly, Scott Russell, the SAP executive board member who heads its customer success activities globally, said, of the EG Group deal: “They are transforming with Rise, but also supported with SuccessFactors in supporting their forecourt sites around the world.

“It’s been about transforming siloed finance and HR systems with a global platform that is then able to give them reach, efficiency and agility. There’s a lot of emphasis on the data that enables them to make fast decisions.”

Graham Billsborough, CIO of EG Group, said: “Partnering with SAP has already allowed EG Group to realise benefits across functions such as finance, IT, HR, learning and development. By extending the strategic partnership and working even more closely with SAP, the intent is to design and build a more comprehensive technology solution that will be used as a unified global platform.

“Our ambition is to simplify the current SAP system landscape, through Rise, realising new business capabilities through digital innovation.”

For the supplier, Rohit Nagarajan, president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa North at SAP, added: “We are incredibly proud of the established relationship we have with EG Group and this next phase of the company’s growth and transformation is a truly exciting step.

“Not only for our partnership and what we want to achieve together, but for the way in which EG Group’s move to the cloud with Rise with SAP and S/4Hana will create the necessary foundations to accelerate growth.”

In the statement, both parties said they would collaborate “to make a difference to [EG’s] wider communities, via learning and development and establishing a centre of excellence which will look to employ and train talent from the local community and certify with SAP accreditation at the end of the training”.