Stoli Group: Experiencing an extraordinary business transformation with a cost-effective move to the cloud
Reimagining ERP to securely empower global employees
As a global producer, manager, and distributor of adult beverages, Stoli Group envisions leading the market when providing its luxury customers with extraordinary experiences. To achieve this, the company wanted to transform its operations and chose to implement an SAP Cloud ERP solution with the help of SAP partner Supernova Consulting Ltd.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Consumer products—beverages | Global | 250 employees | Supernova Consulting Ltd. |
reduction in annual total cost of ownership for the ERP system.
months to go-live with core enterprise-wide functionality.
ERP Director, Stoli Group
Modernizing ERP for greater security and a maintenance-free solution
Stoli Group is a global producer, manager, and distributor of ultrapremium iconic spirits, wines, and nonalcoholic beverages, including its flagship brand Stoli Vodka. With a vision to be “the acknowledged global leader in extraordinary adult beverages,” the company appeals to luxury consumers with products sold in more than 170 countries through a network of 300 distributors.
As a longtime SAP customer, Stoli Group used SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) for more than 20 years. When it was time to refresh its ERP environment, the company decided to move to the cloud with a more secure, maintenance-free solution that would meet its current needs while providing a path for future growth. Stoli Group was looking for a best-in-class solution to replace its legacy systems and provide global support for its sales, finance, inventory, logistics, supply chain, and production operations in 40 legal entities.
A cloud-based solution appealed to Stoli Group because its 250 employees work remotely, and the cloud would provide a centralized environment to make work easier and more efficient for employees. Moving to an SAP Cloud ERP solution was a logical decision because the company wanted to decrease the security and maintenance requirements for its on-premises ERP servers, operating systems, and databases that were costly and time-consuming. The company also needed a more robust solution to help it manage large volumes of customer, product, and supplier data and enable real-time, up-to-date reporting.
ERP Director, Stoli Group
Gaining greater efficiency and cost savings with a four-month move to the cloud
Stoli Group chose SAP Cloud ERP for its new ERP environment and turned to Supernova Consulting Ltd., a certified SAP partner that has supported the company for over 15 years, to assist in the implementation. While the company reviewed other solutions, it selected an SAP Cloud ERP solution because of its software-as-a-service capabilities, predictable price, and complimentary software packages. Stoli Group also liked that its IT team could engage with SAP’s well-developed community of partners and experts as needed.
For phase one of its implementation, Stoli Group implemented SAP Cloud ERP in two of its largest distributing entities. Supernova Consulting played a critical role in the implementation, as it provided the initial configuration, adherence to SAP’s best practices, and customized data migration tools. Through its solution expertise, the partner completed the implementation in four months, with sales, inventory tracking, purchasing, logistics, and core financial transactions enabled in the cloud ERP solution. As part of this initiative, SAP Cloud ERP was integrated with SAP Concur solutions, which the company uses to manage travel expenses. Because the IT team members already were familiar with SAP solutions, they were able to get up and running quickly on SAP Cloud ERP with training from Supernova.
ERP Director, Stoli Group
Unlocking value while achieving priceless peace of mind
For the Stoli Group, the implementation of SAP Cloud ERP has achieved its primary goals of increased cybersecurity, reduced cost of ownership of its ERP solution, and maintenance managed by SAP. Thanks to the flexible user licensing in its subscription-based model of SAP Cloud ERP, the company no longer has any capital expenses for its ERP operations. This reduces the considerable annual costs of maintenance, hosting, and administration, as well as indirect costs previously associated with its on-premises ERP solution.
SAP Cloud ERP has helped the company simplify and streamline its logistics and finance processes, such as order to cash, purchase-to-pay inventory, and financial closings and postings. Now, the company has a solid foundation based on actual data for forecasting production and shipment planning.
From a user perspective, the web-based and mobile capabilities of SAP Cloud ERP provide the company’s distributed and remote teams with a central environment for processes such as self-service reporting and approval workflows. According to Dmitry Kalmykov, ERP director at Stoli Group, “There were a few wow moments during the implementation. Although it may seem simple, it was a big deal when I realized that I can not only work in the SAP environment from my iPad but also configure and support the system from anywhere in the world.”
Stoli Group is also experiencing benefits from the embedded analytics functionality in SAP Cloud ERP, which provides both standard and ad hoc real-time reporting and analysis options at no extra cost. “SAP Cloud ERP is powerful, flexible, and customizable, with great end-user extensibility, so we can easily add custom fields, custom objects, and custom logic whenever we want,” adds Kalmykov. “We are seeing a major increase in performance over our previous system as far as reporting is concerned. Users can work quickly, reporting on transactional levels or exporting data to a spreadsheet tool. With the press of a button, they can download tens or hundreds of lines of data to analyze.”
ERP Director, Stoli Group
Taking advantage of innovation today and in the future
For next steps, Stoli Group plans on rolling out SAP Cloud ERP to its other legal entities. The company also intends to add more functionality such as manufacturing in its production plants and integration with its customers, suppliers, freight forwarders, and other partners.
Stoli Group would also like to take advantage of SAP Business AI technology to provide automation and document processing and the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to deliver transformational insights across its lines of business.
Featured partner
Supernova Consulting Ltd. is a leading consulting, technology, and outsourcing services firm serving clients in more than 30 countries. Supernova helped Stoli Group successfully launch its new ERP environment in four months while improving security, saving costs, and providing global employees with the tools they need to support the company’s growth and expansion.