Capgemini transforms Pidpa’s SAP landscape to accommodate Intelligent Enterprise Goals with S/4HANA

Learn how Capgemini helped Belgium’s Pidpa water company with a 36-month transformation to achieve business optimization and standardization positioning Pidpa for future success.

Capgemini received the GOLD award at the SAP Best of Customer Success Awards 2023 for its successful Pidpa S/4 HANA transformation

Foundations of the project

Pidpa, one of Belgium’s leading water companies, completed a strategic transformation journey to S/4HANA using a greenfield approach with Capgemini as its key technology partner.

In addition to the S/4HANA transformation, this case study is also exemplary of highlighting surrounding global landscape of SAP cloud products that we successfully deployed.

Pidpa aimed at becoming an intelligent enterprise through business harmonization, optimization, and standardization, thereby lowering total cost of ownership (TCO), accelerating time to market, and innovating its company-wide technology platforms, preparing it to embrace the future strategic business ambitions. The large-scale project unravelled in Antwerp with a kick-off to initial go-live duration of 36 months.

Our approach

On our end, ensuring that several cloud components were seamlessly integrated with the on-premise S/4HANA components while using the modern and user-friendly Fiori front-end were critical to this transformation.

The nominated project was undertaken for the entire organization, with +500 internal users and +600,000 potential self-service users at the time of application, and the number of users planned on completion of the roll-out was the same. The landscape consisted of an on-premise S/4HANA backbone, complemented by multiple SAP products running in the Cloud including SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C) with Utilities add-on, SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), Cloud for Energy (C4E), Ariba network, SAP SuccessFactors (SF), SAP Business Technology Platform Integration Suite, SAP BTP Mobile Services, and SAP EnableNow.

Challenges that we addressed

One of the initial challenges was going back to standard, which was realized by the “change approval board” that continuously evaluated the business case (full-time equivalent reduction) towards the cost (implementation cost + TCO impact). Pidpa achieved 77% of the level 3 processes to be fully implemented in standard. The approved enhancements had all a clear business case: for example, in C4C, several enhancements for user-friendliness and efficiency were approved, with a clear benefit in call handling time and full-time equivalent impact on the call centre staffing.

The second challenge was change management, mainly related to adopting the new technology, various new applications, and the switch from SAP GUI to a full Fiori front-end. To facilitate this adoption, intermediate demo sessions were planned throughout the build phase of the project, followed by extensive training using SAP Enable Now.

The third challenge was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was faced during the entire foundation and a big part of the build phase. The switch to remote working required a cultural change for all Pidpa employees.

What have been the results (quantitative or qualitative benefits) of this project for the business and/or IT?

We helped in optimizing key processes in this transformation including – Finance To Manage (FTM), Procure To Pay (PTP), Meter To Cash (MTC), Order To Cash (OTC), Demand To Supply (DTS), Invest To Divest (ITD), Service To Cash (STC), Maintain To Settle (MTS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Human Capital Management (HCM). Additionally, during the project, Pidpa was able to include the digital water meter implementation, enabling the company to collect data in near real-time and make more informed decisions about water usage, water pressure, leakage detection, and optimizing the water supply to customers.

In addition to these benefits, there have also been a numerous quantitative benefits for the business as a result of the project. For example, the implementation of the digital water meter has allowed Pidpa to monitor water usage and detect leaks, which has led to significant cost savings more accurately. The improved efficiency and automation of processes has also resulted in a reduction of full-time employee (FTE) needs, further reducing costs.

From an IT perspective, the project has resulted in a more modern and flexible technology landscape, which is better able to adapt to the changing needs of the business. The use of cloud solutions has also resulted in a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for IT, as well as a reduction in the amount of time and resources required for maintenance and upgrades. The use of standard solutions, wherever possible, has also resulted in a more stable and reliable system, with fewer customizations to maintain.

Overall, this collaborative project with Capgemini has been a success for Pidpa, delivering several significant benefits to the business and IT. By adopting a strategic and forward-looking approach to their technology landscape, Pidpa has positioned themselves for continued success in the future, while also delivering better service to their customers and reducing costs.

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