The Challenge

Etex is a pioneer in the manufacture of lightweight construction materials, enabling people worldwide to build safe, sustainable, smart and beautiful buildings. Founded in 1905, its innovations and acquisitions in fire protection, plaster technology, modular construction and engineering have revolutionised the construction industry, aligning it with Etex’s mission of inspiring ways of living.

Etex sees its products as part of the solution to combating climate change, as they are recyclable and up to 45% less emissions-intensive to produce than traditional construction methods. The company has signed the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and is fully committed to helping achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in areas where its products can have an impact.

Migrating from a legacy SAP environment

Etex has strong ambitions to grow its business and develop the company’s sustainable product lines through internal innovation and further acquisitions. For this, it needs a strong enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform with modern, business-enhancing functionality. Its legacy SAP ECC platform was facing end of support and Etex opted to take the opportunity to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA.

This was a major modernisation project and Etex conducted a comprehensive multi-year assessment to determine the right approach. It opted for a brownfield migration, carrying some business-critical processes and functionality over to S/4HANA and leveraging new S/4HANA features where possible.

Etex wanted a world-class combination of systems integrators and technology partners to handle the migration and conversion. It therefore engaged Cognizant and SAP to deliver the end-to-end project.

Cognizant's approach

A target of 12 months was set for the whole environment to go live on S/4HANA. Throughout, Cognizant, Etex and SAP worked in partnership to ensure a smooth and successful project delivery with all parties working together to anticipate, address and resolve any issues.

Delivering a successful modernisation

The modernisation involved first developing a thorough understanding of the SAP environment.  A full system readiness analysis was conducted to understand which aspects of the environment would need remediation before the move.  A conversion plan for the migration was then created, using best-practice processes and frameworks.

To de-risk the project, a six-cycle migration was planned. The cycles started with the sandbox environment, being the lowest risk, and progressed through to the production environment. Each cycle involved Etex, Cognizant and SAP working together to convert to S/4HANA, implement mandatory simplification items, make custom code corrections and migrate the data. The learnings from each cycle were applied in subsequent cycles, in readiness for seamless cut-over and go live.

As part of our end-to-end approach, Cognizant also implemented a best-practice test management strategy that Etex can use for future business transformation projects. 

All six cycles were completed as planned, with Etex going live on S/4HANA in a single weekend at the end of the <12-month period.

"I am deeply impressed by the professionalism and collaborative spirit of the joint project team comprising Etex, SAP and Cognizant. Their unwavering commitment and seamless coordination allowed us to successfully deliver this critical project on time, without any disruption to our business operations. - Dirk Altgassen, CDIO, Etex

Business outcomes