How Molson Coors ensured a seamless migration to AWS Cloud and SAP HANA with Basis Technologies
Overview
About Molson Coors
Molson Coors is the world’s fourth largest beer/beverage company, with more than 200 years of brewing history. Employing more than 16,000 people globally, its products are sold in over 100 countries and the company saw more than 70 million barrels of beer sold in 2023. Having expanded its beverage offering beyond beer, its iconic brand portfolio includes Coors Light, Miller Lite, Molson Canadian, Simply Spiked Lemonade, Carling, Staropramen and Zoa.
Challenges
Facing large, complex transformations with manual change management
Molson Coors needed to migrate from on-premise to an AWS Cloud infrastructure, as well as SAP HANA
Manual change control was no longer sustainable due to Molson Coors’ large and complex SAP environment
The threat of unplanned downtime was significant with the previous manual process
Solutions
Automating the end-to-end change and release process with ActiveControl
ActiveControl from Basis Technologies can automate and govern change in even the most complex SAP landscapes
Molson Coors would be able to streamline its change processes, reduce downtime and ensure business continuity with dual maintenance during its migration to AWS Cloud
ActiveControl would enable the business to monitor the progress of change initiatives in real-time and identify bottlenecks to optimize workflows
Results
Cutting manual effort by 40% in Molson Coors’ migrations to AWS and SAP HANA
ActiveControl ensured greater control, security and compliance by automating SAP change management.
This led to a 40% reduction in manual effort, a 50% decrease in transport planning time, and retrofitting time reduced from “days” to just one hour
ActiveControl played a critical role in Molson Coors’ migration to AWS Cloud infrastructure and will support in the move to SAP S/4HANA
Customer testimonial
Jason Wierek
SAP Environment Manager at Molson Coors Beverage Company
Jason Wierek
SAP Environment Manager at Molson Coors Beverage Company
Embracing automation to ensure a seamless migration to AWS Cloud and SAP HANA
International beverage company Molson Coors used ActiveControl to ensure business continuity during its strategic migration to AWS
Executive Summary
To achieve its business transformation and innovation goals, Molson Coors decided to migrate from on-premise data centers to AWS Cloud infrastructure, as well as onto SAP HANA.
As part of the migration to AWS, it was imperative that the team kept their production landscape operating on-premise as normal while they built a new cloud landscape. This required transports to be synchronized between the on-prem landscape and the new cloud landscape, as well as providing the ability to retrofit between environments.
However, as a dynamic business with a large and complex SAP environment, Molson Coors found that manual change control was no longer sustainable, leading to higher risks of downtime and greater inefficiencies.
This is where ActiveControl from Basis Technologies came in.
The Challenge
Retrofitting posed a significant challenge to the Molson Coors team. When undertaking change within its production cycle, the business created an SAP N+1 environment to separate testing and development from its existing production system. Molson Coors needed to ensure it could move its planned changes out of the production cycle and into its N+1 landscape, so that development & Quality Assurance (QA) systems in that landscape mirrored the production track in real time.
Molson Coors also needed to reduce downtime, which had affected the business for a number of years when they made changes within SAP. The team previously managed transports manually on spreadsheets, which impacted business continuity through human error.
They were also conscious of the limitations of Segregation of Duties, which is designed to minimize the risk of fraud and errors and protect company assets such as data or inventories. In the past, Molson Coors had experienced an unplanned production outage caused by undesirable software changes being imported into the system, creating significant operational wastage and costs across stock, shipping and transportation, and warehousing, which it needed to avoid a repeat of.
The Solution
Molson Coors chose ActiveControl – the change management solution from Basis Technologies – to manage its business-critical migration to AWS Cloud. Its ability to automate and govern change in even the most complex SAP landscapes, while ensuring business continuity for a production cycle that couldn’t afford to slow down, made it the right solution for the job.
Embracing automation with ActiveControl would enable Molson Coors to streamline its change processes, reduce downtime, and protect day-to-day operations during its migration to the cloud. It also allows them to monitor the progress of change initiatives in real-time and identify bottlenecks to optimize workflows.
The Result
During its SAP change initiatives, ActiveControl empowered Molson Coors to achieve:
- A 40% reduction in manual effort, saving its team valuable time to focus on other tasks
- A 50% decrease in transport planning time
- A reduction in retrofitting time (from production landscape to the project landscape) from “multiple days” to just one hour
Before ActiveControl, they had several teams of people carrying out SAP change processes, with multiple manual steps involved. Today, everything is automated and can be completed in just a few clicks.
Molson Coors’ SAP Environment Manager, Jason Wierek, said the business’ migration to AWS Cloud would have been difficult and highly complex without ActiveControl.
As for S/4HANA, Molson Coors is currently undergoing a greenfield project involving S/4HANA Transportation Management (TM) and S/4HANA Extended Warehouse Management (EWM). ActiveControl is already playing a significant role in managing N+1 landscapes. The team are also mapping out a larger transformation to S/4HANA, where ActiveControl will play a key in keeping both the current landscape going (business continuity) as well as seamlessly moving new changes into the S/4HANA landscape.
