ERP in the cloud: S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe acts as an investor responsible for, among other things, the preparation and later construction of Poland’s first nuclear power plant. This strategic investment in an emission-free energy source to be located in Pomerania at the “Lubiatowo-Kopalino” area aims to enhance Poland’s energy security, support the European Union’s climate goals, and contribute to the economic development of the country and the region. The investment has gained momentum in recent years, now becoming the most advanced nuclear project in Poland.

In 2023, key administrative decisions were made – environmental and location ones. They gave the green light to commence more advanced work in the ongoing project. In the same year, PEJ signed its most important contract to date – for the design of a nuclear power plant – with a consortium of American companies Westinghouse-Bechtel.  The investor also began personnel training activities for the emerging nuclear sector with Poland’s key universities. One of the important business moves was also the selection and implementation of a system supporting the management of the company and its human resources.

Management of the company’s key business processes has been based on specialized tools offered by the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software suite SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. HR and payroll processes are handled in SAP SuccessFactors.

The project was carried out jointly with All for One Poland and with the support of SAP Poland. The first project work began in July 2023, and the system was launched at the beginning of February 2024. The use of the top-end functionalities offered by SAP reduces the costs of system operation while maintaining a high level of data security, and helps standardize important business processes in Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe. The choice of the public cloud model reduces the need to invest in your own IT infrastructure and provides flexibility in the selection of system maintenance partners.

The S/4HANA Cloud system supports more than 600 model processes allowing the company to select the functions most suited to its business needs and possibly modify them. Project management and documentation creation are supported by modern, dedicated tools. The use of leading software and digitization tools increases the level of security for the implementation of the nationally strategic project. The choice of solutions from the SAP portfolio stems from the need to optimize the IT systems used so far and ensure the efficiency of corporate processes.

The project covered the functionalities necessary for the company’s core business processes in the asset management, purchasing, finance and human resources areas. The implemented system provides a stable foundation for carrying out this multi-area project.

From PEJ’s perspective, the most important goals of the project were stated as follows:

• optimization and simplification of processes in the areas covered by the implementation, building system solutions tailored to PEJ’s actual needs, and elimination of data duplication in different systems;
• centralizing responsibility for processes and increasing internal competence;
• maintaining internal control and expanding reporting capabilities;
• ensuring the smooth process flow in integration with other systems (workflow, eB2B platform);
• providing users with an efficient, accessible, and user-friendly system.

For the HR and payroll area, the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution has been implemented.

Implementing the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system to support company management is a complex undertaking. Completing it in just eight months is a success in itself. It is also worth noting that the project for PEJ ended within the planned budget and scope.

This success is no accident. At its core lies the effective implementation of  established objectives and shared commitments, which were clearly communicated to project participants from the outset of collaboration.  Below, we present several key ones.

In selecting IT solutions and systems to support management, Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe uses off-the-shelf, commercially available applications in a cloud model, among other solutions.  Such a path chosen by the company for maintaining and developing tools provides clear support for management processes in the organization.

The benefits of this approach include a short time from the purchase of a license to the go-live of the solution, ease of maintaining implemented enhancements, as well as updates and new versions available as part of a subscription. The most part of the cost of operating them, resulting from subscription fees, is predictable. In addition, the company does not bear the cost of hiring or leasing IT specialists for the chosen technologies.

The price to pay for the benefits of cloud services is the readiness to adjust organizational processes to the standard solutions offered by these applications and to curb the appetite for “tailoring systems to fit our needs.”

The choice of the aforementioned solutions was determined by the clear advantages, including the rapid deployment of the proposed solutions, thereby enabling the organization to be managed in accordance with legal requirements and business expectations.

Wherever possible, we stick to the system standard – another tenet of this project that has been instrumental in meeting the tight schedule. It is a far-reaching acceptance of the processes predefined in the system and limiting configuration changes to the necessary minimum (e.g., if required by law or critical organizational requirements such as data access). And, of course, no so-called minor improvements, dedicated configurations or shortcuts.

At first glance, this may seem simple, but in fact it is not easy to convince experienced accountants, payroll or purchasing specialists that they should adapt to the system, and it is not the system that should adapt to them.  It is also not easy to restrain the appetite for minor extensions that could potentially ease their work, but in the first stage of the project they act as sand thrown into the gears of the project in full swing.

