For 20 years, expert consultants from Larsen and Toubro Infotech Limited (LTI) have guided clients in digital transformation and migration to the cloud. LTI has become the sixth-largest IT company in India because it knows in its bones that today, when the only certainty is change, staying agile is crucial. It chose  SAP S/4HANA® running on Amazon Web Services as the platform for its intelligent enterprise and recommends that infrastructure to clients in multiple industries in more than 30 countries.  

Fostering Innovation and Agility with SAP S/4HANA® 

Before: Challenges and Opportunities 

• Reduce hardware costs and IT administration work by moving core functions to the cloud
• Extend the services portfolio for clients to include SAP S/4HANA® running on a public cloud 
• Advance evolution toward an intelligent enterprise with multidimensional, scalable reporting 

Why SAP 

• Among the first to master in-memory database technology and delivery of the Intelligent Enterprise
• Long-standing partner and trusted provider of multiple existing internal solutions 
• Developer of diverse software products frequently implemented in client systems

After: Value-Driven Results

• Higher operational efficiency by integrating contract and project structures, allocating resources intelligently, and optimizing invoice processing
• Richer employee experience through integration with SAP® SuccessFactors® and  SAP Concur® solutions as well as third-party and custom systems 
• Shorter procurement turnaround time through mobile-enabled approval processes using SAP Fiori® apps “The launch was seamless, based on a standard installation guide for SAP S/4HANA. Now, SAP S/4HANA on AWS supports all our financial and procurement functions.”  

Implementing Full-Service ERP in the Cloud 

A long-standing SAP customer and provider of architecture and implementation services for SAP® software systems, Larsen and Toubro Infotech Limited (LTI) recently unveiled the new tagline “Let’s solve.” While reaffirming its mission to  help clients digitalize their businesses, LTI also announced its own cloud computing program  based on SAP S/4HANA®. 

Moving to the cloud

A few years after its initial installation of the  SAP S/4HANA Finance solution on premise, LTI was ready to reimagine its ERP backbone as a cloud-based infrastructure. IT managers knew they could reduce capital and overhead costs when they no longer had to buy and maintain hardware. And they could make the IT behind their SAP software systems more agile while gaining time to focus on technology strategy. They were ready to undertake a massive infrastructure overhaul to fuel their intelligent enterprise. 

Gaining powerful selling points

LTI now runs SAP S/4HANA on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform already in place at  its headquarters. The company also folds in  SAP SuccessFactors® and SAP Concur® solutions in separate cloud systems, in-house applications running on Microsoft Azure, and multiple third-party applications. The resulting intelligent suite showcases LTI’s skill in application management services and delivery of cloud-based infrastructures capitalizing on the versatility of SAP S/4HANA.  

“Our cloud implementation of SAP S/4HANA highlights our  SAP S/4HANA skills and enhances customer confidence in  our fully managed services.”  

Multiplying Business Value with SAP S/4HANA  and AWS 

LTI learned about SAP S/4HANA from the inside  out by helping many of its 59 Fortune 500 clients advance their digital transformation through realtime insights and more-responsive business models – which SAP S/4HANA is purpose built  to deliver. 

Streamlining access to additional functionality from SAP

LTI also realized that access to SAP SuccessFactors solutions functionality in SAP S/4HANA would dovetail nicely with company ambitions to attract top talent and plug in to the academic ecosystem. And robust project management functionality in the suite could help foster emerging co-innovation initiatives with top clients. 

Setting up in the cloud

In its role as cloud solutions consultant, LTI  also knew the value of leaving application management to an external provider. Working with its own cloud center of excellence and AWS Professional Services, the company designed and sized the infrastructure using SAP S/4HANA on AWS in just a few weeks. And the project team was able to transfer data from LTI’s on-premise data center to the AWS environment in just a few days. Figure 1 summarizes at a high level the links between the core running on SAP S/4HANA and LTI’s peripheral systems. LTI is now well on the way to becoming an intelligent enterprise. 

Results

Investors in LTI and parent company Larsen and Toubro Limited will be pleased to note that running SAP S/4HANA adds to shareholder value in several ways.

The new technology implementation and the intelligent enterprise model it supports open new market segments, while better pricing, new subscription opportunities, and 360-degree customer visibility help LTI increase revenues. LTI executives expect sales volumes to grow substantially.

Profitability soars with the automation of manual tasks and the resulting reduction in the risk of fraud and error. And standardization on best-practice-based processes, built-in system scalability, and faster cycle times for client projects all contribute favorably to the bottom line as well. 

LTI can also raise asset efficiency to new levels with better capacity control and proactive maintenance of fixed assets, along with reductions in inventory and optimization of cash flow with tighter receivables management.

And lowering the cost of operational reporting while vastly improving speed, comprehensiveness, reliability, and agility of analytics will help LTI remain a consulting powerhouse for years to come.  

Expanding SAP Solutions into New Arenas  in the Future 

By making even greater use of the powerful features in SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Concur solutions, LTI will optimize the employee experience to attract and retain top talent. Additional integration with third-party and homegrown peripheral systems in continuing intelligent enterprise development will further increase operational efficiency. The time and money saved can be devoted to design thinking and coinnovation with clients in such emerging technologies as machine learning and blockchain processing. 

 Setting an example for sister businesses

Parent company Larsen and Toubro Limited has multiple other businesses that are noticing the success of LTI and may consider moving from  SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA® to SAP S/4HANA on AWS. The Larsen and Toubro pipeline business has a large manufacturing 

component and will especially benefit from multiple SAP Leonardo Machine Learning capabilities. The business focused on engineering and construction of power plants works with a wide variety of business partners and will welcome integration with Ariba® Network to build and manage its supplier base. 

Becoming an intelligent enterprise

Finally, running SAP S/4HANA on AWS represents a first step beyond digital transformation to the creation of an intelligent enterprise at LTI. With  the Intelligent Enterprise delivered by SAP, LTI  will make a quantum leap in its ability to hone competitive edge by basing actions on real-time situation awareness and responding quickly to change.