Original blog was created in French and published 2023
https://news.sap.com/france/2023/04/leonhart-se-tourne-vers-lavenir-avec-un-erp-sap-s-4hana-en-mode-... >
After several decades of rapid growth, the Leonhart Group faced issues with its information systems – disparate tools made the consolidation of data complex. In 2020, Leonhart decided to standardize and modernize its systems to strengthen the quality of its data and benefit from business intelligence and new technologies. Leonhart selected Nagarro to assist in its transformation, deploying a solution built around the public edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
The Leonhart Group has been a major player in the extraction and processing of sand and aggregates for over 100 years. It offers natural or recycled aggregates, natural stones, ready-mixed concrete, and concrete products for heavy and light prefabrication. The group covers the entire value chain, from extraction to delivery, including products, but also offers transport and delivery services. Leonhart achieves an annual turnover of approximately €140 million. Leonhart has 600 employees spread over 17 sites in France, and each year extracts 980,000 tons of aggregates and delivers 100,000 cubic meters of concrete.
Groupe Leonhart Looks to the Future with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition (English)>
Standardizing the information system
While Leonhart can be proud of rapid growth in recent decades, its development, partly linked to external growth operations, has resulted in a heterogeneous information system. Many activity-specific tools coexist but don’t connect across the company. As part of its system transformation, Leonhart‘s objective was to rely on a single platform to cover all of the group's business processes, improving data quality and allowing rapid access to data, with optimal security, at the press of a button.
The search process was launched at the end of 2020. Leonhart drew up precise and detailed specifications of its goals and conducted an exhaustive study of the solutions available on the market and the deployment methods offered. The cloud, and an SaaS, quickly became essential for cost control, rapid ROI, and ease of versioning to guarantee the sustainability of the solution and support the group's projects and ambitions. Leonhart chose Nagarro as its deployment partner for several reasons: the expertise of its consultants, the size of its business, its financial health, and the ability to offer a global solution with custom development. The project launched in February 2021.
Three modules for a single platform
Nagarro has deployed a unique platform for Leonhart, built on complementary elements:
- The public edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud supports business needs with a very wide functional scope and a fit-to-standard implementation methodology: extraction, trading, finance, management control, production, logistics, and customer relations are all integrated. Leonhart will also implement business intelligence with powerful and accessible analytics built into SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.
- The Fit-to-Standard analysis, a series of workshops that validate the predefined business processes and best practices of SAP solutions and identify any specific requirements. This includes connection with the rest of the company's information systems through SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This platform brings together data and analytics, artificial intelligence, application development, automation, and integration in a unified environment.
- A custom development, based on SAP BTP, to cover a very specific need – the weighing of trucks entering and leaving sand pits. To develop this functionality not covered by the standard solution, Nagarro has relied on innovation: visual recognition and the Internet of Things make it possible to automate weighing and connect the weighbridge to SAP solutions.
Now that it has taken the first step with the deployment of a standard, reliable, and scalable ERP, Leonhart wants to go further and enter Industry 4.0. “With our ERP as the robust base for innovation, we have a new project with SAP and Nagarro: the development of a connected gravel pit. This is one of the next challenges that we are going to take up,” concludes Nicolas Battesti, CFO of the Leonhart Group.
Nagarro France is part of the SAP Business Unit of the international Nagarro group. Nagarro France advises customers on IT strategy and processes, implements, and operates systems including the associated support and maintenance. With over 19,000 employees in 34 countries, Nagarro offers customers not only international expertise, but also access to further technology solutions of a global player in software engineering.
Learn more about
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition here.