Consistent maintenance of the planned objectives allowed for keeping the initial scope of the project and ensuring a strong adherence to model processes.  This also contributed to on-schedule progress and helped keep the budget under control.

The S/4 system is currently dynamically developed by the manufacturer. It is possible that further updates will complement the solution standard with expected features. Another argument in favor of this approach is that a potential second phase of implementation is a good time to introduce extensions. By then, users will have become well-acquainted with the system capabilities, gained experience working with it, and the proposed extensions will have become more mature as a result.

The essence of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud project approach is a ready-made set of model SAP Best Practices processes, requiring only parameterization, which makes it possible to hand over the processes to users for testing just a few months after the project launch.

SAP Best Practices is part of the SAP Activate methodology incorporating elements of agile methodologies. It includes six phases: Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy and Run.

The methodology and a set of accompanying tools create a coherent project environment that organizes and allows for supervision of the work of the involved teams according to the schedule, supports testing and preparation of documentation.

In accordance with the methodology, the initial phase of the project includes Fit-to-Standard analysis and workshops carried out on a dedicated Starter system. Future system users can gain hands-on experience with the ready-made processes including sample data by navigating through the various interfaces, reports, and printouts.

Early involvement of the project team in working with the system along with available knowledge resources (comprehensive Self-Enablement and Onboarding) allow for a quick understanding of its capabilities and thorough preparation for production use. However, this requires allocating time for the project participants’ own work. At PEJ, this condition was met. The company’s management not only clearly communicated the importance of the project to the organization, but also created favorable working conditions for the project team.

An integral part of the methodology is Cloud ALM, a cloud solution available as part of the S/4HANA Cloud subscription. This is a rich environment supporting the implementation and management of SAP systems, with full substantive documentation (including business concepts, tools for accelerating scope preparation, ready-made schedules, tasks, implementation strategies, accelerators).  In addition, CALM includes tools to support documentation of tasks and project decisions and to track testing and ongoing project work (scenarios, schedule).

The use of these project tools at PEJ has significantly reduced project preparation time. The available project tool environment also greatly facilitates its organization and communication.

According to Eurostat, 55.7 percent of Polish companies are already using cloud services (which is higher than the European Union average of 45.2 percent). These figures are higher year after year. However, they are often solutions supporting ancillary processes, perceived as less important, non-critical to the company’s operations. Moving systems that support financial management or payroll processing to the cloud can be a difficult psychological barrier to overcome.

The example of the PEJ company shows the benefits of such a model – quick access to a functioning system with lower project costs kept within budget. As part of the package, the company has gained access to know-how in the form of ready-to-use processes in key management areas, which is a value in itself for a greenfield company.

The implementation of SAP SuccessFactors at Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe brings a number of benefits in the area of human resources management. The implemented SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll modules are an ideal base for building a comprehensive cloud solution that can cover all key HR processes, such as recruitment, talent management, training, compensation management, goal management and payroll accounting.

An integrated system from a single manufacturer eliminates the need to integrate multiple tools from different providers. As a cloud-based solution, SuccessFactors can be easily scaled according to an organization’s needs, without the need to invest in additional infrastructure. The system offers mobile applications, allowing employees and managers to access HR information and perform tasks from any location and device. SuccessFactors provides advanced analytical tools, and is constantly updated to ensure compliance with the latest laws and regulations. SAP SuccessFactors helps streamline HR processes, attract and retain talented employees, and obtain valuable analytical data to make better HR decisions.

Kordian Polarny, SAP HR and SuccessFactors Team Leader, All for One Poland

The implementation we carried out is the first SAP S/4HANA and SuccessFactors implementation in the public cloud model in Poland. Together with our partner All for One Poland and with the support of SAP Poland, we did a tremendous job in less than eight months. This was possible because our cooperation was based on mutual understanding and open relationships, as well as the search for constructive solutions. It can be confidently said that the PEJ team has undergone an internal transformation, and our partners have gained valuable new experiences, enriching us all with something that is hard to measure.

It is worth noting that the implementation of SAP S/4HANA in the public cloud model differs from traditional implementations of the “classic" SAP system, which was a major challenge for everyone, but also acted as a significant facilitator in many area. This is because the system offers ready-made processes that only need to be customized, and the very management of the project and creation of documentation is supported by modern, dedicated tools.

Magdalena Włodarczyk, SAP implementation project manager, Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe