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SAP, the leader in enterprise application and business-oriented artificial intelligence solutions, came together with its business partners in Turkey on 28 June at the event titled 'The Path to Success: SAP S/4HANA Customer Experiences' on 28 June. At the event, business leaders shared their experiences on S/4HANA transformation projects and gave tips on how digital transformation projects should be carried out.

TURKEY - SAP, the leader in enterprise application and business-oriented artificial intelligence solutions, met with leading organisations in Turkey at Radisson Blu Bosphorus Hotel on Friday, 28 June at the event titled 'The Path to Success: SAP S/4HANA Customer Experiences' at the event. Business leaders from leading companies in their sectors such as Yaşar Holding, Ford Otosan, SOCAR Turkey and Tüpraş attended the summit and shared their transformation journeys with S/4HANA, which is at the centre of digitalisation. While the participants evaluated their experiences and successes in digital transformation projects, they also gave tips on how a project should be carried out.

"We hosted one third of Turkey's economy"

Delivering the opening speech at the event where inspiring customer stories about S/4HANA transformations were shared and business networking opportunities were presented, Murat Benlidayı, SAP Turkey GMY in charge of Service and Consultancy, stated that being the pioneer of transformation plays a critical role in building the future vision of companies and said, "With the increasing dominance of technology in the business world, digital transformation is at the centre of businesses. Today, managing change management with the right and comprehensive business strategies and adapting smart technology solutions to business processes are inevitable for organisations that are more competitive, efficient and resistant to changing challenging conditions. On the other hand, it is also critical to anticipate how artificial intelligence, which has become a part of our lives, can affect the business world. Today, we are hosting one third of the Turkish economy as our guests in the hall. In this event series, we will now direct our questions to successful project representatives in a special way and benefit from their experiences and inspiring thoughts."

"The digitalisation journey that started 28 years ago with SAP R3 continues with SAP S4/HANA transformation."

Turgut Sarıoğlu, Executive Vice President of Yaşar Holding, started his speech by emphasising that Yaşar Group was one of the first companies to decide to use SAP R/3 software 28 years ago and to use SAP in Turkey: "While the pandemic period was a major breaking point for the entire business world, it also enabled Yaşar Group to take important steps in digitalisation processes. In the sectors in which we operate as a Group; We accelerated our digital transformation process with the responsibility of implementing global new technologies and best practices, taking into account the demands of our customers, suppliers and employees. The use of the SAP R3 system, which has a silo-based infrastructure in our companies, has limited adequacy to ensure data integrity, which led us to look for different solutions. As a result of a year-long detailed analysis and feasibility studies, it was decided to invest in SAP's next generation cloud technologies in 2023 and our SAP S4/HANA transformation project, 'Project Feniks' was launched. With "Project Feniks", which will last approximately 4 years and centred on the transformation of ERP systems, it was decided to make a "greenfield" transition, a transition method that offers redesign and simplification for all processes. With the Digital Transformation Project, which is planned to be implemented throughout Yaşar Group, we aim to complete the transformation of 6 companies in the first phase, 5 companies in the second phase, and our foreign companies in the third phase and to put 33 S4/HANA modules into use. We aim to achieve our sustainable growth target by increasing efficiency and strengthening innovation in our companies with Project Feniks Phase 1, which is targeted to be completed at the end of 22 months (first quarter of 2025) with the works that 300 employees from our companies contribute in addition to their current operational processes."

Ford Otosan: "We designed our Romania plant with SAP's experience in the automotive sector"

Hayriye Karadeniz, Digital Products and Services Leader of Ford Otosan, one of Turkey's most important players in the automotive industry, explained the process of crossing paths with SAP as follows: "We have a significant share in the automotive industry with 23 thousand employees, production facilities in 4 different locations and an annual production capacity of more than 750 thousand vehicles. In our extensive business volume, 90% of which is exported, we needed to re-establish all our systems, including financial, logistics and warehousing, after the acquisition of Ford's Romanian plant. At this point, our paths crossed with SAP. Our Romanian plant is a huge structure with an annual production capacity of 270 thousand vehicles and 350 thousand engines. First of all, it is necessary to understand the process correctly. Because you can never stop production. You have to plan every step you take, especially in technological infrastructure, accurately and perfectly. For the first 6 months, we maintained the existing structure of Ford's own systems. Then, we started the transformation project in Romania with a team of 80 people... Here, we established all financial systems in 8 months and created a system that operates non-stop. With our new entry into the SAP world, we commissioned 20 applications instead of 40 applications. We redesigned the entire structure with SAP's entire experience and successful applications in the automotive sector. We succeeded in launching our project at the only appropriate time when the annual census of the factory was held. In this process, we once again saw the importance of change management and it turned out that the 3 most important keys of this process are communication, governance and change. Now it is Turkey's turn. Our main expectation is that technology will add vision to our company in terms of cost, speed and quality and keep us in a competitive position. These investments made by Ford Otosan contribute not only to its own competitiveness, but also to the competitiveness of the country. We are looking for opportunities, we focus on areas where technology/SAP will create opportunities for us."

SOCAR Turkey: "Our aim is to create value by transforming our business processes with the power of technology"

Sertan Ün, Digital Solutions Group Director of SOCAR Turkey, which operates as Turkey's largest foreign investor and integrated industrial group, shared the story of the project called "Project Earth", in which they combined all the processes they carried out in SAP systems of different maturity levels on a single platform with SAP's S/4HANA product, with the following words:  "As the pioneer of digitalisation in the energy sector, we aim to achieve business transformation with the support of technology and to provide sectoral gains since 2020. As SOCAR Turkey, we have implemented 'Project Earth', a strategic step in our digital transformation journey, with great success. We gathered our operations under a single roof by combining our SAP systems of different maturity levels on the SAP S/4HANA platform. This project was not just a technology update, but a comprehensive business transformation project that formed the new backbone of all our corporate workflows.

Project Earth is of strategic importance for us. We spent a lot of effort on the scope and design of the project, and by establishing a harmonious teamwork with our functions, we completed the first phase of our project in 16 months and implemented it as of January 2022. We redesigned the best practices in the industry and in the world to work on a modern infrastructure integrated with external stakeholders. We commissioned our operations in many areas ranging from material management, procurement, production, maintenance and repair and financial operations at world standards. We prepared 92 business scenarios by working shoulder to shoulder with our business units in more than 250 workshops. More than 170 SOCAR employees and more than 100 SAP consultants contributed to the project. Our project team successfully completed all processes by testing them in 8000 steps.

As the last milestone of this successful programme, we continue the second phase of our project to bring our PETKIM processes to the standards we have established. We have completed the design process and we are progressing in accordance with our plan in the system preparations phase. The success criterion in such large-scale project processes is what you do the day after the project goes live. The biggest success criterion is that you do not experience problems and crises other than foreseeable risks. SAP has been one of our most important companions in this transformation process and we continue to receive their support at the global level."