#18 "People, processes and systems in perfect harmony"
Harmonizing 67 active ERP systems, around 500 processes, for 210 companies is an absolute Herculean task. The GEA Group has set up a dual transformation for this, consisting of global business process management and the introduction of SAP S/4 HANA as the only ERP system - the largest transformation program in the company's history.
This is a challenge that many companies are currently facing if they want to lay the foundations for far-reaching and successful digitalization. In order not to focus solely on the technical or procedural aspects, but not to forget the employees, an unusual change strategy has been chosen: namely to place people at the center of the change. Without people, such a project cannot be successfully implemented. Although processes and systems can be specified, it takes more than acceptance to work together more effectively and efficiently.
In our strategy interview, Daniela Weiss, Senior Vice President Corporate Business Process Management & BPM Lead S/4HANA Transformation at GEA Group, explains how GEA uses co-creation, a collaborative process community and a lot of change communication to bring "people, processes and systems into harmony" and how people have fun in the process.
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Information about the company
The GEA Group is one of the world's largest system suppliers to the food and pharmaceutical industry and is active in over 60 countries. With a product portfolio of machines and systems, sophisticated process technology and components for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, GEA is probably part of our everyday lives - from breakfast to dinner. Headquartered in Düsseldorf, the group employs around 18,200 people worldwide.
Daniela Weiss - Personal information
Ms. Weiss completed her MBA at the ESB Business School in Reutlingen. After working as a consultant at BearingPoint and Capgemini, she was responsible for BPM at Schuler AG and has been on board as Senior Vice President at GEA since 2019. Together with her BPM expert team and around 300 process community members from the business, she is responsible for 24 global end-to-end processes for the entire group worldwide. In this role, she is also part of the three-person leadership team for the S/4HANA transformation.
The greatest challenges of increased complexity
The GEA Group has a clear purpose: Engineering for a better world. Its drive is to make the world a little bit better every day with its products and services. The GEA Group has a long history in this area. The acquisition of various companies with a long tradition is a clear strength of the GEA Group, of which they are proud. At the same time, however, this fact does not make it any easier to work in a global structure when the growth strategy - Mission 26 - is about more than just the sum of the individual parts. Here you are faced with the task of grown complexities: when Daniela started at GEA in 2019, there were 67 active ERP systems, 500 processes, 210 companies and no process community or BPM team. The challenging task is to harmonize these 67 active ERP systems with all associated processes across the company into one system by the end of 2025. On the one hand, this should increase the company's ability to control processes and, on the other, create the basis for digitalization: a single source of digital truth.
In addition to the complexity of the content, the ambitious timeline is certainly one of the biggest challenges here, as the first pilot was to be launched within 15 months during Covid and the entire program was to be delivered by the end of 2025 - according to the promise to the capital market. Despite all the technical and procedural innovations, another key challenge was not only to bring the more than 18,200 employees on board, but to build a new GEA together with them.
Why linking BPM and S/4HANA transformation makes sense
Daniela believes that the trick is not to dwell on the past for too long, but to immediately look to the future and start working with the future in the sense of a greenfield approach. To this end, a dual transformation was set up at GEA, consisting of BPM (Business Process Management) and the SAP S/4HANA transformation.
The starting point here is the business processes: with a clear focus on end-to-end processes and an alignment with business requirements, the aim is to streamline and accelerate simple procedures and short decision-making paths so that a high process speed is enabled and guaranteed, while at the same time retaining scope for agility and flexibility and promoting transparency. This applies equally to processes in S/4HANA as well as non-SAP processes and processes that are not system-supported, with the focus being on S/4HANA processes. The bridge to the system was built directly from this starting point. S/4HANA allows GEA to get rid of the many different ways of always doing the same thing, while improving the quality of data and increasing transparency to make better decisions. So they have combined the best of both worlds and made good use of the tailwind.
People in the focus of change
For Daniela, people make the decisive difference. An S/4HANA transformation should not be seen as an end in itself, but offers a clear benefit, on the one hand for the business itself and its digitalization, as well as the new growth and sustainability strategy. But also for each individual employee in their day-to-day work. The aim here is to bring processes to life, develop them further and make the company and day-to-day work a little bit better with the help of S/4HANA. However, this cannot be achieved without people and their expertise. Ultimately, the purpose of processes and systems is to help people do a better job so that they can focus on the really important things. During the process, it was particularly important to Daniela that her colleagues from the business were on board right from the start so that the transformation could be successfully established - and not just dictated top-down.
Bringing people, processes and systems into harmony
Daniela is convinced that it takes perfect harmony between people, processes and systems for a company to function successfully. Technology will not solve existing problems if the people and processes are missing. The processes create the framework for the people, their actions and their decisions, while the systems are used to execute these processes more efficiently. Efficiency and effectiveness therefore require a good balance so that the processes and systems really do support people in the end.
Success factors of the transformation
In the last 1.5 to 2 years, GEA has already achieved a lot to be proud of: Daniela has built up a BPM & Change Management team that now consists of 8 people and is full of passion. She has created a community in which over 300 employees from 25 different countries exchange ideas. A BPM lifecycle was created that maps all business processes - SAP-supported and non-SAP-supported. Together, over 400 global processes were designed with the help of the BPM lifecycle. And all along the way, everyone has had a lot of fun with further development. The greatest success is to see that people are now gradually bringing the designed processes and the system to life.
Daniela sees the consistent focus on people with the help of the 3 C's - co-creation, community and change communication - as a key success factor.
Co-Creation
From the very beginning, the new processes were developed together with selected colleagues from divisions, regions and functions. People from different divisions, cultures and languages came together to build the future together - new processes from GEA for GEA, so to speak.
CommunityFor Daniela, the community is a strategic network that now has more than 300 members around the globe. The community encourages each other to have confidence in their own abilities and strengthens the empowerment and ownership of colleagues for the respective processes.
Change communication
Change communication played a key role throughout the entire journey: for example, a language was chosen that everyone in the GEA environment could understand, far removed from the technical SAP terminology. At the same time, open dialog formats were played with the C-level for the entire big picture and a clear mission.
Daniela emphasizes that such a transformation is only possible with the necessary backing. She sees the fact that the support of top management was felt from the very beginning as a key success factor. Finally, she notes that it is essential to have a clear goal that creates a framework and clear rules, while at the same time having room to learn and act flexibly.