With the implementation of SAP BW/4HANA, packaging specialist LINHARDT has brought its data warehousing landscape up to the latest technical standards and, thanks to the maintenance guarantee until at least 2040, benefits from long-term planning security. During the migration, the availability of the SAP BW system had to be ensured continuously, as LINHARDT, being a manufacturing company, relies on a functioning reporting system at all times. IBsolution competently supported the migration from SAP BW 7.5 to SAP BW/4HANA with its comprehensive data and analytics expertise.
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“We benefited significantly from identifying the relevant objects and reporting areas as part of a preliminary analysis and from carrying out the individual migration steps in accordance with SAP’s proven process model.”
Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group
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The LINHARDT Group is one of Europe’s leading packaging manufacturers. At its headquarters in Viechtach, Lower Bavaria, as well as at its locations in Pausa and Hambrücken, the company produces a wide range of packaging solutions made of aluminum and plastic, which are used in the healthcare, beauty, home & industrial, and leisure sectors. The family-owned company’s extensive product portfolio includes, among other things, plastic and aluminum tubes, aerosol cans, aluminum capsules, and aluminum cans.
Future-proof with SAP BW/4HANA
LINHARDT has been using SAP Business Warehouse (BW) for many years to integrate and analyze company data in a central location and to make it available for reporting. Because the current version, SAP BW 7.5, will reach end-of-support on December 31, 2027, LINHARDT decided early on to migrate to SAP BW/4HANA, thereby aligning with SAP’s official BW strategy. With SAP BW/4HANA, the packaging manufacturer benefits from a support guarantee until at least 2040.
Reporting is crucial for operational management
The migration to SAP BW/4HANA provides LINHARDT with long-term planning and investment security – particularly with regard to reporting, which plays a fundamental role in the operational management of the business. “As a company in the packaging industry, we place a strong focus on production and sales,” says Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group. “Up-to-date and reliable daily reporting is indispensable for us and absolutely business-critical. We use SAP BW/4HANA as a strategic analysis tool and reporting platform, consolidating data from various sources there.”
Given the critical importance of reporting to business success, LINHARDT must be able to generate reports at all times. Accordingly, system availability could not be interrupted even during the SAP BW/4HANA migration and go-live, which was ensured by temporarily running the old and new systems in parallel. From a technical perspective, the transition from SAP BW 7.5 to SAP BW/4HANA also required adapting a large number of data objects to the specific requirements of SAP BW/4HANA. The source systems, which were already connected to SAP BW 7.5, remained unchanged and now also provide data for SAP BW/4HANA. As part of the SAP BW/4HANA migration, the company also switched from Integrated Planning (IP) to SAP Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) Embedded. This required adjustments to various planning objects, functions, and sequences.
On equal footing, both professionally and personally
With IBsolution, LINHARDT relied on an experienced SAP data & analytics partner that supported the project both functionally and technically. The partner’s high level of expertise, quick response times, and committed collaboration were particularly appreciated. The project’s success was based not only on technological know-how but, above all, on a partnership built on mutual respect. Together, both teams were able to efficiently resolve even last-minute challenges and steer the project toward success in a targeted manner.
Today, LINHARDT benefits from a state-of-the-art analytics and reporting platform that offers high stability, fast data processing, and high-performance analyses. Business units receive relevant information more quickly and can leverage the value of existing corporate data in an even more targeted manner. The successful migration thus not only ensures technological future-proofing but also supports data-driven decision-making throughout the entire company.
Conclusion: A proven process model leads to success
In retrospect, the use of the support tools provided by SAP for the SAP BW/4HANA migration proved to be a key success factor. “We benefited significantly from identifying the relevant objects and reporting areas as part of a preliminary analysis and from carrying out the individual migration steps in accordance with SAP’s proven process model,” explains Robert Brückner.
The SAP BW/4HANA Readiness Check, a self-service tool, consolidated relevant aspects and analyses to determine the correct approach for the migration. The SAP BW Migration Tool was used to identify the affected data objects. Based on this preliminary work, a task list was ultimately created that served as a step-by-step guide for project participants. As a result, LINHARDT succeeded in upgrading its reporting and analytics platform to the current technology stack – with the assurance that it will benefit from the associated release security for many years to come and protect its own BW investments in the long term. Together, LINHARDT and IBsolution successfully modernized a business-critical SAP BW landscape – without compromising operational reporting.
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“As a company in the packaging industry, we place a strong focus on production and sales. Up-to-date and reliable daily reporting is indispensable for us and absolutely business-critical. We use SAP BW/4HANA as a strategic analysis tool and reporting platform, consolidating data from various sources there.”
Robert Brückner, Vice President IT & Digitalization at the LINHARDT Group
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Photo: Linhardt
