Keytree and SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Transforming global business in the digital age
Established in 2016, pladis Global is a biscuit, chocolate and confectionery company that comprises longstanding, pedigree brands including McVities, Flipz and Turtles in the USA and Ülker (Turkey). pladis is also proud to distribute a carefully curated, GODIVA Everyday Luxury chocolate range exclusively for consumer packaged goods channels around the world. The organisation boasts annual revenues £2.3bn and operates in over 130 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
As a young organisation with some 20,000 employees and 34 manufacturing facilities and distribution centres spread across the globe, pladis made the strategic decision in 2017 to drive a new consumer-centric operating model, streamline operations and enable profitable growth by implementing a new digital technology platform. A platform that would allow the organisation to harmonise data, remove complexity and accelerate innovation and speed-to-market in a constantly changing, competitive environment.
The goal for pladis is to become the global leader in confectionery by driving a truly consumer-centric business model, enabled by agile execution capabilities as the foundation for growth and continual innovation. The S/4HANA Cloud based solution will provide a standard business model across geographies while allowing localised flexibility and ease of adopting new functionality. It will also enable collaboration with customers, partners and consumers to accelerate innovation.
To realise this vision, pladis has embarked on a Digital Transformation journey to create new business capabilities, relevant to the digital world, including being more agile with customers and consumers and adapt quickly to changing market and consumer needs and preferences.
The first step on the journey was S/4HANA Cloud – SAP’s Digital Core. Keytree was selected as the SAP partner of choice to handle the implementation and rollout, following in-depth discussions and explorations from both parties as to define the organisational and project objectives. The pladis team were eager to maximise Keytree’s extensive knowledge of the digital landscape and strong innovation credentials. Keytree’s wide-ranging expertise in ERP and global recognition for SAP Cloud Platform apps was a perfect match for the Digital Transformation voyage on which pladis was embarking. The relationship has proved very successful with the first stage of the implementation for pladis North America live in May 2018 – with Australia and China next in line.