Situation
A prominent $400M national food and beverage manufacturer and distributor had not updated their SAP system in 15 years. What had started as a cost-saving decision by prior executive leadership had quietly compounded into one of the most significant operational risks in the company’s history.
Over the years, the business had grown substantially — adding business units, stores, and distribution centers — and SAP had been customized extensively along the way to support that growth. But without a corresponding investment in upgrades, the platform had drifted further and further from both SAP’s current capabilities and the company’s actual business processes. Employees across departments had resorted to manual workarounds, spreadsheets, and offline processes to compensate for what SAP could no longer do. Productivity suffered. Data quality deteriorated. The customer experience fell behind what the business needed it to be.
Most critically: SAP had gone out of mainstream support. The company was running a critical enterprise system with no vendor support coverage — exposing themselves to security vulnerabilities, compliance risk, and a complete inability to resolve major platform issues if they arose.
The SAP upgrade was identified as a high-priority initiative in the IT Strategy that Full On Consulting developed to align IT and the business behind a goal of doubling revenue over five years. It was not optional. It was urgent.
Challenge
The complexity of this upgrade extended well beyond a standard software update. Fifteen years of accumulated technical decisions, infrastructure constraints, and business customization created a multi-layered challenge that had to be solved in the right sequence before the SAP software itself could be touched.
The Infrastructure Could Not Support the New SAP Version
The existing enterprise server lacked the CPU speed, memory, and storage capacity required to run the new version of SAP. Before the software could be upgraded, entirely new server infrastructure had to be procured, installed, and validated.
The Database Was Not UTF Compliant
The existing DB2 database did not meet the UTF character encoding requirements of the new SAP version. The entire database — containing years of production data — had to be unloaded, migrated to a new UTF-compliant DB2 version, and validated before SAP could run on top of it.
15 Years of Customization Required Analysis and Refactoring
Over 15 years, the company had customized SAP extensively to accommodate its growth and unique business processes. Each customization had to be evaluated: some were still valid and needed to be refactored for compatibility with the new version; others had been superseded by native SAP functionality and needed to be retired. This required both deep SAP technical expertise and deep knowledge of the company's business processes.
The Cutover Window Was Fixed: 40 Hours
With 5 business units, 10 retail stores, and 5 distribution centers all running on SAP, the business could not sustain extended downtime. The production cutover had to be completed within a 40-hour window over a weekend. Stores would be closed Friday to give the team Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to execute. Monday morning, the business had to be operational.
A Previous SAP Experience Had Left Scar Tissue
The company had been through a prior SAP initiative that had not gone smoothly. There was institutional skepticism at the leadership level about the organization's ability to execute a complex enterprise-wide deployment without significant disruption. Rebuilding that confidence was part of the challenge.
Action
Full On Consulting structured the engagement into three sequential phases, each with its own workstreams, testing gates, and sign-off requirements before the next phase could begin. Throughout all phases, a cross-functional team of business and IT leaders was assembled and maintained — ensuring that every decision had both technical and business ownership.
Phase 1: Infrastructure Upgrade — New Server
The first step was procuring and deploying a new enterprise server with significantly greater CPU speed, memory, and storage capacity. Full On Consulting worked with the hardware vendor to specify, configure, and install the server. It was first deployed into the development environment for initial configuration and testing, then promoted to QA for functional validation.
Once functional testing was complete and signed off, the new server was deployed into production over a weekend. The team executed smoke testing to confirm stability, and the system was made available to the full company on Sunday. Phase 1 complete — on schedule, with no business disruption.
Phase 2: Database Upgrade — DB2 to UTF Compliance
With the server infrastructure in place, Phase 2 focused on the database. The existing DB2 database was not UTF-compliant — a hard requirement for the new SAP version. The data was unloaded from the old database, transformed, and loaded into a new UTF-compliant DB2 instance. This process was executed first in development, then in QA, with SAP tested against the new database at each stage.
Once QA testing was complete and verified, the new database was deployed into production over a weekend. Data was loaded, backup and recovery processes were configured and tested. Phase 2 complete. The infrastructure foundation was now ready for the SAP software upgrade.
Phase 3: SAP Software Upgrade
The SAP software upgrade was the most complex phase by a significant margin. Full On Consulting began with structured upgrade pre-planning:
- Every existing SAP customization was catalogued and evaluated — identifying which needed to be refactored for the new version and which were now obsolete because the new version of SAP natively supported that functionality.
- Changes in SAP functionality between the old and new versions were mapped against the company’s business processes.
- Business unit leaders mapped their revised business processes against the new SAP capabilities — a critical step that produced both the functional requirements for configuration and the foundation for end-user training.
Full On Consulting staffed the project with functional leaders from every major business area: Accounts Receivable, Purchasing, Accounts Payable, Customer Service, Operations, Inventory Management, Production Planning, Accounting, and Finance. Each functional leader was paired with an IT counterpart to manage data migration, configuration, and technical validation within their domain.
The software was upgraded in the demo environment first, then in development — where the team executed configuration changes, refactored customizations, updated reports, and performed data conversion. Each business process was tested and results documented. Once every business unit leader had signed off on development testing, the team migrated to QA, executed the data conversion again, and ran full functional testing. Sign-off from every business unit leader was required before the production plan could be finalized.
