SAP S/4HANA as the digital core

The State Agency for Roads, Bridges and Waterways Hamburg (LSBG) was facing major challenges. In addition to the internal perception that there was potential for improving IT support in business processes, external stakeholders also presented the LSBG with requirements that necessitated an expansion of the current IT application landscape. The tax authority, as an important external stakeholder, planned to migrate all state agencies to the SAP HANA architecture. The LBSG acted as a pilot state-owned enterprise in the first wave.

In 2020, the LSBG chose SAP as its software manufacturer to provide a highly integrated IT system that eliminates media discontinuity in large parts of the LSBG's process landscape, core business and commercial processes. As part of the preliminary project ‘Initiation of the SAP S/4HANA programme – Digital core of the LSB’, an adesso team worked with the LSBG from 2020 to 2021 to develop the target architecture that meets the requirements of the LSBG and other stakeholders, as well as the roadmap for the period from 1 July 2021 to early 2024. Based on this roadmap, the ‘SAP S/4HANA – Digital Core of the LSBG’ programme created a future-proof LSBG.

The programme supported both the technical development of the LSBG and the advancement of the digitalisation of the information objects used by the LSBG. In addition to the standardisation driven by the tax authorities in the area of end-to-end process management, the programme is also a digital pioneer for many strands of action in the LSBG's corporate concept.

The aim of the programme was to structure a roadmap with interdependent projects and to provide the best possible support for their implementation. The projects were divided into the following streams:

Control of day-to-day operations

• Conversion to S/4HANA and ensuring accounting consistency
• Management of construction projects and ongoing tasks with SAP

Asset life cycle: Data on the assets managed by the LSBG

• Introduction of a central object directory
• Asset management

Reporting/monitoring: Implementing stakeholder requirements for information

• Development of flexible reporting and monitoring solutions
• Flexible creation and management of reports/monitors

From 2021 to 2022, the SAP environment was modernised and expanded in five projects. Further projects followed from 2023 onwards. Construction project management was integrated, and wiko and the investment planning list were replaced. An easily customisable reporting system with access to current data was set up, enabling objects to be linked to the building across all measures.

• Creation of a data foundation for further efficiency gains in administration
• Improved quality and service life of FFH's assets through better information on their current status
• Increased stakeholder satisfaction through optimal information provision
• Creation of a database for further innovation opportunities. Based on the data, new IT applications could be developed, such as services to provide information to citizens
• Automation of administrative processes, such as automatic invoice verification
• Better variant planning in the event of changes in the priorities of the commissioning authorities for construction measures

The customer has been supported by adesso since 2020. adesso provides consulting and development services for the extensive SAP programme. Among other things, the programme implements the following SAP solutions for LSBG: FI, CO, MM, SD, GEF, EAM and AIN, EPPM, PS, SAP Asset Central, SAC and CATS. Some of these were planned as cloud solutions. The overall solution is aligned as closely as possible with the SAP standard.

The challenges for the programme lay, on the one hand, in the fact that the organisational changes that had to be implemented on the customer side for the use of the new IT landscape had to be planned in line with technical implementation deadlines. The programme met these challenges with target group-specific change and communication approaches based on the Prosci methodology (3-phase process, PCT model and ADKAR model), as well as a planned separation of the organisational and technical go-live.

On the other hand, the technical go-live and the harmonisation project of the FHH finance authority had to be managed with the diversity of stakeholders and externally driven deadlines. To this end, communication is managed in a targeted, regular and close manner with all parties involved via the programme structure.

As part of the new solution, user training courses were created for the roles involved and planning was carried out with the business areas involved. In order to provide the best possible support for users, a knowledge portal was set up that contains all the information material from the training courses and is supplemented with further information such as videos, FAQs and much more.

Another requirement is the coordination of the development and implementation of the SAP solutions with the service provider Dataport, which is the central IT service provider for the LSBG. This involves regularly defining the scope and cooperation of tasks between the programme, the customer and Dataport. The programme management has also successfully established communication measures and risk control measures for this challenge.