Marc O’Polo: Fashioning a transformation that’s a perfect fit for international growth and meeting its sustainability goals
How SAP LeanIX helps navigate a complex transformation
German fashion giant Marc O’Polo AG shored up the course of a complex transformation to an SAP Cloud ERP Private solution using the SAP LeanIX portfolio to gain strategic visibility into its software applications and dependencies. By developing a business-centric view of its application landscape, the company could better manage and control the transformation effort.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Retail | Stephanskirchen, Germany | 2,300 employees |
to gain a 360-degree view of its software landscape.
visibility of applications, lifecycles, and dependencies.
IT Enterprise Architect, Marc O’Polo AG
Navigating a radical transformation project to advanced ERP
International fashion brand Marc O’Polo AG is known for contemporary premium casual wear that embodies natural materials and high-quality workmanship. It supplies a network of more than 2,000 stores in 46 countries, including 111 of its own physical stores and online shops, as well as retail partners through franchise stores, multilabel concepts, and shop-in-store models.
With its corporate strategy focused on internationalization tied with a deep commitment to responsible production, the brand has grown rapidly over the past 10 years. During this time, Marc O’Polo developed and implemented various IT solutions to meet demands, leading to a multitude of complex processes across various systems. For example, the company operated several different ERP systems for the wholesale, retail, and finance divisions, which required significant effort for communication and data sharing.
To better support its global growth, Marc O’Polo decided to reorganize its IT infrastructure from scratch on a modern business foundation. As part of the transformation, it wanted to standardize its IT and corporate processes.
The company needed to keep business operations up and running during the transformation project, so it determined a phased approach for the go-lives, with separate business divisions having their own go-live dates. To be successful, both the old and new systems would have to work in tandem. Comprehensive documentation and full transparency were critical, as was maintaining employee involvement and motivation.
Enabling a transparent view of its IT landscape and interdependences
To execute its transformation to SAP Cloud ERP Private and develop sustainable architecture, Marc O’Polo needed a holistic view of its software landscape. Oliver Dawid, IT enterprise architect at Marc O’Polo, comments: “For a successful transformation that ticked all the boxes regarding quality and could be finalized within the scheduled two years, we needed a modern enterprise architecture tool with a data-based approach at its core.”
Marc O’Polo determined that the SAP LeanIX portfolio provided the best fit for its needs. The company liked its intuitive user interface and competitive pricing model that’s not dependent on the number of users. The company worked in close collaboration with the customer success team for SAP LeanIX solutions to quickly roll out the solutions. This included onboarding employees and gathering information on the current IT systems and interfaces. Using the import feature in SAP LeanIX and a flexible best-practice data model with predefined fact sheets, this process took only three months.
The team at Marc O’Polo also custom developed middleware as the API layer to harmonize communication between the systems, mapping it using best practices enabled by SAP LeanIX.
Powering sustainable IT and business practices now and for the future
With real transparency into its software landscape, including application lifecycles and dependencies, the enterprise architecture team laid the groundwork for the harmonious and parallel operation of legacy and new systems during the transformation.
Marc O’Polo recognized that only those who were well-informed would support change. With SAP LeanIX, everyone in the organization was able to take part in the transformation journey. In addition, to increase adoption, the company integrated SAP LeanIX with Confluence and Jira applications, enabling stakeholders to continue using the documentation and project management tools they were familiar with. This allows users to share project reports or check the status of Jira tickets directly through the application portfolio management interface provided in SAP LeanIX.
Depending on the transformation phase, Marc O’Polo’s interdisciplinary project team consisted of up to 80 employees who used SAP LeanIX as their window into information related to the software landscape.
A major factor influencing the success of the project was the decision to connect business processes and supporting applications through integration with the SAP Signavio portfolio. This provided visibility to all areas touched by the transformation. Within the various workstreams, leaders from IT and other business divisions could engage with external consultants and define which processes would be available in SAP LeanIX. The team also made use of up-to-date information on its applications from SAP LeanIX in the SAP Signavio Process Modeler solution to simplify and speed up process-model design.
IT Enterprise Architect, Marc O’Polo AG