Axpo's Transformation Journey: Streamlining Business Processes with SAP S/4HANA

About Axpo

• Headquartered in Baden, Switzerland
• Switzerland's largest producer of renewable energy
  
• 7'000+ employees
• Serves 30+ countries across Europe, North America and Asia

Several organisational adjustments in recent years, coupled with a heterogeneous, historically grown SAP environment, led Axpo to consolidate its system landscape. The aim was to harmonise and standardise consistent end-to-end business processes across all organisational units. The overarching goal of the oneERP programme is for all Axpo entities to transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition, thereby reducing complexity, preventing breaches of end-to-end processes, and enhancing controllability and company efficiency.

The previous heterogeneous ERP landscape, with three SAP systems for the entire group (P10, P30, CKW) and two Procurement systems, resulted in non-standardised business processes and a need for manual processes.

Axpo collaborated with Deloitte to reimagine the company's system landscape and create a new experience for its employees and customers. Leveraging the global Deloitte network and delivery hubs, as well as working alongside other implementation partners, the first Go-Live was realised in October 2023, focusing on three legal entities: Axpo Services AG, Axpo Solutions AG, and Axpo Holding AG. The following SAP solutions were key:

• Fiori Launchpad: The Fiori Launchpad, serves as the new landing page for all SAP transactions, serves as the web-version of SAP S/4HANA with tiles improving the day-to-day user experience.
• ProTime: The application for a fully digital process for expense and activity recording, replacing the old systems and ensuring a paperless process of handling, and archiving receipts. In the new ProTime, expense receipts can even be submitted by mobile devices on the go, archived 100% electronically and paid out after approval faster, on a weekly basis.
• Vendor Invoice Management (VIM): The new Accounts Payable workflow solution that is fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA optimises the process to receive, validate, code, approve and monitor vendor invoices, with the invoice approval now visible on one screen only.
• Ariba Guided Buying: Replacing the old COUPA (WeBuy) system, the ordering process becomes fully digital for goods and services.

Introduction of “No PO, No Pay": Approvals will be granted before a Purchase Order (PO) reaches the supplier. Supplier invoices without Purchase Order will no longer be paid. Invoice approval will be done automatically by the systems in case of an Invoice/PO match – without additional clicking or swiping.

Automatic approvals for orders below 500 CHF: Orders below CHF 500 will be processed with a passive 4-eyes review. The owner of the cost element to whom the order is placed, will receive an information e-mail about the order and a monthly report on the spends. A dedicated team was built to actively manage order confirmations and to support requesters when deviations between orders and order confirmations appear.

• Trading Interface: The new trading interface enables a seamless integration with a centralised energy trading platform, empowering Axpo to manage its real-time energy trading business.

The transition of employees to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition was supported by an organisational change management set-up. After the impacted stakeholder groups were identified (stakeholder analysis), the change impacts were categorised as process, technology, or people changes and the degree of change was captured (change impact assessment). To define the training needs of the impacted stakeholder groups, a training needs assessment was conducted, resulting in a structured end-user training plan. To inform the relevant stakeholders, Deloitte prepared an end-user communication plan showing all the planned communication messages per channel and audience.

• ProTime: Fully digital process for expense and activity recording (also via mobile), replacing legacy system and physical process of handling receipts.
• Vendor Invoice Management (VIM): fully integrated in SAP S/4HANA to optimise the process to receive, validate, code, approve and monitor vendor invoices.
• Ariba Guided Buying: fully digital process for ordering goods and services.
• The new trading interface enables a seamless integration with a centralised energy trading platform, empowering Axpo to manage its real-time energy trading business.
• Ca. 920 employees were impacted by the October 2023 go-live, having received the relevant trainings to use the new tools.
• Complete programme re-shape by Deloitte after initial main implementation partner unable to achieve pilot go-live.