Hershey: Gaining deeper insights into how to keep the future prosperous and sweet with SAP solutions
Explore Hershey’s journey with SAP
Whether you’re nine or 95, The Hershey Company has likely brought its goodness to your life. A longtime user of SAP solutions, Hershey is modernizing its approach to data to gain insights that will keep the future tasting sweet. At the heart of this transformation are SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business Technology Platform, and the SAP Datasphere solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Consumer products | Hershey, Pennsylvania | 20,505 employees |
business-user dashboards created in partnership with IT.
stop for reporting and analytics.
Senior Manager for Reporting Solutions, The Hershey Company
Bringing together 20 years of data across multiple systems
For more than 125 years, The Hershey Company has made moments of goodness for people of all ages. Whether it’s sharing Hershey’s “Kisses” with your sweetheart, opening a “Reese’s” Peanut Butter Cup on Halloween, or making s’mores around the campfire, great memories start with Hershey.
But Hershey is more than a candy company. It also boasts an entire community, including a world-class amusement park centered around its headquarters in Hershey, Pennsylvania. And more recently, the company has branched out into the broader snack food market. As the business grows and evolves, so must the technology that supports it.
Running on the SAP ERP application for more than 25 years, Hershey had numerous cases of data replication across multiple systems. KPIs were not uniform across business areas, and varying data definitions made cleanup and consolidation difficult.
The company needed to improve access to quality data, self-service modeling, and analytics in a governed way so that IT could focus on strategic tasks and business could steer the company better.
Senior Manager for Reporting Solutions, The Hershey Company
Keeping data clean and accessible for better decision-making
Hershey chose SAP S/4HANA to serve as its new digital backbone. Not only does it integrate with existing SAP systems for everything from procurement to product lifecycle management, to trade and campaign management, but it also helps prepare the company for new innovations going forward.
The SAP BW/4HANA solution provides next-generation data warehousing. And the SAP Fiori user experience helps ensure a standardized interface and functionality across solutions. Core data services are also used for data modeling and data processing.
The Hershey team also looked to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to deploy a business data fabric architecture. Self-service modeling and reporting is enabled by the SAP Analytics Cloud solution, with the SAP Datasphere solution enabling the harmonization of data management, analytics, and intelligent planning.
Hershey’s guiding principle for the overall system is to keep the core clean, minimize customization, and, ultimately, make data accessible to everyone who needs it.
Senior Manager for Reporting Solutions, The Hershey Company
Providing users a self-service one-stop shop to access and analyze data
When Hershey started its SAP S/4HANA journey, it had three dashboards in SAP Analytics Cloud. Throughout its journey, that number has grown to over 40 as the business sees the value of SAP Analytics Cloud as a delivery solution. Now, with the launch of SAP BTP and self-service modeling in SAP Datasphere, Hershey sees the potential to unlock additional business benefits. Instead of relying on the IT team, users across various departments have a one-stop shop for accessing certified, trusted data and can do the individualized analysis needed to understand their part of the business in relation to the enterprise as a whole.
Plus, with quarterly updates and SAP’s clear road map for the future, there are new standard capabilities constantly available to help with ongoing innovation.
Now, employees have the tools they need to access data, review it, and gain the insights they need, while Hershey has the governance required to help keep all that information clean and secure.
Senior Manager for Reporting Solutions, The Hershey Company