Global Consumer Products Manufacturer Achieves Resilient, GDPR-Compliant Integration with SAP Integration Suite

Case study
integration systems

A global consumer products manufacturer, headquartered in the Chicago area, operates primarily in North America and Europe. Their North American operations relied on SAP ECC, while their European divisions use multiple localized versions of Microsoft Navision. To modernize and unify their ERP landscape, the company initiated a multi-phase migration to SAP S/4HANA.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE:

The company faced several integration challenges as they moved towards SAP S/4HANA:

  • GDPR Compliance – European data privacy regulations required that Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of European citizens could not be stored or processed outside of Europe.
  • Multiple Order Channels - The European divisions contained multiple channels for customers to place sales orders as well as receive order confirmations and invoices. Fixes to any individual system would need to be redone for each channel.
  • Complex Middleware Landscape – The company relied on three different middleware solutions for EDI and non-EDI integrations, leading to inefficiencies, lack of standardization, and high maintenance costs.
  • Disruptive Migration Risks – As the company transitioned to SAP S/4HANA in phases, ensuring seamless integration between legacy systems and new infrastructure was critical to avoiding business disruption.

 

SOLUTION:

To address these challenges, the company selected SAP Integration Suite as its primary middleware for both EDI and non-EDI interfaces. The implementation involved:

  • A hub-and-spoke integration model, ensuring standardized and reusable connections across all systems.
  • Leveraging SAP-provided APIs wherever possible to streamline and future-proof integrations.
  • Implementing SAP HANA Cloud for secure data processing, ensuring that European PII handling remained compliant with GDPR by never being stored in the U.S.-hosted SAP S/4HANA environment.
  • Phased deployment strategy, minimizing operational impact as systems migrated to S/4HANA.

 

RESULTS:

  • Seamless integration across 9 internal systems.
  • EDI connectivity with 169 trading partners, processing 7,500 messages per day.
  • Full GDPR compliance, ensuring data privacy regulations were met.
  • Standardized and simplified middleware landscape, reducing IT complexity and operational costs.

Solutions that get results

Yours can be the next success story.