Fresenius: Moving to the cloud to enable business innovation and advance patient care
Supporting a complex business transformation agenda using RISE with SAP
Global healthcare group Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA is on a multi-year business transformation journey to standardize processes while removing legacy IT complexity, developing a global and modern IT portfolio. With the RISE with SAP solution, Fresenius is streamlining operations, enhancing efficiency, and delivering on a strategy to advance patient care.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Life sciences and healthcare | Bad Homburg, Germany | 193,865 employees | Capgemini SE |
reduction in time spent on SAP system administration.
lower IT governance effort in running SAP software.
reduction in the IT footprint.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Life sciences and healthcare | Bad Homburg, Germany | 193,865 employees | Capgemini SE |
reduction in time spent on SAP system administration.
lower IT governance effort in running SAP software.
reduction in the IT footprint.
Modernizing the IT infrastructure with a cloud-first strategy
Every day, Fresenius serves the needs of critically ill patients by helping create a future of better medicine for more people. Making world-class therapies accessible to a steadily increasing number of people, the company offers high-quality, affordable products and runs an extensive network of hospitals and healthcare facilities.
As a fast-growing business, the company wanted to increase the scalability and flexibility of its IT infrastructure to enable it to respond to changing market conditions in an agile way. It also wanted to improve operational efficiency by automating and digitalizing global business processes.
As a first step, Fresenius embarked on an ambitious IT transformation project with the ultimate goal of creating an intelligent enterprise supported by SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. The first phase of this project involved replacing the company’s aging on-premise technology with a cloud-based IT landscape.
Senior Vice President, Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA
Working closely with SAP experts to enable a smooth transition
To help ensure a successful cloud migration, Fresenius decided to deploy RISE with SAP. A key factor in this decision was the straightforward delivery model that offers a single contract for the solutions, services, and infrastructure, simplifying procurement and management. In addition, a guided implementation approach, as well as the ability to run technology operations as a service with SAP as a trusted partner, gave the company confidence that it could complete the migration without disrupting the business.
In total, the company moved more than 130 SAP applications, including seven core ERP production instances and more than 100,000 user accounts, from in-house data centers to the cloud in just 15 months. Because it handles sensitive patient data, it was crucial that the company implemented a trusted private cloud environment supported by comprehensive security processes and services. For this reason, RISE with SAP was implemented, providing reliable availability, always-on surveillance, and centralized security controls. This resulted in enhanced security and compliance visibility to support enterprise-wide business processes across finance and supply chain – all with a predictable cost of ownership providing peace of mind.
SAP MaxAttention services played an important role in helping ensure a smooth transition within 15 months. Key services provided included overall program management, technical quality management, performance checks, and go-live support to minimize risks during the cutover. In addition, SAP partner Capgemini SE worked closely with SAP experts and the Fresenius team to migrate the systems – providing testing, validation, and compliance support.
Taking a more strategic role in meeting the needs of the business
Thanks to guidance and support from experts at SAP and Capgemini, Fresenius achieved the migration two months earlier than expected and with very little disruption to the business. Downtime was kept to a minimum, and the transition was invisible to users. In fact, the only difference in the user experience was an increase in performance, with a 20%–30% improvement in system response time.
In-depth evaluations of the existing IT infrastructure undertaken by SAP experts prior to the migration identified over 30 systems for decommissioning. As a result, Fresenius now has a streamlined SAP environment, with its overall IT footprint shrinking by 20%, reducing total cost of ownership.
Meanwhile, the move to a managed cloud operating model has resulted in significant time savings for the IT team. System administration time has dropped by half, and governance and management of the company’s technical infrastructure has been reduced by 10%. With peace of mind that SAP is managing the cloud environment according to robust standards to help ensure ongoing business continuity, Fresenius’s IT personnel can spend more time understanding and delivering on the needs of the business.
CIO, Fresenius Group
Optimizing business processes with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition
Having achieved the milestone of moving its SAP applications to the cloud with RISE with SAP, Fresenius is progressing other cloud solutions from SAP. These include SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain, SAP Concur, and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions.
In addition, it’s focusing on a planned migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. Supported by SAP MaxAttention, the IT team is now in constant dialogue with the business in the driving seat to agree on a planned strategy and road map for a transition that is due to start within the next 12 months.
For Fresenius, the potential impacts of the move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition are far reaching and significant. A business transformation based on implementing a clean core intelligent ERP system will bring automation, standardization, and optimization of processes. Meanwhile, faster decision-making based on more-accurate information is set to help the company improve operational efficiency while increasing business agility so that it can respond quickly to new market challenges.
Featured partner
For more than 50 years, Capgemini SE has been unlocking the value of technology to help companies transform and manage their business. In supporting Fresenius in its migration to the cloud, Capgemini drew on deep industry expertise and a command of the fast-evolving fields of cloud, data artificial intelligence, connectivity, software, digital engineering, and platforms.