IT Transformation Case Study: $40M Saved & IT Repositioned for 40% Business Growth

Situation: A Business Targeting 40% Growth with an IT Organization That Couldn't Support It

New executive leadership was embarking on a strategic directive to achieve 40% growth in four years. Although ambitious, there was one major problem: the IT organization was in no position to support that level of growth. Over the prior 12 years, investment in IT had been kept to a minimum — executives viewed IT as a cost center providing minimal value, and deferred investment accordingly.

Challenge: 12 Years of Deferred IT Investment, Zero Disaster Recovery

With no meaningful IT investment for over 12 years beyond operational expenses, every layer of the IT stack was outdated — SAP, technical infrastructure, security, and the IT organization itself were all out of date, out of maintenance, and inadequate for the company's needs. The challenge was determining where to start, how much could realistically be accomplished, and what it would cost — all without disrupting ongoing business operations. This was a defining enterprise IT transformation challenge: modernize everything, preserve continuity, and do it within a defined budget and timeline.

Action: A Three-Year IT Modernization Roadmap

Full On Consulting worked with executives and business leaders to fully understand the current state, their business challenges, and the growth strategy ahead. We evaluated the entire IT organization — staffing model, applications, infrastructure, security, vendor licensing, and the data center. Our IT reorganization assessment identified the key gaps and opportunities. The objectives set by leadership were clear:

• Implement changes without impacting day-to-day business operations
• Update applications and infrastructure and return them to vendor support
• Secure the computing environment against threats
• Position the technical environment for substantial future growth

Full On Consulting developed a three-year IT growth strategy plan covering all IT initiatives, their costs, expected business savings, and the sequence in which applications would be migrated to modern platforms. The plan was presented to the executive team for review and approval. Key initiatives included:

• Defining an IT strategy and governance processes to review, align, and prioritize initiatives
• Implementing disaster recovery including a cloud-based SAP backup — the highest-urgency initiative given the complete absence of any recovery capability
• Upgrading SAP from ECC 5.0 to ECC 6.7 (severely out of support), delivering SAP licensing savings of $400K
• Upgrading the Warehouse Management System
• Upgrading the virtualization environment (out of support)
• Installing a new enterprise-scale SAN to support business growth
• Implementing an enterprise-scale firewall solution for perimeter security
• Implementing Salesforce CRM for quote generation and order creation
• Implementing a Data Warehouse and analytics solution for near-real-time visibility into financial performance, inventory, sales, and costs
• Upgrading B2B and B2C eCommerce sites from Magento 1.7 to 1.14 and migrating them to a new AWS cloud environment
• Implementing an integration platform to automate data brokerage between Salesforce, SAP, Magento, and the Data Warehouse
• Re-aligning the IT organization to better serve each business unit — a critical IT reorganization component

A critical success factor was securing executive and business leader buy-in throughout the program. Without their partnership, new technologies could not be implemented alongside the revamped business processes needed to sustain them. For the SAP upgrade alone, 50+ business leaders and analysts participated in verifying each business process functioned correctly — a model for business-IT alignment in enterprise IT transformation.

Result: $40M Saved, $400K in SAP Licensing Reduced, Business Positioned for 40% Growth

The results of this IT transformation success story were immediate and dramatic. The first initiative implemented was disaster recovery and business continuity planning — and it proved its value almost immediately. A short time after the cloud-based ERP backup was deployed, the data center caught fire due to faulty battery maintenance. The disaster recovery solution activated successfully, saving the company an estimated $40M and protecting their reputation with customers — a defining disaster recovery savings outcome.

The SAP upgrade from ECC 5.0 to ECC 6.7 delivered an additional $400K in SAP licensing savings by moving the client off an unsupported version and renegotiating licensing as part of the upgrade — a standout IT cost savings outcome that paid for a significant portion of the upgrade itself.

By the end of the three-year program, the IT organization had been fully modernized — applications updated, security hardened, infrastructure scaled, and the team realigned. The business had the technology foundation required to pursue its 40% growth target. These IT consulting results — $40M in disaster recovery savings, $400K in infrastructure transformation results, and an IT organization transformed from a cost center into a strategic growth enabler — represent one of Full On Consulting's most impactful IT modernization case study outcomes.