CASE STUDY

Ballance Agri-Nutrients go all in

on S/4HANA for world-class

supply chain excellence

Who is Ballance Agri-Nutrients?

Ballance is a New Zealand (NZ) farmer-owned co-operative that is committed to helping its customers farm more productively, profitably and sustainably. From a core business of fertiliser manufacturing, supply, sales and advice, Ballance has grown to offer farmers a full range of digitally enabled, science-backed products and services.

Ballance Agri-Nutrients (Ballance) first completed an ECC migration to theHANA database (Suite on HANA) and Brownfields conversion to S/4HANAFinance 1503 (add-on) in 2016, making them the first organisation in NewZealand to go-live on S/4HANA.

Ballance has since executed a second successful S/4HANA conversion,upgrading the rest of its SAP modules to the latest S/4HANA version as partof its digital roadmap for achieving world-class supply chain and logisticsexcellence. Here’s the story.

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There is no one size fits all approach when itcomes to ECC conversions to SAP’s next-generation intelligent ERP, S/4HANA. Everyjourney is different.

Impact assessment with a trial conversion in a Sandpit environmentprovided clarity on requirements for Business Partner Conversion and anestimate of custom code remediation using the ABAP Test Cockpit (ATC)tool.Impact on functional areas (SD, LE, MM, PM and PP, FI etc.), impacts onBW, integration, already deployed SAPUI5 apps, and add-ons were allassessed in the engagement.Impact assessment provided options for the level of Fiori that could beenabled (none to full).Trial conversion ensured that impacts were well understood, aiding thedecision on whether a technical or full conversion (including the massdeployment of Fiori) would be best.A template for conversion activities and estimates for delivery andtimelines were established.Where S/4HANA simplifications had eliminated or significantly changedin-use functionality, design for the replacement solutions was undertakento ensure impact, scope and business requirements were well understoodand agreed.

For enterprises looking to deploy S/4HANA, the challenge is to convert in theway that most suits your business operations and achieves the best possibleoutcomes for all stakeholders. Ballance wanted to upgrade all its SAP modulesto S/4HANA without impacting its complex integrated environment.

In early 2019, Ballance undertook a S/4HANA impact assessment and trialconversion with its trusted SAP partner Zag to fully understand theimplications of a conversion to S/4HANA and determine the best approach forBallance.

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Assessing the challenge and business implications

Impact assessment and trial conversion deliverables:

“Thanks to insights from ourS/4HANA impact assessment andtrial conversion with Zag, weunderstood the best conversion pathfor Ballance was to undertake atechnical conversion first, bringing allour business-critical modules to thelatest version with minimal businessdisruption, and then deploy the Fioriuser experience and othertransformational projects enabled byS/4HANA as separate, subsequentprojects,” says Tim Lloyd, ActingChief Digital Officer for Ballance.

The objective was to deliver aplatform fit for growth and digitaltransformation by laying down afuture-proof technical foundation fornew functional enhancementsto Ballance’s SAP landscape.

“It helps that Zag knows ourbusiness and industry reallywell, not to mention theyhave the most S/4HANAexperience in the region, sowe trusted them completelyto work alongside us on theconversion.”

Deciding on the best approach

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- Tim Lloyd, Acting Chief DigitalOfficer

“The prerequisiteengagements with Zag gavethe business a lot ofconfidence in the S/4HANAconversion and paved a solidfoundation for the project’sdelivery.”

Conversion activities To enable Ballance to continue withother important projects andbusiness-as-usual support duringthe S/4HANA conversion project, aparallel SAP ECC environment wasused to test, validate conversionscripts and dry run the conversion.Ballance and Zag used a full ECCsystem copy for Trial, Development(DEV) and Quality Assurance (QAS)conversions to ensure that allproblems that would come up duringproduction (PROD) were identifiedearly and addressed.

Full integration testing and issueremediation took place, and anychanges or developments inthe BAU landscape were importedinto the parallel landscape to ensurethat they would be fully supported inthe PROD conversion.

The go-live was executed across twocutover weekends, the first beingthe migration to HANA 2 and thesecond weekend being theconversion to 1809.

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The pre-conversion and systemconversion activities includedupgrades to Ballance’s add-ons andthe removal of older Fiori apps thatwere no longer supported. To ensurethat subsequent projects would beable to leverage Fiori apps availableon S/4HANA, Ballance’s existing Fiorienvironment was updated to enablespecific functionalities likeenterprise search and menu loading.

Ballance and Zag completed a full ECC6 Brownfields conversion to the lateston-premise version of S/4HANA - Enterprise Management 1809, on SAP’snewly enhanced in-memory database - HANA 2, in early 2020. Supply ChainManagement (SCM) and Sales & Distribution (SD) were among the business-critical modules migrated and upgraded along with Ballance’s existingS/4HANA Finance system.

The hassle-free, no disruption technical conversion

“The S/4HANA conversion was a critical digital enablement project forBallance and it went live on-time and hassle-free,” says Lloyd. “Zag’sexpertise, talent and one-team approach with Ballance were largecontributors to the conversion’s success.”

There were no major defects or impact to Ballance's integrated systems (incl.SAP SCM, SAP BW, BI, SAP Commerce and Marketing and other non-SAPsystems), nor was there any disruption to users or business operations. Theparallel DEV and QAS environments have become Ballance’s new DEV andQAS systems operating alongside its converted PROD system. Support wasswiftly handed over in the intended 30 days.

“Beneficially, the project came in slightly under budget, so we have reallocatedthese funds to the transformative functional projects kicking-off on the backof the technical conversion, targeting key areas of our digital supply chain forimprovement,” says Lloyd.

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Conversion outcome

“The S/4HANA conversion was a critical digitalenablement project for Ballance and it went liveon-time and hassle-free. Zag’s expertise, talentand one-team approach with Ballance were largecontributors to the conversion’s success.”

- Tim Lloyd, Acting Chief Digital Officer

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For more information visit:

To get in contact email:

W // zag.team

E // info@zag.team

CASE STUDYSAP S/4HANA

Undertaking a technical conversionto S/4HANA as a first step (asopposed to a Big-Bang conversionwith Fiori deployment across thewhole business) has fast-trackedBallance's journey to S/4HANA,minimising overall disruption to thebusiness and the amount of trainingand change management required.

Ballance has insured its digitalinvestment by being on the latestSAP versions, making it sustainablefor longer.

The swift completion of this technicalconversion allows Ballance to makeuse of new S/4HANA applicationsand technologies, modern code forfunctional enhancements and, mostimportantly, provides an enablementplatform and pathway for thedeployment and transition of thebusiness to the Fiori user experience.Beneficially, Ballance can plan andtailor the rollout of Fiori to suit itsbusiness (e.g by department, site,strategic priority) and in the way thatderives maximum value andtransformation to its operationalprocesses.

“With S/4HANA we have enhancedour technical and functional systemcapability, allowing us to improve,standardise and optimise areas ofour supply chain as part of Ballance’sWorld-Class Supply Chainprogramme,” says Lloyd. “Off theback of the technical conversion, weare kicking off four projects with Zagto address pain points in our logisticsoperations with the help of Fiori andother cutting-edge SAP and partnertechnologies.”

“We look forward to executing thisnext innovation chapter in our digitalroadmap with our trusted SAPpartner, Zag.”

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Future enhancements and Fiori deployments