Rapid Time to Value at Domo Chemicals: the SAP S/4HANA implementation

Name: Skinn Branding Agency
Price range: $

Dec 1, 2022

With the acquisition of Solvay's PolyTechnyl division in 2021, chemical company DOMO doubled its capacity. A major challenge, especially since the entire IT infrastructure had to be built from a blank template to integrate into the SAP DOMO landscape. Moreover, an aggressive TSA (transition Service Agreement) regarding legacy software imposed a strict deadline of 13 months. Additional challenge: the first milestone was the implementation for Spain, which had to be completed after three months.

Transferring 1,300 users to SAP without disruption

The division transferred accounts for more than 60% of DOMO's sales. 500 users had to switch systems in three countries: Spain, Poland and France. In total, more than 1,300 Domo employees were impacted, representing 65% of the company. Business continuity and quickly integrating the new production capacity within the SAP IT ecosystem were essential.

5 internal SAP resources... and Expertum.

The project was strategically very important for DOMO, amongst other strategic priorities on DOMO IT's agenda. With a strict deadline and only 5 internal SAP resources available, this project had to be on track from the start.

Stakeholders management along the way

Every successful project starts with the buy-in of all stakeholders. But time was lacking to first initiate a comprehensive survey round. The SAP project team, composed of DOMO and Expertum specialists, opted for a Minimum Viable Product approach in which the stakeholders were included in the SAP story while the implementation had already started. This was only possible by relying on the course set by the SAP team. At delivery, 95% of the business users were satisfied. Significantly higher than for the previous system, where only 1 in 2 users were satisfied.

Hurry and haste are particularly advantageous at DOMO

A clear plan, concrete objectives, a strong and courageous team that persevered and got all stakeholders behind it along the way: it all contributed to a strong result. Full implementation was achieved within three months. Implementation costs fell by 50% due to the tight focus, ERP maintenance costs fell by 30% thanks to the integration. Haste, urgency and cost reduction can go well together with a strong team.

This tastes like more

This project strengthened the conviction among all involved that the SAP-only approach is the right one for DOMO. The lessons learned will help with new implementations in the remaining branches. The robust SAP IT foundation now turns out to be the ideal basis for innovation. For example, applications are now being built with SAP Fiori that leverage the real-time capabilities of the SAP S/4HANA platform. Further integration of SAP S/4HANA with DOMO's cyber-security SIEM platform is also planned, with both platforms reinforcing each other to secure data at DOMO.