JBS Foods Reduces Migration Risk to SAP S/4HANA with Selective, Tiered Approach

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JBS Foods (“JBS”) successfully concludes the first phase in their multi-year SAP S/4HANA transformation initiative.

JBS ($70b+) is the largest protein producer in the world. They employ ~245,000 team members, operate over 400 production plants, and their products provide meals for customers across 190 countries. Core operations for their pork, chicken, and beef businesses run on a single global instance of SAP ECC 6.0.

As of February 20^th 2023, JBS has successfully moved one third of their US business to SAP S/4HANA with Syskoplan Reply as their main implementation partner. A very short downtime window at go-live was met with Syskoplan Reply’s expertise leading the transformation, leveraging cbs’ Enterprise Transformer (ET) resulting in 60+ legal entities in North America now live on S/4HANA with minimal business disruption. Syskoplan Reply and cbs’ ET combined functional, business process, and technical experience to deliver a flexible selective data transition to SAP’s newest platform for JBS.

“We selected Syskoplan Reply because of their approach and cultural fit .... dedicated internal team … required outside expertise and tools … advise where to innovate and improve processes and data. ” – Colin Cole, IT Director and Rogerio Peres, Chief Information Officer

The new system is lean, with only two years of fully transformed transactional data history. JBS took this opportunity to adjust its financial structures leveraging a more streamlined global chart of accounts and new cost center and profit center hierarchies. JBS implemented over 50 key innovations, was able to shed large amounts of outdated and obsolete custom code, introduced over 120 FIORI apps, harmonized master data, and renewed analytics capabilities by replacing its legacy BW with BW/4HANA.

As a long-time SAP customer, JBS started to plan for SAP S/4HANA in 2019. The internal team quickly concluded that a greenfield implementation would have been too complex and disruptive to the business. A brownfield conversion was considered high-risk as a single-instance ECC system requires conversion as a whole in one single, global big bang. Selective Data Transition helped manage risk by breaking up the S/4HANA transformation into more manageable waves while allowing to reduce the overall data footprint and transforming financial structures. Additional waves are scheduled to continue through 2026.

Learn how the largest meat producer in the world, JBS Foods, is navigating through their SAP S/4HANA journey at SAP Sapphire and ASUG Annual Conference on May 16-17 in Orlando.

Reply

Reply specializes in the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. Reply is a network of highly specialized companies supporting key industrial groups in the definition and development of business models enabled for the new paradigms of AI, cloud computing, digital media and the Internet of Things. Reply services include: Consulting, System Integration and Digital Services www.reply.com

Syskoplan Reply

Syskoplan Reply focuses on business process consulting, supported by SAP products. Syskoplan Reply delivers business and SAP consulting globally covering all world regions with a strong focus on the Americas and Europe. Reply’s SAP team has approximately 900 consultants world-wide. The SAP competency focuses on clients that manufacture discrete and repetitive products. www.syskoplan-reply.com

cbs Corporate Business Solution

Corporate Business Solutions (cbs) is a global SAP consultancy for digital transformation and enterprise-wide solutions. Founded in 1995, cbs has expanded to over 25 offices worldwide allowing delivery of high-quality SAP consulting services to a global customer base through a network of over 1000 consultants. Leveraging the industry leading cbs ET Enterprise Transformer® software, cbs delivers complex business transformations with experienced functional and technical consultants. www.cbs-consulting.com/us