SAP S/4HANA Migration Enables Innovation at Paragon 28, Merit Energy
In a recently held session at the SAPPHIRE NOW 2021 online conference, SAP customers Paragon 28 Inc. and Merit Energy Company highlighted the importance of SAP S/4HANA migration in going down the path of becoming an intelligent enterprise.
Before delving into how SAP S/4HANA is being used by Paragon 28 and Merit Energy to become more adaptable and responsive to changing business requirements, Mary Sibley, Vice President of SAP S/4HANA Center of Excellence at SAP, firstly explained the reason behind SAP’s passion for working with customers on their journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise. In the virtual event, Sibley shared:
“We believe that an intelligent ERP provides the best opportunity to impact positively revenue, productivity, asset utilisation and support for strategy.”
Sibley went on to share examples in each of the mentioned categories. For revenue, there is the ability to offer products as a service. Meanwhile, for productivity, robotic process automation technology is incorporated in SAP S/4HANA to allow staff to automate rote processes and devote more time to higher-value work.
For asset utilisation, SAP S/4HANA delivers solutions to assist companies’ transition from scheduled to predictive maintenance, resulting in increased equipment uptime and decreased service costs. Lastly, for strategy, real-time analytics capabilities in the modern ERP system enable data-driven decision-making.
“It is really the combination of embedded analytics, real-time analytics, and an app-like interface, surrounded by really strong business processes,” Sibley added.
Utilising the Capabilities of SAP S/4HANA Migration
Representatives from Paragon 28 Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of medical solutions for the foot and ankle industry, and Merit Energy Company, a private firm specialising in direct investments in oil and gas assets, joined the virtual event to further discuss how their companies embrace SAP’s vision of an intelligent enterprise using SAP S/4HANA as the ERP foundation.
Established in 2010 to address the needs of the foot and ankle market segment, Yuliya Aslan, Vice President of Information Technology at Paragon 28, said that the Colorado-based company is implementing SAP S/4HANA to serve as the core to fulfill its future growth and innovation needs. During the discussion, Aslan was asked about what drove the company’s decision to go for SAP S/4HANA migration. She stated:
“We already have several exciting projects on the horizon that will incorporate intelligent technologies in the future. But for the near future, we wanted to implement the core SAP functionality, and that will put us in the position of stability and growth to look ahead and be innovative.”
According to Aslan, Paragon 28 expects to utilise real-time analytics capabilities to improve data accuracy and visibility into its daily business processes. Additionally, she said that the company needs real-time visibility into what’s going on in the medical device industry so that it can make appropriate decisions, which could range from production to distribution to safety.
“For example, our business is all about enabling surgeries, and if there is an emergency surgery and our inventory is needed, we need to see this so we can react and ship quickly. That is key to our growth and success,” Aslan further explained.
Leveraging SAP Solutions
As an early adopter for new releases, Merit Energy has been using SAP solutions for over 15 years — testing and implementing new enhancement packages as they become available. According to Russ Hulme, Group Manager for SAP Systems at Merit Energy, the SAP S/4HANA Movement program was essential in the company’s success.
He explained that SAP worked closely with the Merit Energy team and went on a fact-finding mission, which enabled them to create intentional conversations that got their employees excited about the possibilities that SAP technology has to offer.
During the SAPPHIRE NOW 2021 session, Hulme shared that Merit Energy believes that the value of the intelligent enterprise is in enabling not just faster business decisions, but also in allowing for innovative and more informed business decision-making. He added:
“We already knew what the capabilities of HANA offered us, but in seeing what S/4HANA has to offer with the integration of the underlying data models, we’ve been able to break things down again at a more granular level and do our analysis better.”
“We didn’t move to S/4HANA just to go faster or just to be more efficient. We moved to be better, to grow, to set ourselves up to be innovative, and that’s just what we’ve seen,” Hulme concluded.
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