Aramco migrated its largest SAP Enterprise Resource Planning system to SAP’s latest generation technology, S/4HANA. Over 1,200 employees worldwide, from the Kingdom, the US, Europe and Asia participated in this major event. This is a major step that will enable the Company to meet the demand for the latest digital technologies and support its digitalization ambitions. To facilitate this, it is imperative that the ERP systems supporting the Company’s core business are upgraded to the latest technologies.
Saudi Aramco’s strategy to migrate the ERP systems comprises a hybrid of the 3 approaches: System Migration of the main ERP systems to an SAP S/4HANA on-premise digital core; System Consolidation to consolidate specific ERP systems into the Digital Core resulting in a reduction in the number of systems and applications; and System Migration to Cloud for specific applications. The new platform provides technologies in the areas of mobility, machine learning, advanced analytics and Internet-of-Things (IoT) that will facilitate a significant number of digitalization use cases. The first set of business applications transferred to the new ERP system was finance and logistics, which are used by more than 64,000 employees and contractors.
This is the first of 13 ERP systems to be migrated to the new technology under Aramco’s ERP Transformation Project and is due to be completed by December 2023.
Yousef Al-Ulyan, Vice President of Information Technology at Aramco, said: “This is an important milestone in our digital journey. As of today, Aramco is the largest S/4HANA installation in the region and in the Oil & Gas Industry globally. This adoption of a cloud-based ERP platform, demonstrates another instance of how Aramco pursues cutting edge technologies to reinforce Aramco’s excellence in efficient operation. By embracing new yet added value technologies, the company will realize entirely new ways of doing business that will ultimately help strengthen our ability to serve our customers and substantially increase our competitive edge.”
Peter Maier, President Industries and Customer Advisory at SAP, said: “We are very proud that Aramco trusts SAP S/4HANA to run their core business. This new platform will optimize key business processes with intelligent technologies and support the company’s strategy to provide clean and reliable energy and innovative products. I am looking forward to seeing Aramco successfully complete this transformation journey and redefine the next business practices in the industry.”
