The first phase of Fujitsu’s move to a single SAP ERP – the SAP S/4HANA hosted in Microsoft Azure– will be implemented in its headquarters within fiscal 2024.
Fujitsu, a longstanding SAP partner, is deepening its alliance with the German software company under a five-year plan to move all its ERP systems on SAP S4/HANA. The project dubbed OneERP+ is designed to implement a standardized ERP across its global operations and position Fujitsu as a digital transformation company– in a repositioning costing around $760 million.
The multi-year DX project was the brainchild of Fujitsu CEO Takahito Tokita and is led by EVP and chief data and process officer Shunsuke Baba according to The Register. The multinational technology company, which currently has about 124,200 employees, is expected to take in an additional 1,500 employees during the peak of the project implementation.
According to Baba, the OneERP+ program was launched in the second half of 2020 with the objective of building “a foundation to support the purpose-driven and data-driven management”. Fujitsu currently runs over 4,000 systems for internal business and multiple instances of SAP-based systems along with those developed in-house for ERP. Sharing about the hurdles of the strategic shift, he added:
“There are many different business processes and systems for each business and region. One of our key challenges is how to thoroughly standardize all business process data and simplify it as a basic system.”
Moving to One SAP ERP
The mammoth undertaking aims to move all of Fujitsu’s ERP systems to a single SAP S/4HANA platform, hosted in Microsoft Azure and streamline various business processes throughout its global operations. Furthermore, SaaS front-end applications are pegged to run in Azure along with other instances hosted by AWS.
“Our goal with the initiative is to organize and integrate them all at once to standardize and streamline operations in a holistic manner,” Baba added.
The ERP integration project includes managing multiple key business processes such as sales, accounting, procurement, and project management data, among many others. As part of the five-year plan, Fujitsu has been leveraging SAP Concur since fiscal 2022.
“This is a very challenging project, and although it is actually promoted with the inclusion of add-on development, it is not merely an ERP introduction project but is also promoted as a large-scale reform project at the management level on the premise of a large-scale transformation of business processes,” explained Baba. “The organization consists of a team that designs business transformation from a business perspective and a team that implements it as an IT system.”
He highlighted that Fujitsu aims to illustrate to its customers a successful digital transformation and encourage them to embark on their own DX journey. Baba said that the company has the mission to showcase reference models of practical knowledge based on Fujitsu’s own experience and by being the ‘first penguin’ to take the plunge.
As an exemplar of DX with a 40-year global partnership with SAP in technology and services, Fujitsu has recently been recognized as the newest SAP partner to join the Regional Strategic Services Partner (RSSP) initiative launched in Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) to further reinforce the SAP ecosystem within the region. Fujitsu’s participation in the SAP RSSP effort is a major step in realizing the company’s ambition for “Business Applications” to facilitate more sustainable business transformation as part of Fujitsu Uvance, the company’s portfolio of global solutions aimed at realizing a sustainable world.