The Production Deployment Plan
Deploying SAP across 5 business units, 10 stores, and 5 distribution centers in a 40-hour window required a level of planning precision that went well beyond a standard go-live checklist. Full On Consulting developed a detailed production deployment plan that was reviewed and approved by every business unit leader, the CEO, CFO, and President before a single person traveled to their deployment location.
The plan specified: the exact timing of every activity, which resources would be physically located at each store, distribution center, and the main corporate data center, and the escalation path for every category of issue. Business testers were positioned on-site at stores, distribution centers, and business unit locations to support personnel directly. The core IT team remained at corporate to manage central systems and coordinate across all sites.
Stores were closed Friday. The implementation plan launched Friday evening. Training had been completed in the weeks prior — every SAP user had been walked through the revised business processes and their specific day-to-day activities in the new system. Training sign-off was a gate requirement before the production plan was approved.
On Sunday, with all activities complete, a formal go / no-go call was held with the business unit leaders, CEO, CFO, and President. Every workstream reported green. The decision was made: go live.
Result
The go-live was a success by every measure. Across 5 business units, 10 stores, and 5 distribution centers — with teams distributed nationwide — the SAP upgrade was completed within the 40-hour window without a single significant business disruption. There was one issue identified post-go-live: a missing field on an invoice, caused by a change in the new SAP version. It was identified, resolved, and closed. Everything else worked exactly as planned.
The system was noticeably faster than it had ever been. Business processes that had been workarounds for years now had native SAP support. Manual processes were eliminated. Data quality improved. The customer experience was enhanced. The entire company — IT and business alike — felt the difference immediately.
The CEO pulled Donald aside after go-live and said that in the company’s history, they had never had a complex IT initiative deployed across the entire organization that smoothly.
“They have never had a complex IT initiative be deployed across the entire company that smoothly.”
— CEO, $400M Manufacturing & Distribution Company
The $400,000 SAP Licensing Negotiation
The go-live was not the end of the story. As part of completing the SAP upgrade, the licensing script had to be run against the new version. When the results came back, SAP informed the company that they owed $750,000 in additional licensing fees.
The root cause was structural. When SAP had originally been sold to the company years earlier, entry-level licenses had been used to minimize upfront cost and get the software into the organization. Over time, as users were assigned to more functional roles within the system, the new version’s licensing model classified those roles at higher license tiers — dramatically inflating the per-user cost.
The CEO’s response was direct: the company would move off SAP entirely before paying $750,000. Full On Consulting took a different approach.
Donald compiled a complete list of every employee in the company who used SAP. For each person, he documented their actual role — the specific transactions they performed, how frequently, and what business function they supported. He then worked directly with SAP to build a revised licensing model that reflected the company’s actual usage rather than the default role assignments the upgrade script had generated.
The result: the licensing cost was reduced from $750,000 to $350,000 — a savings of $400,000. The CEO accepted the revised terms. The company kept SAP, kept the upgrade, and kept all of the operational improvements that came with it.
Summary of Outcomes
$400,000 saved — through direct SAP licensing negotiation — reducing the bill from $750K to $350K
Zero business disruption — across 5 business units, 10 stores, and 5 distribution centers during the 40-hour production cutover
15-year technical debt eliminated — infrastructure, database, and SAP software all brought current and into support
Business process alignment — revised business processes mapped in SAP, eliminating manual workarounds and spreadsheet dependencies
Improved data quality — accurate, consistent data across all business units for the first time in over a decade
Enhanced customer experience — customer-facing processes supported natively in SAP, removing delays and errors caused by manual handling
Foundation for growth — IT platform positioned to support the company’s five-year goal of doubling revenue
CEO recognition — acknowledged as the smoothest complex IT deployment in company history
WHY FULL ON CONSULTING
Senior Consultants Only
Every engagement is led and delivered by senior consultants — former CIOs, CTOs, and enterprise IT executives. You get the people you were sold, not a bait-and-switch to junior staff after the contract is signed.
$40M+ in Documented Savings
Our track record includes $40M+ in verified client savings, a $130M M&A integration across 90+ global facilities, and an end-user computing transformation for 18,000 employees. We deliver measurable outcomes — not just recommendations.
20+ Years of Enterprise Experience
Our consultants average 20+ years of enterprise IT experience across Fortune 500 and mid-market companies. We have run the same programs we are being asked to lead — across SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and large-scale transformations.
Strategy Through Execution
We do not hand you a strategy deck and walk away. Our teams stay engaged from initial assessment through go-live — accountable for outcomes, not just deliverables. If we recommend it, we are prepared to execute it.
Boutique Agility
As a boutique firm, we move faster, adapt to your priorities, and work with your team rather than around it. No bureaucracy, no layers of overhead — just focused, senior-led execution from day one.
A Partner, Not a Vendor
We build long-term relationships grounded in trust and integrity. Many of our clients have engaged us across multiple initiatives and refer us to peers — because we do what we say we will do, every time.
Ready to Modernize Your SAP?
Whether you are years behind on an upgrade, facing an end-of-support deadline, or planning an S/4HANA migration, our senior SAP consultants have done this before — at scale, on time, and without disrupting your business.
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