delaware 100 per cent in the cloud with SAP S4HANA

Jun 29, 2017

news

Antwerp, 29 June 2017 - delaware today announced that it has placed its entire IT infrastructure in the cloud. Since May 2017, the company has run 100% of its operations on SAP S/4HANA® Cloud. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is SAP’s next-generation cloud ERP suite that allows both transactional and analytics data to reside in one system, providing users with real-time data analysis. In this process, delaware co-innovated alongside SAP to act according to its own creed: growing towards “truly smart.”

“When we defined our strategic plan for 2020, we were convinced cloud would impact our world, and we embraced change by engaging on a co-innovation journey with SAP to build SAP S/4HANA Cloud with support for professional services,” said Filip Decostere, partner at delaware. The key driver in delaware’s cloud-first strategy is effectiveness. “delaware’s workplace is now built on state-of-the-art technology, enabling our people to be more effective. The change is already starting to pay dividends in how we organize and manage our work,” he added.

delaware embarked on its co-innovation journey with SAP to contribute to the product development and to share its extensive knowledge of the services business to help build a cloud solution fit-for-purpose for professional services. At the same time, this initiative allowed delaware to extend its expertise, both on the functional and the architectural side. For its outstanding contributions as a partner, the company recently won the SAP® Pinnacle Award for SAP S/4HANA Partner of the Year – Cloud.

In the end, cloud isn’t about upgrading technologies; it’s about fundamentally changing the way organizations work. SAP S/4HANA Cloud was designed to help a company run simple in a digital economy. It delivers the power of a digital core with the key benefits expected from cloud solutions and offers increased simplicity, productivity and flexibility, as well as instant insights thanks to the power of embedded analytics.

"Today, it is premature to define the return on investment of the change for delaware," according to Steven Fleurent, CIO at delaware. “Since all employees are still going through a learning phase, it is too early to point out the entire profit it will bring us. Getting acquainted with a new system always is an exploration,” he added. “Yet we have already noticed improvement in several aspects, and have full confidence in the increased rapidity and fluency of all processes, such as starting up projects and invoicing. This is why we opted for the cloud solution in the first place. On top of that, delaware is convinced the new system will improve intercompany projects and communication, which is important for a fast-growing organization that operates globally.”