Industry
Textile management / Rental textile services
Company headquarters
Vienna
Locations
30 locations in 11 countries (13 of which are in Austria)
Founded
1916, family business
SAP in use
Since 2000
SRB solution
SAP S/4HANA Migration (Brownfield)
Since the turn of the millennium, Salesianer has relied on SAP for cross-border laundry operations, from procurement to billing. As SAP will discontinue support for ERP in 2027, a migration was necessary. The legacy system was complex, with extensive, country-specific custom developments and third-party solutions.
Migration to SAP S/4HANA to future-proof the platform. At the same time, processes should be harmonised, data cleaned, and 10 European countries brought together under a central SAP umbrella.
SAP S/4HANA migration using a brownfield approach with various add-ons, including analysis of the accounting conversion using the DTV (Data Transition Validation) tool. Existing architectural structures were largely retained and carried over to the new platform.
Go-live at the end of February 2024, the migration project was completed within the time and budget framework, with only a few hypercare days thanks to good preparation. SAP S/4HANA is fully operational in 10 countries.
The Austrian market leader in textile management achieves a milestone in its digitalisation strategy.
Quality and sustainability have been core values of the SALESIANER Group for over 100 years, a family business based in Vienna. SALESIANER has become the market leader through high-quality laundry services in Austria and other CEE and SEE countries. To sustainably ensure the company's growth-oriented development, an important milestone was reached in the digitalisation strategy with the migration from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA, together with SRB.
The SALESIANER Group has stood for clean, hygienically perfect laundry for over 100 years. The rental of textiles and their hygienic preparation and care constitute the core business of the international company based in Vienna. At a total of 30 locations in 11 countries in Europe, comprehensive textile supply is provided for healthcare, hospitality, and industry. Cleanroom textiles, washroom hygiene, as well as promotional and dirt-trapping mats complement the extensive offering. Logistics includes not only the procurement and provision of textiles but also delivery and collection, up to cleaning according to the highest hygiene and sustainability standards.
“Anyone who promises the highest quality, hygiene, and service flexibility, like us, must be able to keep that promise. IT plays a central role in this,” explains Thomas Huber, Head of Group IT at the SALESIANER Group.
Since the turn of the millennium, SALESIANER has relied on SAP. Accordingly, the system functionality is highly relevant for cross-border laundry operations – from procurement to billing. As SAP will discontinue support for ERP in 2027, the migration to SAP S/4HANA provided an alternative solution. This also presented the opportunity to harmonise processes, clean data, and professionally and sustainably align SALESIANER for the future from an IT perspective. The migration was a necessary step and had to be planned long-term and executed with the utmost care due to its complexity and importance. For the implementation of the project, SALESIANER relied on the expertise of SRB.
Through the existing partnership and the associated knowledge of the specifics of the SALESIANER architecture, SRB was able to make a significant contribution to the successful implementation of the project. This is also confirmed by Harald Poeselt, Head of IT Applications at SALESIANER: “SRB and we share a professional, long-standing collaboration. Therefore, we had great trust in our IT service provider and knew that the people involved would define the necessary processes and implement the project within the agreed timeframe.”
The project duration was set with sufficient preparation time, starting with initial planning and strategy workshops where SRB was always on hand with advice and support for the brownfield migration. This is a form of migration where the existing architectural structures are largely retained and carried over to the new platform.
To address the greatest potential risks of such a migration in advance, meticulous preparation by the project team was necessary. This included preliminary studies and projects such as the update with the SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Package 8 (EHP8), the Customer Vendor Integration (CVI), the deletion of company codes, or the archiving of legacy data. The challenge was to bring together a total of 10 European countries under a central SAP umbrella while considering country-specific solutions and third-party applications.
“Those who do their homework before migration lay the foundation for a ‘smooth’ transition to SAP S/4HANA. Salesianer is the best example that this saying is not without reason,” says Christian Schaunig, Senior Consultant and Team Lead Sales at SRB.
The SRB project manager was closely involved when, at the beginning of 2023, the transition from the existing SAP ERP solution to SAP S/4HANA was initiated at the rental textile group. In a total of 10 countries, different areas were transferred to the new platform, and the hardware, including the SAP-certified backup system, was virtualised. And last but not least, SRB ensured that everything was migrated as planned.
By the end of February 2024, SAP S/4HANA was ‘up and running’ and the migration project was successfully completed. Although it is still too early for concrete benchmarks, the client SALESIANER is very satisfied: “The good preparatory work and the parallel training of employees ensured that all national organisations could work smoothly on the new system. For a project of this magnitude, one can be very satisfied with the implementation and quality,” Thomas Huber is pleased with the project completion.
The migration to SAP S/4HANA within the defined project period was achieved thanks to the professional support from SRB with only a few hypercare days. The SALESIANER Group can thus rely on a system architecture that is future-proof for further SAP developments, flexibly grows with the requirements of the rental textile company, and supports business success.
The SALESIANER Group is the leading Austrian rental textile company with a total of 30 locations in eleven countries. In its home market of Austria, 13 locations ensure comprehensive regional supply. Another 17 locations are in Germany and Switzerland, as well as in the CEE/SEE countries of Croatia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The family business was founded in 1916 and offers the highest quality, hygiene, and supply reliability in laundry services and rental textiles for healthcare, hospitality, and industrial workwear. Cleanroom textiles, washroom hygiene, as well as promotional and dirt-trapping mats complement the offering. More company information at www.salesianer.at.
ABOUT SRB Consulting Team GmbH SRB is one of the leading Austrian consulting companies for the digitalisation of complex processes in the SAP area. Founded in Vienna in 1997, the now 50-strong SRB expert team accompanies companies from various industries on their path to digital transformation and designs and optimises their internal processes with comprehensive IT services of all kinds. More about SRB at www.srb.at.
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